185. How to Rewire Your Cravings: Physiology, Habits, and the Thoughts That Help

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Have you ever found yourself negotiating with a pint of ice cream at 9 p.m., even though you ate dinner just two hours ago?

You tell yourself you’ll have “just one bite.” Then maybe one more. Suddenly, you’re standing in front of the freezer wondering why this feels so hard.

Cravings aren’t simply a willpower problem. Blood sugar swings, stress, poor sleep, old habits, and an overly convenient pantry can all make certain foods feel almost impossible to ignore.

But you can learn to pause, understand what’s driving the urge, and respond without shame or rigid food rules. 

I was recently decluttering my home when I found an old journal from 2020. At the time, I was doing a lot of work around urges and cravings, and I had written down phrases, questions, and practical strategies to use when I felt pulled toward food but wasn’t physically hungry.

Reading through those notes years later, I realized how useful they still are. They weren’t about forcing myself to “be good” or pretending I didn’t want the food. They were about understanding what was happening in my body, creating a little space before reacting, and learning to respond with curiosity instead of panic.

Here are the key things to work through when a craving hits. 

1. Check Whether You’re Actually Hungry

Ask yourself whether you would eat something simple, such as an apple, a cold hard-boiled egg, or a plain piece of chicken.

• If several foods sound good, you may be physically hungry.
• If only something very specific, e.g. sweet, salty, crunchy, or creamy, it is more likely a craving.

A craving is not bad or dangerous. It is simply information.

2. Support Your Blood Sugar

It is much harder to manage cravings when your body is dealing with sharp blood sugar swings.

Pair carbohydrates with protein and fiber whenever possible. For example:

• Crackers with hummus or cheese
• Toast with eggs
• Fruit with Greek yogurt
• Pretzels after some vegetables and cottage cheese

You can also start meals with a few bites of fiber and protein before moving on to the carbohydrate. You don’t need to finish all your broccoli before touching your potatoes. The idea is to create a buffer, not invent a new food rule.

3. Notice the Role of Ultra-Processed Foods

Ultra-processed foods are often quick to digest and designed to be extremely rewarding. They tend to combine sweet, salty, creamy, or crunchy textures in a way that makes stopping difficult.

That doesn’t mean you can never eat them. It means it is worth noticing whether certain foods leave you wanting more shortly afterward.

And no, adding ten grams of protein to a bag of chips does not magically turn it into a balanced meal.

4. Look at Sleep and Stress

Sometimes the craving is your body asking for energy. Other times, food has become the quickest way to get comfort, pleasure, or a break.

Ask yourself:

What do I need more than food right now?

It might be:

• Sleep
• A few minutes alone
• A break from the television or kitchen
• Comfort after a difficult day
• Something enjoyable that isn’t food

You may still decide to eat, but now you are making a conscious choice instead of reacting automatically.

5. Make the Habit Less Convenient

You don’t have to ban tempting foods, but you also don’t need to display them at eye level like a pantry billboard.

Try moving them off the counter, placing them on a higher shelf, or storing them behind something else. You can also leave the kitchen, step outside, take a shower, or move to another room.

By switching the environment, you create enough space for your thinking brain to come back online.

6. Pause Before Answering the Urge

Every time a craving immediately ends with eating, the habit becomes more automatic.

To change the pattern, there will be times when you need to feel the urge without answering it right away. That may be uncomfortable, but discomfort is not an emergency.

These were the phrases from my old journal that stood out most:

• “I notice I want this, and that’s okay.”
• “I’m willing to feel the desire without answering it immediately.”
• “This is hard, and I do hard things.”

A craving is a sensation, not a command.

7. Identify the Pattern

Pay attention to when cravings usually appear.

Do they happen after dinner? While watching television? After a stressful meeting? On days when you skipped lunch? When you are exhausted but don’t want the evening to end?

Once you spot the pattern, choose one small thing to change. For example, you might eat more protein earlier in the day, turn off the television, or go to bed earlier.

The goal is not to say no every time or follow rigid food rules. It is to understand what is happening, pause, and decide whether the food is genuinely worth it.

Remember: there is usually a good reason the habit developed. Now you can decide whether it is still serving you, and practice a different response with patience and self-compassion.

Want to go deeper? Listen to the full episode for more practical strategies to understand your cravings, interrupt automatic habits, and build a calmer, more supportive relationship with food. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.  

