(upbeat music)
- Hey Munchies, welcome to the channel
if you're new or if you're not.
I'm Alyssia, and I'm stoked you're here.
Today we are continuing to dive into cravings,
this is part two of this miniseries.
Really it's one video I had to split into two
because it was so long.
But I do recommend watching the first one
which launched last week, which explains what cravings are.
Are they physical, mental, emotional, what's the deal?
And then I invite you to come back to this video
where we actually dive into
how to manage a craving when it arises.
Now let me tell ya, my approach
since healing my very negative relationship with food
has significantly changed.
Okay, so if you go online and you type in
"how to deal with cravings" or whatever,
they're gonna tell you things like
"don't keep it in the house," or "make low-calorie swaps,"
or "eat small snacks throughout the day
so you're not hungry."
And I'm gonna sit here and say,
no! (heavy metal music)
I don't advise any of these tactics,
although I must say it with a light heart,
because I have definitely followed all of these,
and did for years when I felt owned by food.
My approach now is very different.
So let's take not keeping it in the house, for instance.
This is a way to control external circumstances.
If it's not there, I can't eat it. Easy, right?
It makes it easier on my brain
if I don't have to deal with the uncomfortable resistance
that comes with having to choose to not eat it.
But the problem is, we can't control external conditions
all the time, most of the time,
and perfect conditions never exist.
So it's like, have you ever wanted to go on a diet,
and you just wanna wait until you have
a certain amount of days or weeks
when there's nothing on the calendar
that's gonna get in the way,
and it has to be starting on a Monday?
Or is it just me who is ruled by diet culture?
Perfect conditions don't exist,
and any effort to control means at some point,
when shit happens, because it will,
we don't have the skills to deal with it.
I used to try and control what my roommates
or my boyfriend, Christian, would keep in the house.
I'd say, "You can't keep white cheddar Cheetos in the house
because I can't open the bag without eating them all."
Or, "We can't keep ice cream or cereal
or Oreos or whatever in the house."
I wasn't just trying to control my environment,
I had to control everyone else's around me,
and that wasn't fair.
They need the freedom to choose what they wanna eat too,
and that's not up to me.
So we talked about this in the Food Freedom series,
this approach to not keep it in the house.
It addresses the symptom of the problem,
not the root, right?
So the food is the symptom, the root is,
maybe it's stress, or emotions, or whatever.
We think the problem right now is
the food, the food in the house.
So what do we do? Not have it here.
(alarm buzzes)
The food is the symptom of the problem.
There's nothing inherently bad
about Cheetos, or ice cream, or Oreos.
It's how and why I'm turning to them that becomes a problem.
So what's the root cause of this?
It's my lack of skills, my lack of emotional regulation,
or acknowledging, again, that emotions are real.
I was filling an emotional hunger,
and I had so much emotional distress
that I didn't know what to do other than turn to the food.
So, not keeping it in the house
doesn't help us build up the skills long-term.
It's a band-aid, and what I found
when using this band-aid is,
the second that someone came over to my house
and brought one of these foods,
or if I was at a party and the foods were there,
I could not control myself and it triggered a binge.
So let me be clear.
This is your body and your choice.
You can choose to not keep these things in the house,
that's okay, it doesn't matter to me what you choose.
All I'm saying is, if you wanna be free
from the stress around food and health
and feeling owned by it,
at some point we have to confront these deep truths.
I didn't confront them for a decade,
so you do it when the time is right for you,
and I'm not saying that's now.
But I'm encouraging you to just take a look
and make the choice that is right for you right now.
Okay, so what about the next Google suggestion
with cravings, to make low-calorie swaps?
Let me tell you what I don't like about this
and what I saw in my personal experience.
So I used to make a lot of desserts out of legumes,
chickpea cookies and black bean brownies.
And here's the thing, they can taste pretty good sometimes.
But often we end up mentally resisting the alternative.
So I have a craving for a real cookie,
and I don't let myself have it.
The cookie's bad, it's not allowed,
it's breaking the rules, there's no flexibility.
And I think a bean cookie could be good enough,
but mentally what I'm rebelling against is the rules.
I don't wanna feel owned by the rules.
It's not really what I want.
And so when I eat the bean cookie,
it doesn't really satisfy, even if it tastes pretty good.
When it comes to craving cookies, and pizza, and foods
that wouldn't be classically labeled as nutritious,
is it really being driven by the body?
I mean, maybe it is, like we talked about earlier,
a nutrient deficiency or something, or a hormonal urge.
But is your body telling you it needs cookies for survival?
Probably not.
If it were, you'd probably crave healthy foods
with the nutrients of whatever you're lacking.
So probably it's us wanting it
for some deeper reason, right?
The mind and body are connected.
So it boils down again
to the emotional or mental root, not the physical.
It's not about the food.
Okay, so the last suggestion via Google is,
"eat small snacks throughout the day
so that you're not hungry."
So in the Food Freedom series,
I talked about how our body functions and regulates
because of these feedback loops.
And I'll link that video below
if you don't know what I'm talking about.
But pretty much, if we don't listen
to those signals that our body sends us,
then our body can't regulate and it becomes dysregulated.
So we talked about dieting and how,
when we deprive ourselves of eating
when our body is signaling hunger,
we start to tune it out
and we can't tell anymore what's a signal.
So not eating ignores those feedback loops and signals,
but so does always eating.
So I do health and life coaching,
and I work with a lot of clients
who struggle with binge eating.
And many of them at first,
and this was true for myself as well,
at first they can't tell if they're hungry or full.
