How To Conquer Your Eating And Drinking Urges

Have you ever been around a plate of chocolate chip cookies where there seems to be more chocolate chips than cookie?

You start drooling (not literally I hope), as you stare. You look away and try to distract yourself by talking with a friend.

It doesn’t work. Those chocolate chip cookies have your full attention.

With a second attempt, you try to resist the urge again by focusing as hard as you can on what your friend is saying.

You can’t take it anymore. She really needs to stop complaining about her terrible date the other night who had awful breath and wouldn’t stop talking about his mother’s five cats.

Ten minutes later, you start feeling like you haven’t eaten in days, you’re so hungry for that cookie. Your friend finally ends her story and steps away for another drink.

You whip around, eyes locked on that plate of cookies, and grab the one with the MOST chips. After all, you deserve it for resisting for so long.

Immediately, your brain feels relief. You indulge, feel amazing for about 10 minutes, and then the disappointment that you had such poor self-control sets in. Now you have to run on the treadmill for an extra 30 minutes tomorrow, just to burn that cookie off.

You went through all that discomfort, only to lose. That’s because fighting urges hardly ever works. Allowing them does though.

By this, I mean allowing urges to come, and then allowing them to pass.

Urges are simply strong desires or impulses. They are just feelings stemming from a thought. A thought such as “I need to eat something sweet after dinner.”

They tend to pull us toward a specific action, like a magnetic force. One you feel like you must fight.

Fighting an urge is ineffective though, because it only makes the desire stronger, just like a magnet. It keeps the urge feeling around longer, making it much more likely that you give in to it. (Just like you did with the chocolate chip cookie, wink wink.)

Today, I’m going to teach you how to conquer your eating and drinking urges effectively.

Why Allowing Urges Works

When you allow an urge, there is less tension, less force. Eventually, it will pass. All feelings do.

(Did you know that emotions only last 90 seconds, according to Harvard Neuroscientiest, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor? It’s our thoughts that keep the emotion active for longer. Amazing huh?)

Allowing urges is easier than fighting urges. This is great news, because allowing urges is much more effective at keeping you on your path to your health goals.

Why allowing urges to come and go works, is you are essentially reconditioning your brain not to act upon any urge you have. This is much longer-lasting than just trying to resist the urge or distract yourself.

Allowing urges isn’t easy though.

It’s especially difficult the first several times you do it. I want to offer to you though, that once you do it repeatedly, it becomes much easier. (Thank goodness, right?)

That’s why I want to encourage you to get in the habit of allowing urges. It’s going to be uncomfortable at first, but you can absolutely do it.

To get in the habit of allowing urges, you just need repetition. With repetition, you continue to teach your brain that you don’t need to act upon an urge, you can just let it be.

By allowing the urge to come and go without causing the behavior to occur, you are breaking that behavior sequence. Once you break a behavior sequence, you break the habit.

Become the Parent

As I mentioned, urges are uncomfortable feelings. Your primitive brain wants you to avoid short-term discomfort. It is a part of the brain our cavemen and women ancestors passed onto us that is required for survival.

The primitive is ALWAYS trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain or discomfort, to improve the likelihood of survival.

To avoid pain or discomfort, it must find a solution to the “problem,” preferably a quick and easy one. (As a career woman, I know you totally get that!)

With urges, that easy solution is to just allow yourself to eat the food or drink that doesn’t fit into your goals. Unfortunately, this will oftentimes leave you feeling disappointed in yourself, and like you’ve taken a step backward.

When you allow your urge to occur and then pass, you are deconditioning your brain, as I mentioned earlier. You are deconditioning it from immediately trying to solving that problem of short-term discomfort.

This is exactly why it’s so difficult to allow urges at first. You are essentially trying to convince your brain that there is no need to solve that immediate problem of discomfort.

(Your primitive brain is like a small child who doesn’t want to listen.)

Your Higher Brain Steps In

Luckily, you have a higher brain, the executive decision-making part of your brain. This is called the pre-frontal cortex.

Your pre-frontal cortex is more future-focused and your best interests are its priority. It’s the part of your brain that kicks in when you consciously allow the urge to come and go.

Your pre-frontal cortex is the parent who overrides the small child.

It has the final say.

Once a parent gets used to the fact that she can override the child when it comes to the child’s best interests, she gets better at it. She becomes more confident, and it gets easier.

That’s how your brain works too.