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing today? I have been doing so much decluttering this summer, and some of this came out of in the summer reset, that's the four-month l- you could say book study, but it's really more than that 'cause we've been taking the concepts from the book and then implementing different challenges and things. It's been such a nice group. Someone in there mentioned about decluttering and how they had joined Dawn the Minimal Mom. She had a decluttering challenge, and I didn't join that challenge, but I've talked a lot about Dawn. I absolutely love how she talks about decluttering. She makes it really easy and simple. I think she's someone amazing to learn from if this is something that you're struggling with. I did her course, ah, five, six years ago at this point. It was Taking Back Your Home, and I to this day still use the concepts. So anyway, I bring this up because in the midst of decluttering so much, which feels so good by the way, I do this about usually two times a year. That's the only way I can kinda keep on top of it. We don't have a bunch of storage in my home. It's a situation where we keep what we like, and we do not the rest. In the midst of doing that, I found this journal from 2020 when I was starting to work a lot through urges and cravings. And there are some great sentences in here where there are, for example, thoughts when allowing urges thoughts that I could practice that could help. And I realized it would be a really great episode if we went over some of these and talk about, okay, what is an urge and a craving? What are some physiologic things you can do to support yourself? Because if you don't support your physiology, if you don't give yourself a fighting chance at blood sugars being regulated and your body being able to handle what it's eating, there's no chance that you can work on the thoughts or different behaviors. Remember that a lot of the time, physiology drives behavior. People would like to think that they just choose to say, "Oh, I want donuts in the morning," and they go out and get it, but everyone's mind does not think that. There was something initially that made you crave and want that sugar, that, that led you in that direction. And so just remember that physiology usually drives behavior. But then there comes a moment when we've treated the physiology, but then the habit is in place, and then we need to break it. So that's what I wanna talk about today, when you notice that, what you can do. So you know it's an urge and a craving and that it's not real hunger because real hunger, you're gonna go and eat. You're gonna ask yourself a food that I do not desire at all. For me, it would be a cold hard-boiled egg. No thanks, unless I'm hungry. An apple. I like apples, but I'm not going to overeat on apples, right? Like I know I'm hungry when I eat an apple. For people that eat meat in the room, it might be A dry piece of chicken breast. Whatever it is where you're like, when you're hungry, you'll eat it, but the rest of the time you're not exactly signing up for it. If you would wanna go eat that, go eat. But if not, and it's something very specific, urges and cravings are typically something sweet, something salty, something crunchy. It- you're usually not having an urge and a craving for raw broccoli with nothing on it, so just to give you perspective. All right, so you know this is an urge and a craving. Let's talk about first what we should be doing in life so that we can help decrease the chance of that, and then second, we'll talk about some thoughts that you could start to think or different things that you could do. Number one, I want you to always be pairing your carbohydrates first with a protein fiber, and then you eat the carb. The reason being, you slow down the absorption of that carbohydrate, and you don't have this rapid rise and fall of blood sugar. Rapid rising and falling of blood sugar really contributes to urges and cravings. And not only when that's happening that you have that urge and craving, but that they continue to occur in the future. That's where you really run into the problem because it's a one-off no one cares about. It's the fact that these things get out of control that you really feel powerless. Like, "Oh my gosh, every day now I'm wanting ice cream." That's really what we're trying to future-proof here. You're always gonna have a protein and fiber before you're having a carbohydrate. You don't need to eat all of the fiber or protein, but you're gonna have some. The other thing, and this is the same thing that I basically just said but different name, food ordering has a real impact on blood sugar as well. If you start with a fiber source, then you do protein, then you do the carb, again, the blood sugar does not go up as quickly. Again, I really want to stress, you do not need to eat all of the veggies on the plate first and then all of the chicken on the plate before you get to the carbohydrate. We're just doing some of it to start to slow down the absorption. All right, the last thing that I have on the list is gonna be to decrease ultra-processed food. Let's have a quick conversation about the physiology of ultra-processed food. With ultra-processed food, there are ingredients in there that are not coming naturally out of the earth. They are made in a factory, a facility, a lab. They have emulsifiers, they have stabilizers. They have so many things in them that's allowing it to stay in a package for years on end. It's not just how a food naturally occurs. The problem with ultra-processed food is that it makes your blood sugar go up so quickly, and our mind and body were not meant to take on this hit the way in which these foods affect us. We were not designed to handle that. We were designed to eat some berries that are naturally sweet but also have a ton of fiber in them and really don't do much to your blood sugar, that's what we were meant to get an amazing, "Ooh, that tastes great," from. But pastries and candy and chocolate and those kind of things, they didn't exist back in the day with our ancestors. They were