YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Food Cravings: Why You Crave Certain Foods & How to Feel More in Control
If you have specific food cravings, sugar cravings or salty crunchy cravings, you’re not alone.
Here are answers to some of the most common questions I get about food cravings.
What are Food Cravings?
A food craving is a strong desire to eat a particular food, often because that food is especially rewarding, familiar, or associated with a particular situation, or feeling. A craving isn’t necessarily the same thing as physical hunger.
You can be completely full and still want chocolate or walk past the kitchen and suddenly want cheese and crackers.
You can have a stressful day and find yourself thinking about a specific food before you’ve even consciously decided you want to eat.
Cravings can be influenced by physical factors like not eating enough, lack of sleep, and hunger, but they can also be shaped by habits, emotions, memories, environmental cues, and repeated associations with certain foods.
The important thing to remember is that having a craving doesn’t mean you have to act on it, and it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
Why Do I Crave Certain Foods?
You may crave certain foods because they are rewarding, familiar, easily available, or connected to a particular time, place, emotion, or routine.
Repeatedly eating a food in a certain situation can strengthen the association between the situation and the desire for that food.
Maybe you always want popcorn when you watch TV, or want a cookie when you finish a difficult workday.
Over time, your brain can learn these associations, but since a craving is often a learned pattern, patterns can be changed.
If a craving is being influenced by a deeper need like rest, hydration, nutrients or an emotional need, then meeting those needs will decrease cravings over time.
A craving doesn’t necessarily mean you need food, but it does often mean you need something.
Why Do I Crave Sweets and Sugar?
You may crave sweets because sweet foods are highly rewarding, but sugar cravings can also be influenced by hunger, not eating enough, stress or other emotions, lack of sleep, habits, and repeated exposure to sweet foods.
If you’re going long stretches without eating or trying to be extremely “good” with your food during the day, your desire for quick, rewarding foods may become much stronger.
Lack of sleep and stress can also contribute to food cravings.
You might have eaten plenty of food and still want a cookie because cookies are enjoyable, or because you’ve learned that a cookie is how you end your day.
Before deciding that you’re “addicted to sugar,” look at the bigger pattern.
When do you crave sweets? What happened before the craving? And what are you hoping the food will give you?
Do I Have a Sugar Addiction?
Craving sweets or feeling out of control around sugary foods doesn’t automatically mean you’re addicted to sugar.
“Sugar addiction” isn’t a straightforward medical diagnosis in humans, and sugar cravings can have many different causes.
Certain foods can be extremely rewarding, and it’s possible to develop strong habits and associations around them. Restricting sweets can also make them feel especially desirable and lead to overeating them.
For example, if you’ve spent all day telling yourself you can’t have a cookie, that cookie may become a really big deal by the time you finally allow yourself to eat it.
Then you might eat more than you intended and think, See? I really can’t control myself around sugar.
But that doesn’t indicate you’re addicted. Sometimes what looks like a problem with sugar is actually a combination of restriction, food rules, habit, emotional eating, and an all-or-nothing approach to eating.
Why Do I Think About Food All The Time?
Thinking about food frequently can happen when you’re physically hungry, restricting your food, using food to cope with emotions (emotional eating), following rigid food rules, or simply spending a lot of mental energy trying to control what you eat.
You might spend your day thinking about what you’re going to eat, whether you should have the cookie, what you’ll eat for dinner, whether you “blew it,” or what you’re going to do differently tomorrow.
Sometimes you’re genuinely hungry. Sometimes not.
And the problem isn’t that you think about food too much. It’s that you’ve made food something you have to constantly manage.
If you’ve spent years dieting, restricting certain foods, trying to eat “perfectly,” or telling yourself that tomorrow you’ll finally get back on track, food can take up a surprising amount of mental space.
And if you also use food for comfort, stress relief, reward, or a break, there may be even more reasons for your brain to keep bringing food to your attention.