Once your pre-frontal cortex gets used to overriding the primitive brain by allowing the urge rather than giving in to it, it gets easier.

Like I said earlier, to get used to it, it needs to occur repeatedly. Maybe 30 times, maybe 100 times. Everyone is different.

The key is to just start and keep going.

How to Allow Your Eating and Drinking Urges

Now I want to talk specifically about eating (and maybe drinking) urges, and how to allow them.

We all have them.

My eating urges occur when I see cookies. In my former career, colleagues would bring in cookies, brownies, cakes, you name it.

In my twenties, I would eat one, especially if I had a particularly stressful day. I started associating stress with needing to eat something sweet.

It made me feel better while I was eating it, but that quickly passed.

So, once I started noticing I was getting into a bad eating habit, I decided to not allow these urges to control my actions.

Of course I was going to have an urge, I love cookies. However, I don’t want to be eating cookies most days, so I started just allowing the urge to be there. I noticed that it quickly passed when I let it just be.

Sometimes I still get urges, but I have confidence that I will be successful at letting it pass. That’s only because of the repetition. My brain started seeing evidence that I could do it.

Just like your brain will start to see. When you give in to urges and go for the cookie, chips, French fries, or glass of pinot noir, your brain thinks that’s just the way it is and so it keeps repeating that.

• Read (or skim) this too: Should You Break Your Habit of Snacking at Night?
• GET WEEKLY TIPS: Eating Habit and Weight Loss Tips

Eating Urges

What I want to mention now is that there isn’t anything inherently “bad” about an urge to eat something. Except for when it doesn’t align with your health goals. Only you know that.

If the urge to eat a certain type or volume of food doesn’t align with your health goals, that’s when you’ll want to kick your urge to the curb.

If you are trying to decrease or eliminate sweets, you’re going to want to be able to allow that urge so that urge no longer drives your behavior of eating the sweet.

It can help to have a glass of water nearby and take a few sips while you let the urge pass. This may sound like a distraction or avoidance, but it’s not really.

You are still allowing the urge, because something as neutral as water isn’t exactly a flavor replacement for whatever yumminess you are having the urge to eat or drink.

It’s not fighting the urge with distraction either, because drinking water isn’t very stimulating. (Or at least most people don’t think so!)

• Read (or skim) this too: Sugar Addiction: How to Stop the Cycle

Drinking Urges

Regarding urges with drinking, there is a strong desire to drink a certain type of beverage. It can be something sugary or something containing alcohol or caffeine.

• Read (or skim) this too: How to Decrease Your Caffeine Habit
• GET WEEKLY TIPS: Eating Habit and Weight Loss Tips

When it comes to drinking, alcohol is the most common culprit.

You yourself may have had the thought “I had a tough day at work and this glass of wine will help me decompress.” (That thought has passed through my mind one too many times, which is why I decided to do this work and it was a success!)

It’s not terrible to allow yourself a glass of wine after a tough day on occasion. However, if you are consciously trying to avoid or decrease alcohol, that urge is an annoying pest.

4 Steps to Allow Urges

One of the most important things I can teach you is to get in the habit of allowing your urges to come and go.

This will sound very difficult at first, however it gets easier, way easier.

Just remember, the discomfort of the urge will pass if you let it.

Step 1 – Recognize that the urge is there

Notice where you feel the urge. Is it in your stomach? In your mouth? Just notice that these are sensations only. They aren’t harmful.

Step 2 – Remind yourself that if you allow it to come and go, it will.

Remember that a feeling should only last about 90 seconds? Just remind yourself of this. It’s okay to have that urge. It’s not harming you. You don’t need to solve any problems by making the discomfort go away by eating the cookie.

Step 3 – Remember That You’re the Parent

Overrule your primitive brain (the small child) and enable your pre-frontal cortex (the parent) to be in charge. Don’t let your child grab the cookie. If you need to, grab a glass of water instead.

Step 4 – Repeat

Each time you allow the urge to come and go, it chips away at the habit to just act on the urge. The more frequently you do this, the easier it will become.

If you are trying to decondition your brain, then you have to expose yourself to the object that you have the urge toward. You’ll only be able to break that connection, or behavior sequence, if you do.

Final Notes

From zero to one is always the toughest.

That’s just because your brain isn’t used to doing it. Once you start doing it though, your brain gets used to the new behavior sequence, and it becomes so much easier.

You don’t have to be perfect, and you probably won’t be, especially at first. That’s okay. Just keep going.