Learn How to Stop Food Cravings
Are you tired of doing so good all day and then BAM! 8 pm hits. You want to relax. You’ve had a long day. Everyone wanted a piece of you and you handed it over without a fight. Your f-ing tired and the LAST thing you want to do is sit around “working on your food urges.” All you can think about is how this sucks. Do you throw in the towel?
Today in the podcast you’ll learn more about how we set ourselves to cave to the urges and three tips to stop the cycle. You have to know how you get into this mess if you’ll ever be able to work your way out. Click here to listen to Conquering Urges to Overeat.
How do you conquer urges?
Urges feel urgent in the body. An urge is when you suddenly feel the need to eat. It’s not hunger. If an apple won’t do it, you’re not hungry. Emotional eaters are people who just want food.
If you can get aware of when you eat and why, that’s everything. It doesn’t have to be complicated or hard. Know when you’re emotional eating or wanting to eat versus when you actually need to eat. Want and need are two different things. What do I do when I want to eat versus need to eat?
How are you thinking about your food urges? The urges do not have to go away in order for you to lose weight. Urges do not set you up for uncontrolled eating. Urges aren’t bad. You can control yourself around urges. They aren’t super hard. Don’t judge yourself for your food urges or for what you did eat. Urges are normal.
If urges make you anxious, scared, or worried, you have to clean up your thoughts around them. Urges will come and you can figure this out. If you believe you can’t control yourself around urges, you will feel anxious and then end up eating to “deal” with the anxiety. It’s okay to just be anxious.
How do you conquer urges? Reduce the atmosphere that drives them. Learn to be open to having urges and figuring them out. Take three minutes to answer these questions so that you can stop being overweight.
Overeating and Urges Weightloss Journal Prompt:
- Make a list of everything you think about urges. I think urges are __________. When I think about urges, I think these things.
- Next to each thing you’ve written down, write “bullshit” by it. This reason is bullshit and this is why __________.
Argue for yourself, not against yourself – you can get your shit together. Here are my best three tips to conquer your urges and stop overeating.
Tip #1: You have to know your patterns with urges.
Know your triggers, your cues, the justifications you use to eat, the excuses you use to eat. Don’t assume there’s something deeper going on.
Urges usually are urgent and come on suddenly which is why it’s important to know your triggers or cues.
Overeating and Urges Weightloss Journal Prompt:
Write down your urges and keep them in a notebook, then review your answers and look for patterns.
- Ask yourself “what do I notice about this urge?”
- Is there a night you tend to overeat?
- A girlfriend you tend to over drink with?
- Is it related to stressful workdays?
- Notice the pattern so you can be prepared for the urge (but don’t get anxious about it).
If you don’t know your patterns, you’re running on autopilot and say things like “it’s just happening to me” “I just find myself eating.” Â You have to be a student of what you’re doing.
Tip #2: We have to go from “fuck it” eating to “I’m doing it” eating.
I no longer say fuck it, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to eat it very consciously and without judgment. If you planned a salad for dinner, but your husband wants to take you out to dinner, fuck it eating is when you don’t want him to think you don’t love him so you eat whatever he chooses and stress about it. Instead, know that you love him unconditionally. You can go to whatever restaurant and always eat healthy. Your love is not dependent on what you eat.
We do “fuck it” eating to shut off the inner critic. “I’m doing it” eating means you have a logical conversation in your head and weigh out your options and whether it will get you closer to your goals, then make a well-informed choice. Once you make a choice, there’s no going back and no judgment. The decision is made. Your brain will stop sending up an urge because you already made a decision.
If you plan every night for a bowl of strawberries, but eat a sleeve of Oreos, take the strawberries off of the plan and put the Oreos on it. Plan the overeat. Make it a conscious decision. Urges have more authority when we use fuck it a lot. They have more authority when we ignore our patterns and hope they go away. Hope is not a strategy.
Tip #3: Practice times where you plan for your best self and you visualize your success.
Visualize yourself having urges and overcoming them. If we had a “no eating after 8pm” night – your brain automatically goes to suffering and wanting to eat. Visualize the process of not being super hard. Practice it ahead of time. You have a relationship with your food urges and you can choose to have a nice relationship with them because they are not going away.
One of my No BS Weightloss Program Coaches, Kathy, thinks of her urges as suggestions. It helps her deal with them better. It’s easier to say ‘No’ to a suggestion!
I think of my urges as shit my brain says. The brain just likes to throw all sorts of shit out there. We can choose how we handle it.