You don’t necessarily need to learn how to think about food less. You need to change the patterns that are keeping food top of mind.
You can have a calm mind that’s not cluttered with food noise once you change the patterns keeping food top of mind.
Why Do I Crave Food When I’m Not Hungry?
You can crave food when you’re not hungry because cravings aren’t always driven by physical hunger. They can be triggered by habits, emotions, sights and smells, thoughts about food, or situations you’ve learned to associate with eating.
Maybe you finish dinner and immediately want something sweet or walk into the breakroom looking for food because you need a mental break after that last task or meeting.
Maybe you finally sit down on the couch at night after a stressful day and crave cookies.
In these situations, your body may not be asking for food. Your brain may simply be responding to a familiar cue.
Why Do I Crave Food When I’m Stressed?
You may crave food when you’re stressed because eating can provide pleasure, comfort, distraction, or a temporary break from whatever is overwhelming you.
Stress can also affect appetite and make highly rewarding foods especially appealing.
Maybe you’ve had a terrible day at work and suddenly want something sweet, or your schedule has been packed and you sit on the couch with some ice cream to de-stress.
Food can become a very fast way to change how you feel, even if that relief doesn’t last very long.
And if eating has repeatedly helped you feel better when you’re stressed, your brain can learn to reach for food automatically the next time stress shows up.
You’re not weak if you give into cravings when stressed.
Your brain is just trying to get relief fast to try to protect you.
Why Do I Crave Food at Night?
Nighttime food cravings can be caused by physical hunger, eating too little during the day, fatigue, stress, habit, or finally having time to relax after a demanding day.
For many busy women, nighttime is when the day finally stops.
You’ve worked. You’ve taken care of everyone else. You’ve made decisions all day. And now you’re finally sitting on the couch with a little time that belongs to you.
Food can become part of that transition from “I’m responsible for everything” to “I’m finally off.”
And if you’ve also been restricting your food during the day, your body may have a legitimate reason to be hungry at night.
That’s why nighttime cravings aren’t always a simple willpower problem.
If this is a pattern for you, don’t just look at what you’re eating after dinner.
Look at the entire day that came before it.
What did you eat? How hungry were you? How stressful was your day? How tired are you? And what does eating at night give you that you may not be getting anywhere else?
How Do I Get Rid of Cravings?
You can lower the intensity and frequency of cravings by first understanding what’s behind the craving, giving yourself what you truly need, and then learning to feel the craving and not respond to it.
Everyone experiences some cravings every once in awhile, so to never have cravings again in your life isn’t a realistic goal.
But you can significantly decrease the intensity and amount of cravings so that they’re easier to experience and move on from without eating in response to them.
It starts with understanding that a craving is just an uncomfortable feeling in your body and that there’s always something behind it, something causing it.
Discovering what that is, is key to then being able to do something about it.
How Do I Control Food Cravings?
You can learn to manage food cravings without fighting them. The key is understanding what’s driving the craving and changing the patterns that make certain foods feel especially difficult to resist.
Sometimes a craving is being driven by physical hunger or not eating enough.
Other times it’s a habit, stress, boredom, fatigue, restriction, or a learned association with a particular food or situation.
There isn’t one trick that works for every craving because there isn’t one cause. But fighting cravings always keeps the feeling alive and therefore often backfires.
Instead of thinking, “I have to fight this craving,” ask yourself, “why am I having this craving right now? What do I actually need?”
Once you understand what’s driving it, you have more options.
And the goal isn’t to become someone who never wants chocolate, French fries, or ice cream.
It’s to be able to want those foods without feeling like they control you.
You can enjoy the foods you love and still have a healthy relationship with food, lose weight and keep it off without fighting your food cravings.
Here’s your next step to feel in control of food cravings:
Start with a free consult to understand more of your patterns and get a clear roadmap of what it takes to have the healthy relationship with food that you want.
It’ll save you time, energy, and frustration, and you’ll be well on your way to feeling more in control and having a healthier relationship with food.