And then we go through all the tools
and they start to get to know
how to gauge their hunger and fullness,
and what they realize is
they start eating throughout the day
at like a level 4 on their hunger scale.
So if you don't know what a hunger scale is,
I'll link the video below where I talk about it,
but pretty much, 1 is like you're not hungry at all,
10 is you're extremely hungry, and usually,
it's gonna be different for everyone,
but we are gonna eat a meal when we're at a 6 or 7,
you don't wanna wait until you're a 10.
So for these clients, these binge-eating clients,
when they start to realize,
they start eating at a 4 before they're really hungry.
Why are they doing this?
To prevent the discomfort of being hungry.
So they snack all day long.
But hunger is normal, it is a normal signal,
and we should let that feedback loop
do what it's supposed to, which is signal us to eat.
And when it does signal us, we should respond and eat.
So again, this addresses the symptom and not the root.
This approach, eating snacks all day long,
it prevents the discomfort of ever being hungry,
of ever letting a craving occur,
rather than understanding why it might be happening.
So the problem is not the food itself,
it's not that we want the food, that's not a problem,
and it's not the craving, all of these things are okay.
We don't need to hide the chocolate
so that we can't reach it,
or make cookies with beans, unless you want to,
more power to you, I did it for a decade.
For long-term healing, what we need
is to understand these deep roots
of what's often an emotional hunger,
and make the space to explore what's there.
- Emotional hunger.
(scary string music)
- Okay, but what about cravings, though?
I hear you, how do we actually deal with them,
not just saying what not to do
along with this abstract, emotional gibberish?
Just kidding, but also seriously, what do we do?
So we touched on this last week briefly,
and this is where it becomes important.
Cravings are sensations in the body.
Everything we experience in life
is through the sensations in the body.
So there are five physical senses.
You've got your sight and smell
and taste and hearing and touch.
And in the Mindfulness framework,
there's a sixth sense door, they call it,
so each of these is a door,
an access point for the sensation,
the sixth sense door is thinking or emotions, mental events.
So every experience in life
comes through one of these six sense doors.
And this is our only access to the present moment.
I often use the example of smell.
So if I'm smelling something,
if I'm smelling a cup of coffee right now,
I'm smelling it in this present moment, right now.
Now, if I'm thinking about something
that I smelled yesterday, like an apple pie or something,
I smelled it yesterday,
I'm not smelling it today in this present moment,
I'm thinking about smelling it.
So this is mindfulness.
What's actually here now, what am I accessing
through one of those sense doors right now?
Simple.
So a craving shows up as one of those sensations,
and likely it's a physical sensation through the body,
one of those sense doors of the body,
plus the thoughts about the sensation
that create some meaning or story.
So some physical sensation comes up,
maybe I smell something, or maybe my stomach grumbles,
and then I have a thought that arises along with it,
"I want cake," and then along comes
the meaning or the story.
Maybe it's "I'm PMS-ing,"
or "I haven't had anything sweet in a while,"
or maybe it's "I just worked out,
so my body needs fuel and I deserve it,"
or whatever the story may be.
The point is, it doesn't matter whether a craving
is mental, emotional, or physical, okay?
The path forward can be the same, and it's simple.
When we address the root.
There can be many symptoms to address,
but there's likely only one root response
that will reveal an authentic path forward.
Mindfulness is all about choosing a response.
Rather than habitually mindlessly reacting,
we intentionally respond.
So instead of trying to decipher,
is this craving mental or physical or emotional,
and getting caught up in rationalizing
or intellectualizing the experience,
which is all outer wisdom, thinking, "I'm craving this,
and so it must mean I'm deficient in this nutrient,"
or whatever.
Instead, that doesn't matter,
we can tune into the raw data of this moment.
Mindfulness is what is happening now in the body.
So how can my inner wisdom guide me here?
How can I listen to my body and then respond?
That's the question.
There's nothing wrong with chocolate
or potato chips or fries.
It becomes a problem when we pawn the desire off
on this external craving, right?
We become a victim to it.
Woe is me for having this craving.
Instead, can we just take responsibility
and acknowledge the truth?
This is what's happening now.
There's a desire for chocolate.
This is okay. Chocolate is okay, I'm okay.
And then we can use our inner and outer wisdom to determine,
is this how I wanna serve my body
and my mind and heart right now?
There's no judgment needed.
One tool I like to use with clients and in workshops,
and also in the binge-eating recovery program
that I certified in last year,
and I'm gonna share it with you today, is the body scan.
So this is a type of meditation
that can help us re-regulate our bodies and our emotions,
and really start to learn how to experience cravings
as sensations in the body so we don't feel overwhelmed,
and then we can take some wise action
when they show up to choose what we wanna do.
So I have done an audio recording and linked it below,
if you wanna download it, I'll email it to you for free.
It's about 15 minutes long, and I advise people,
especially those struggling with relationships with food,
to try this as a daily practice.
Also, if you are interested in working together one-on-one,
I offer health coaching and life coaching,
you can check out my website in the description box.
Also, if you think this video would help anyone you know,
and could share it to social media, that would be amazing.
And as a reminder, I have compiled
all of the Food Freedom Style content I've shared
into a course, with added worksheets, tools,
journal prompts, guided meditations, and more.
So if you want everything in one place and easily accessible
to support your journey to food freedom,
that is now available at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom.
People who sign up for one-on-one coaching, by the way,
will actually get this course for free.
So I will link those services below as well.
I appreciate you.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Feel free to kindly share how you approach cravings.
And who knows,
your tactics might help someone else reading them.
So thank you for being here, I'll see you next week,
and remember, it's all a matter of mind over munch.
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