How To Work With A Food Craving

Notice that I said "work with it," not "How to kick its ass and kill it." And by the way, this process can be used with any type of craving.

​If you’re willing to try this in the midst of a craving, (if not you can try to remember the last time you had one), here’s how:

1. Tell yourself that you can go ahead and eat what you want to eat, but that you’re just going to do a little exploring first – a little curiosity game.
2. See if you can take a moment to feel your feet. And breathe. Say the words in and out silently to yourself as you breathe in and out, for a few moments, focusing on your feet at the same time. (This will help quiet your mind).
3. Check inside and see what body sensations you can notice. These sensations might be clear, and yet they might also be quite vague. It doesn't really matter. Just do your best to feel them - get a sense of them. Don’t try to put a label on them, change or control them, figure out what they mean, or tell a story about them. Just see if you can notice them and feel them.
4. See if you can breathe and feel your feet while you notice the sensations - at the same time, as best you can.
5. If an emotion, image, or memory comes, just allow yourself to notice the body-sense that comes with them and breathe and feel your feet.
6. Do this as long as you feel like doing it. If you get uncomfortable, distracted, or bored, just notice that too and do your best not to tell yourself a story about it.
7. This is just an experiment - an opportunity to play around with your felt sense. Again, your goal at this point is not to fix the craving, but to get some practice at getting a clearer sense of your inner landscape with regards to it - perhaps discovering something more true, more specific, than the story or theory you might currently have about it.
8. Please contact me if you’d like some additional help or would like to take this process further!

 
Warning: If you approach this experiment with an attitude or "energy" of trying to fix your food craving, your efforts will probably backfire and you'll end up feeling frustrated. The resistance to “what is” is what keeps “what is” stuck.