141. Mastering your Cravings without the Battle (The Key to Empowered and Effective Self-Control)

Are you tired of constantly giving in to your cravings? 😩 

Dr. Adrienne Youdim provides a powerful technique called "surfing the urge" to help you tolerate the discomfort without reacting to it. 

It's time to take control and overcome those cravings! #SurfTheUrge #TakeControl

In this episode of Health Bite, Dr. Adrienne Youdim dives deep into the topic of cravings. She explores the intense desire for specific things, such as food or substances, and how cravings can impact our physical and emotional well-being. Dr. Youdim emphasizes the importance of effectively managing cravings to achieve greater mental, emotional, and physical well-being. 

Join her as she provides small actionable bites towards healthier living and redefining our relationship with food.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Understand the physiological nature of cravings and how they can impact our physical and emotional well-being.
• Explore the evolutionary reasons behind our cravings and desires for certain things.
• Learn a step-by-step process to sit with cravings and develop tolerance to discomfort, allowing them to pass.
• Understand the importance of practicing tolerance and creating new neural pathways to successfully manage cravings.

“Embrace the craving.” - Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Recommended Resources:

1. 109.Surfing the Urge: A Mindful and Actionable Approach to Navigate Your Cravings
2. https://dradrienneyoudim.com/product/30-day-journal-mini-course/  - A resource created by Dr. Adrienne Youdim that includes daily emails and journaling prompts to help individuals become aware of their thoughts, feelings, and habitual actions related to cravings.

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

1. Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
2. Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
3. Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

Mastering your Cravings without the Battle

As you can imagine, craving is a topic that comes up alot in my medical weight loss practice. And for some reason, it was particularly top of mind with my patients this week, it kept coming up over and over and over again. Its funny how that happens, how things that come up keep coming up as if its part of some collective experience. I imagine that maybe cravings are something you might be battling as well so I thought today I would take a deep dive. Whether we are taking about food or phones, alcohol, cigs, or shopping, cravings and its stronger twin sister desire is something we all reckon with. And in todays podcast I want to talk about how we can reckon with it in a way that is effective and empowering. 

Welcome back to Healthbite, the podcast for small actionable bites towards healthy living. 

I believe your relationship with food is a window into your relationship with yourself. In this podcast we will explore how to redefine this relationship so you can not only achieve your weight loss goals, but greater mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. In the end, that’s what its all about, isnt it?

I am your host Dr Adrienne Youdim and am excited to share with you this weeks bite.

First of all, what is a craving? A craving is an intense desire for a specific thing including a food or a substance. Cravings can cause physical reactions- like increase in heart rate as well as emotional reactions longing, anxiety, or irritability. Cravings are normal but when not managed effectively they can negatively impact your physical and emotional wellbeing.

Our cravings are supported by our physiology and in prior podcasts I have discussed the neurotransmitters involved (we will drop the links below if you have not listened to them) and have been evolutionarily engrained because certain things- food, sex, connection- was linked to our survival so craving and desiring them was a means to successfully acheiving these things. But now, in our lives of abundance and overload- our cravings backfire. 

So how can we manage this normal, physiologic, universal impulse? I want to start with the most important, which is learning to sit with the cravings instead of fighting with them. Have you heard the expression “what you resist persists? Well when it comes to cravings it’s true. 

Fighting with the Cravings is not gonna work in fact it is only going to exacerbate the impulse. Have you ever had this experience? You are sitting on the couch (or in bed) watching TV when all of the sudden out of nowhere a vision of the chocolate cake in your fridge appears in your mind or if you are my husband Dr T, the thought of chips pops into your mind. Or maybe you came home from a stressful day at work or had a stressful day with the kids and are thinking how nice it would be to drink a glass of wine or 2 to take the edge off.  Oh no. Don't think about it you say to yourself. Which is great. Except that now you are thinking about it. In fact you are thinking about it a lot. And in the midst of this tug of war- You cant have any/But I want to/ you are not allowed, you are on a diet/ I dont give a damn about the diet, I want the bleeping cake or whats wrong with me- why do I keep craving this thing or I hate this, I cant stand this feeling. Whatever the fighting words and thoughts are, they will keep in in the clutches of the urge.

Now you are obsessed with this thought and before you know it you watch yourself  (as if in an out of body experience) get up from the couch, walk over to the fridge and pull out the cake. 

It’s such a common experience we assume that submitting to the craving is inevitable and we allow the craving gets the best of us. But it is not inevitable. And the first step is opening up to the possibility that there is another way. If we beleive that we cannot break the habitual and automatic response to our cravings - be it food, alcohol, smoking, shopping, scrolling, then we cannot begin to allow for the possibility for change. Change begins with allowing the possibility of a different outcome. 