not around. Okay, the problem when you have ultra-processed food, the surface area is really high, so absorption is mega rapid. So I'm gonna give you an example. There's a massive difference between you eating a handful of almonds versus having something made with a handful of almond flour. Now you're saying, "Mate, it's literally almonds." Well, one I'm chewing it and the other one is a fine powder. A fine powder is absorbed way quicker than you sitting there and chewing the almond. You're never even gonna get it to the surface area that the flour was at. So the point is your absorption is very different. Hopefully you can understand here, okay, not only does it get absorbed super quick, the other thing that happens with ultra-processed food is that they strip from it the hydration. There's usually not a good amount of fiber, not a good amount of protein. And when they introduce protein or fiber into these products, because the big food industry is getting the message that sales are down, and they wanna continue to have that. They're starting to pump protein into Snicker bars and, oh gosh, what did I try the other day? Doritos. Do you guys know there's protein Dorito chips? Listen, I'm not gonna lie, they're actually really good. I'm sorry to report that because I wanted to hate it, but they're... I think it's 10 grams of protein per serving. But let's be real. Is that the way I wanna be getting protein? No, that's not, right? So let's not get it confused that they're creating a Frankenfood, right? You would never be able to make that at home, but there's, now they're sticking some protein and fiber in it. It is not in a way that your gut is very happy to accept it, 'cause it has a bunch of other things with it. So having that stuff here and there, fine. But consistently, I think the stats are that people eat about 70% or more processed food. That's quite scary when you think about it. And now some of these numbers, I'm not really sure how they're coming up with it, because are you defining healthy food that's prepackaged as a problem as well? There's some distinction of what's going in there, but this definitely leads to chronic disease. So if you are balancing your foods, you're worrying about maybe the food ordering, you are decreasing ultra-processed food, you're gonna be in a spot where you're not gonna have as many urges and cravings. The other two things I wanna throw in here, you've gotta be getting sleep, and stress can't be through the roof. If all of these things are met, you're gonna be in an amazing position. Now, let's say that you still struggle, 'cause many of you still will. There's habits that were there. The physiology is going more toward that, even when you're trying to treat all the things. This is where we get into Building some systems that make it a little bit harder to 100% carry out that urge or craving, or where you work with yourself a little bit more. We always start first with even if you're not hungry, and you know darn well you're gonna go eat that thing, I would say you still always start with a little bit of a protein and fiber, and then you have what it is you want. We're doing this, to decrease that blood sugar going up, to not make this a recurring problem for you. But also, we're doing this because it is not as fun if you are not hungry for me to say, "Well, let me first have you go eat some raw broccoli and carrot and then a little bit of cottage cheese before you have the pretzels." You're not into that. You're like, "I'm really not hungry." It puts a barrier up. The other thing that we can do is not in a restrictive I can't have these things ever way, but we just don't keep it as readily available. In your pantry, for example, we're not gonna put at eye level things that are super tempting to you. We're gonna put it up a shelf. We're gonna put it behind something else. We're not gonna make it be so easy for you, you're gonna have to think a minute if you actually wanna do this. That's another thing, 'cause often you get the urge or craving because you sit in the pantry and you're looking around, "What is it that I can have?" You're, seeking out what you could do. We wanna make it not so easy on you. Can we switch the environment for you? This is a big one. Let's get you out of the kitchen. Let's get you off the couch. When we do that, it tends to turn on a different part of your brain, and now you can actually use that thinking, reasoning part of your brain instead of that subconscious 90% that's just running on autopilot where you're not thinking anymore. That's a really massive one. Can we change your environment? Can we put a little bit of a hurdle between you and so easily accessing things that don't really particularly help you? All right. The other thing, though, that needs to happen here is that we have to deprogram this with time. There are going to be times in the beginning where you have the urge and craving, and we need to not meet it with the response of you eating. The reason I say this, it's because when this is happening, we can't break that pattern unless we stop reinforcing it. Now, this is very uncomfortable when it occurs, especially if you've really struggled with this. One thing I wanna say is if you always eat over it, we will never know what the actual problem is. We will never know why it is that you're actually eating that stuff. Typically, it's that you're overtired at night, or you're frustrated, or you think, "I deserve more me time," or "Finally I get a moment to myself." Whatever the thoughts are that are going through your mind, we need to know what that is and then solve that problem. It's not really the problem of the food, it's what is leading you to do that. So these are just some practical things that we can work on. But I wanna go through, 'cause this is what I came back to and I was like, "Oh, these are so good." When you are noticing that urge and craving, I wonder if you practiced some of these thoughts, if it could be helpful to you. So the first one is, I notice I want blank, and that's okay. We just neutralize it. It's not the end of the world if you want