How to Find Wisdom in Food Cravings, Plus 7 Ways to Make Peace With Them
If you’re human, you’ve probably had a food craving. From jonesing for your favorite sweets to comforting memories of mom’s home cooking, there are plenty of reasons you might have the urge to reach for a certain food. While you may desire a certain food due to its nutritional content, much of the time food cravings can have emotional roots. Instead of looking at cravings as something to resist, ignore, or stamp out altogether, it’s possible to gain insight from food cravings as a way to meet the deeper needs hiding underneath. Here’s how to mine the wisdom your food cravings hold to find peace in your relationship with food.
Understanding the deeper meaning behind food cravings can offer valuable insights into our emotional and physical well-being. Here’s how to find wisdom in food cravings, along with seven strategies to make peace with them:
- Mindful Awareness: Practice mindfulness when experiencing food cravings. Instead of automatically succumbing to them, pause and observe your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. Notice any patterns or triggers underlying your cravings.
- Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to your body’s signals and cues. Cravings may indicate nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, or emotional needs. Tuning in to your body’s messages can help you make informed choices about nourishing yourself.
- Emotional Inquiry: Explore the emotional root of your cravings. Are you seeking comfort, distraction, or stress relief? Reflect on underlying feelings and address them with self-compassion and constructive coping mechanisms, such as journaling, talking to a friend, or practicing relaxation techniques.
- Nutritional Balance: Prioritize balanced nutrition to prevent extreme fluctuations in blood sugar levels and minimize cravings. Incorporate a variety of nutrient-dense foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats, into your diet to support overall well-being.
- Savoring and Moderation: Allow yourself to enjoy your favorite foods mindfully and in moderation. Rather than viewing certain foods as “good” or “bad,” cultivate a balanced approach to eating that emphasizes pleasure, satisfaction, and nourishment without guilt or deprivation.
- Alternative Strategies: Experiment with alternative ways to fulfill your cravings. For example, if you’re craving sweets, try satisfying your sweet tooth with naturally sweet foods like fruit or indulging in a small portion of your favorite dessert mindfully.
- Self-Compassion and Forgiveness: Practice self-compassion and forgiveness if you indulge in cravings occasionally. Be gentle with yourself and recognize that occasional indulgences are a normal part of life. Focus on progress, not perfection, and cultivate a positive relationship with food and your body.
By approaching food cravings with mindfulness, self-awareness, and self-compassion, you can develop a healthier and more balanced relationship with food. Embrace the wisdom inherent in your cravings and use them as opportunities for self-discovery, growth, and nourishment—both physically and emotionally.
If diet culture is to be believed, food cravings are something to be controlled and resisted. But what if there’s another approach?While food cravings can have many causes, they can often indicate that deeper feelings and stressors that are lurking under the surface. Instead of restrictive dieting, intuitive eating embraces desire as something to be celebrated and enjoyed.
According to a 2021 review, intuitive eating is considered an adaptive mental health strategy that’s connected to several positive outcomes, including increases in:
- positive body image
- self-esteem
- overall well-being
A 2020 study followed 1,491 participants from adolescence to young adulthood. At an 8-year follow-up, continued intuitive eating practices were associated with lower incidences of a number of disordered eating behaviors.
This included lower odds of:
- high depressive symptoms
- low self-esteem
- high body dissatisfaction
- unhealthy weight control behaviors like fasting and skipping meals
- extreme weight control behaviors like taking diet pills or vomiting
- binge eating
According to Geneen Roth, author, speaker, and compulsive eating workshop leader, an intuitive approach to food cravings can transform them into a source of liberation.
In her book “Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything,” Roth details her own journey with disordered eating and how she came to lead workshops to support others going through the same thing.
Her philosophy is based on the idea that dieting isn’t so much about food and weight loss as it is about a sense of inner lack.
“Compulsive eating is only the symptom; believing that you are not worth your own love is the problem.”
—Geneen Roth, “Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything”
“It’s never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale,” writes Roth. “When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels.”
Similar to Roth, food freedom and holistic wellness coach Sloane Elizabeth first experienced her own difficulties with food before she became a guide to others.
“I had my own history with disordered eating and body image struggles, and that’s what ultimately inspired me to help other women,” she says.
For Elizabeth, food cravings were actually covering up a fearful need for control.
“I realized that it wasn’t really about the food at all, but it was about control issues and perfectionism,” she says. “Food just so happened to be the thing that I used to express that fear.”
Though she was encouraged by the increasing popularity of intuitive eating, Elizabeth felt there was another layer to be unpacked.
“I was just seeing kind of more surface-level stuff about intuitive eating, like ‘just eat what you’re craving’ and that’s kind of it,” she says. “That wasn’t enough for me to heal.”
“I realized that it wasn’t really about the food at all.”
—Sloane Elizabeth
According to a 2020 review, food deprivation increases cravings for the foods being avoided when it comes to specific foods. The study notes these cravings are a conditioned response brought about by learned cues rather than nutrient or energy deficiencies. This means they can be unlearned.
While it’s difficult to say exactly what these cues are, they likely have emotional undercurrents.
“The root of the issue lies in the subconscious mind,” says Elizabeth “Typically, it’s fear of something—not being lovable, fear of not being worthy, fear of not being perfect, fear of not being in control.”
Roth has a similar approach.
To get at the root of the desire for food, she guides her students to get curious and deeply listen to their own desires. This also involves coming to recognize that the idea that food will fix anything is a “lie.”
“Inquiry…allows you to relate to your feelings instead of retreat from them,” she writes. “Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away.”
Instead of forcing superficial change, like swapping a cookie for a rice cake, Roth encourages her students to face the real reason they’re reaching for food as a source of comfort.
Once faced, the fixation with food becomes far less powerful.
“When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop,” she writes. “When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.”
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