If you have certain food cravings, you’re not alone, and it can put your wellness and your weight loss efforts at risk, but why does it happen and can you do anything to control your cravings?
According to Professor Marion Hetherington, leading expert on food cravings and Professor of Biopsychology at the University of Leeds, ‘A classic craving is an urge or a strong desire for a particular food.’ She notes that these are usually treat foods such as ‘high energy, high calorie, and high fat food’ as the desire comes from your brain – not your stomach.
Nutritionist and lifestyle expert Liz Tucker adds that ‘We have a primitive response, as humans, we live to experience pleasure, through sex and relationships and also through eating and drinking’ so you eat to look after your emotional wellbeing because ‘If you are miserable or in crisis in one area of your life, you aren’t getting pleasure from it and turn to food to give you that happiness kick.’
Cravings are not, however, there because you need to fill a nutritional deficiency. Hetherington notes an experiment where young people were kept on a liquid diet with all of the correct nutrients, but still they craved food with texture like steak and pasta, food that had substance to it. Therefore, it may be the feel of it in your mouth that adds to the craving.
According to Professor Brain Wansink, world expert in eating behaviour, professor at Cornell University and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, culture and gender play a big role in cravings. He researched and concluded that men are more likely to crave pizza, pasta, and soup as hot, savoury foods reminded them of attention from their mothers or wives. Women, on the other hand, associated these foods with preparation and cleaning up, so tended to crave hassle-free snack foods, like chocolate, biscuits and ice cream.
So that’s the why, but how do you control your unhealthy urges? Firstly, fill the house with healthy and convenient snacks such as fruit and carrot sticks, and if you feel your sweet tooth twitching, try having a big glass of water or maybe even a teaspoon of honey or a handful of raisins. If you can manage only having a little taste without going overboard, just have a square or two of chocolate and hide the rest of the bar away or, even better, get someone else in the house to do it so you don’t know where it is!
You can also distract yourself with something unrelated to food, such as having a lovely, indulgent bath or going for a run to release feel-good hormones and burn calories. Hetherington recommends finger tapping to distract yourself, whilst Wansink advises a walk or calling a friend for a chat. Try avoiding food adverts by watching films or recording TV programmes so you can fast forward through the adverts. If that fails, keep a food diary to watch for triggers.
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