cookies and cream ice cream. That's fine. You can want that, and you can notice that you want it, and it's okay. It's not panic. It's not, "Oh my gosh, now I'm gonna go do it. Now I'm not gonna reach my goals." You really, do this whole catastrophe thing. You just notice that it's there, and it's okay. It's neutral. You observe it. That would be one of the first ones. And we'll have all these written in the show notes. If you go to rentiaclinic.com and you click on Podcast, we always have everything written out that I talk about in the podcast episode so that you could go back to whatever you need. All right, the next one that I have on here is, "I noticed I want blank. I am committed to feeling the desire in my body instead of answering the urge." You're almost welcoming in, it's okay that when I have these emotions that are going with this, of course it feels uncomfortable, but I'm willing to feel that and not answer it this moment right away with the food. The last one that I have on here that I think is great is, "This is hard, and I do hard things." It is hard. If you are working on this this is not something that's coming easy to you. You wouldn't have to put so many brain calories into this if it was something that came intuitively to you. Other people that don't struggle with this would hear this episode and think this is insane that we even have to talk about it, that we even have to go through this. But they have other things that they struggle with. They have other challenges. We need to stop comparing. Do not compare yourself to these other people. It creates so much grief for my patients when they're seeing online how quick other people are losing or other people's experience. It creates so many problems. Get offline. Seriously, I always say get offline and literally touch the green grass. Literally put your feet in the grass, ground yourself, and remind yourself that online is fake and it's not real. This can be really challenging and hard for you, and that's okay 'cause you can do hard things. You can change this over time if you want to, and it's not necessarily all gonna be solved overnight, but hopefully some of these tools that you heard today, you realize, "Okay, I'm gonna make sure I'm supporting my physiology with what I'm eating and how I'm sleeping and stress and all of that, and then I can ask myself some different questions when this is occurring. What do I actually need right now?" What do I need more than food right now? 'Cause there's some need that we're not meeting. And we start to look for how we can solve it in a different way, and the less we answer these urges and cravings, the easier it gets. Now please realize that I'm not suggesting here that you never have these foods, and you're like, "No," and you say no, and you resist. I remember when I first started out, who I was learning from, they said, "You plan your food at least 24 hours ahead of time, and then you can't deviate from it, and you have to see, well, why is it that you want other things?" It became this really crazy diet culture thing. That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is that you learn when is it worth it and when is it not, and you're able to pause, and you're able to think about it, and you don't feel out of control around food. That takes time. So this is not restriction that I'm talking about. This is really that you are so loving and supportive to your body that because you don't want to hurt it. Remember, when you're not hungry and you're bringing on extra nutrition, it's as though 900 people are talking to you at the same time. You can't listen or process all of that. Your body, though, when it's getting that extra nutrition, it needs to do something with it. It's overwhelmed. It's overworked, right? So if we wanna not have that happen, we're gonna need to try some different things. Hopefully in today's episode, you heard a sentence or two to help you with that. Remember, awareness is always where you have to start. You have to realize, okay, that's always where I'm overeating or where the urge and craving is showing up, and then you can start to look at that and see, what's one thing I would change around that? Could I switch up the environment? Could I turn the TV off so that I'm not as distracted? There's always something that you can change, but you have to be wanting to change this and not be in a super panicked rush, and be willing to really look at what's there, because there's always a good reason for why we're doing what we do. Don't let this be a thing anymore where you don't know why you're doing it, and, "I'm so dumb for doing this." There is a reason that you learned this. You are smart, you are capable, and there was something about food done in a certain way in which you were doing it, where it helped you at the time, and now you've decided it's not working anymore and you're gonna find a different way. But don't turn to shame to be the motivator behind that. All right, I hope that you all have a great rest of the week, and if this is something that you're working on, that you find one thing in today's episode and you go and implement it. Friendly reminder, if you're wanting to do the September 30, 30 program, make sure that you do that now. I don't know that next year we will have it again. I am really thinking of doing a little bit of a longer program next year. I think that I want to work with a small group over the entire year. We'll have some breaks because I really think that over the summer you need some break time, the holidays you need break time. But I'm really wanting to do some deeper work with a smaller group of people. And so I think that, again, when I run things, I don't run 100 programs at once. I really make sure that there's a purpose behind what I'm doing with people. And so I think that if you're wanting to do this with me, this September might be a good time for it, because I don't know if next year might look very different come January. All right. If you guys have questions, I'd always love to answer them for you. I hope you have a great rest of the week, and we'll talk soon.