Now that we are open for the possibiltiy of change, I want you to embrace the craving. Do not resist, fight or negotiate with it rather, 

I want you to open your arms wide open to the craving, become friendly with it, invite it to the couch and sit down with it. This may sound funny but hear me out, remeber that what you resist, persists. So the alternative is to learn to be with the craving. And by doing so, this is what happens. You learn to tolerate the desire, you lear to toelrate the discomfort without reacting to it. As I shared in my ted talk, learn to pause between the trigger and the reaction, the desire and the impulse to act on that desire when we do, something interesting happens, we allow the feeling to pass. Now keep listeneing because I am going to share with you step by step how to enact this peice, how to sit with the craving, develop tolerance to the discomfort and allow it to pass. 

But before we do that, I need to review the anatomy of a craving. I shared this with you in a prior podcast, episode 109.Surfing the Urge: A Mindful and Actionable Approach to Navigate Your Cravings- it is the number one most listened to episode by the way so please take a listen. 

But it is worth repeating here. According to psychologist Dr Alan Marlatt Our cravings are like a wave. It begins subtly. Then it slowly builds, like a wave and then it peaks. This is the point I say feels like our head is gonna explode if we don't surrender and grab that piece of chocolate.  But here’s the thing, if we wait, if we give it time. This feeling will pass, and like a wave the intensity of that craving will decrescendo and go away. Now you may not believe me, you make disagree or contest. But let me ask you, when was the last time you tried this? When was the last time you sat patiently and compassionately with a craving and let it pass? Probably never. But it will pass if we let it.  Sometimes this process takes 5 minutes, sometimes it takes 20 minutes but it will go away if we let it. 

So now you might be asking ok, I get it but how do I do this in real time? How do I operationalize this?

Number 1: Notice the urge, remind yourself that this is a wave and you can ride the wave, remind yourself that as difficult as it feels you can tolerate the feeling. Ask yourself, where am I in the way. Be aware.

Number 2: Notice where you feel this craving. Lots of people feel it in their gut- you can literally conjure up feelings of hunger even when you are full. Or maybe you feel it in your mouth and are salivating.The point is to notice where you feel this sensation in your body.

Number 3: Now that you know where you feel it most intensely in your body give words to the sensation. Is the sensation tingly or warm, do you experience it as a temperature or a color. Really try and identify the quality and nature of the feeling.

Next bring your attention to your breathing. Perhaps close your eyes. Take a deep breath in thru your nose, relax your belly so you can really take advante of the space in your body to fully inflate your lungs. Then slowly and fully exhale. Do this slowly for a few minutes. 

Now  You can bring your attention to the body again where you are experiencing the craving. Allow the feeling to arise. If it feels too intense you can take your attention back to the breath or you can use the breath to soften the sensation. Imagine that you are breathing into the tension in your jar or shoulder, allow the sensation to loosen. 

You may go between breath and sensation, breath and sensation. 

You may want to notice where you are now on the wave, has it peaked, are you now on the descent. Continue the steps above until you have seen the wave through. 

COngrats, you did it!

Remember that this is a practice. THe more you practice, the more skilled you become. Also remember that the goal is not to extinguish cravings. Remember this is our physiology and you cannot expect that for yourself. The goal is to make them more tolerable and therefore allow them to pass over easier without the same grip and intensity. 

Now there are some things that you to limit cravings. First is to eliminate triggers. 

And finally, continue to work on tolerating the craving instead of reacting and responding to the craving by smoking, eating, drinking the thing. The more you are able to tolerate the trigger without reacting, the stronger the neural pathways to successfully managing cravings. You literally create new pathways in the brain that take the place of your old habitual responses in a process called neuroplasticity. So Keep at it. I promise this stuff works. 

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, I will drop links to some prior episodes that you might find of interest. And also I suggest you check out my 30 day journaling guide to discovering your hunger. In this guide I send you daily emails and journaling prompts which help you become aware of your thoughts, feelings, and habitual actions (including triggers to cravings. 

• I offer you a  framework to address challenges and barriers to achieving your personal goals and give you a guide to set attainable goals and a roadmap on how to achieve them.
• You will get Practices to help you cultivate gratitude, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.
• And guide you to help identify the life changes that provide you more joy, meaning, and fulfillment in your life.

I love this journaling work and use it in my own life daily. I will drop that link for you below as well. 

Well thats all for this week. Practice surging the urge. Have a great week. And I look forward to seeing you again next week on Healthbite!