How Can You Stop Cravings?

Craving are something that we all experience. It is basically an imbalance within your body, primarily in the brain or your hormones. As much as you believe that "willpower" will work it truly doesn't. Your biology and brainpower will easily overtake your willpower, so when you eventually get your hands on whatever it is you have been craving you will indulge. But that's okay because that's how human psychology and behavior works.

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The best way to prevent this is to stop these cravings in the first place. While there are many ways to stop cravings, I want to look at it mainly from a nutritional point of view. Here are some things you can do to help cravings:

1. Protein intake: The reason for this is that protein is broken down into amino acids. Amino acids play a role in creating neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. So, someone who is under eating protein is also low in dopamine or other neurotransmitters. These low levels of dopamine can lead to binging and craving sugar. Your body and brain knows that mainly sugary foods will give you the biggest hit of dopamine, so if this is not balanced your body is looking for sugar. Low dopamine can also lead to depression, feeling moody, fatigued, and much more. If you fix your imbalance in amino acids you may not crave these foods in the first place. The chronic sugar consumption makes the dopamine receptors in your brain less effective so you will just crave more and more. A never ending cycle! Clearly protein is more than just building muscle, it is critical for your brain (and other bodily systems) to function properly.

2. Processed foods/possible lack of nutrients: Our bodies get satiety (full) signals when we eat real food. This is because real food contains vitamins, minerals, and nutrients we need for our bodies to function optimally. Its easy to eat an entire bag of potato chips because there are absolutely no nutrients in them. You are still hungry after eating them because your body didn’t get everything it needed from that food. On the other hand, if you eat a real potato you will most likely feel full from it. This is because your body got a good amount of nutrients it needed from that potato. With all these nutrients now your body and brain can work properly, whereas with potato chips it will do the opposite.

3. Sleep: Lack of sleep causes a shift in hormones. Ghrelin, the hunger hormone is impacted by sleep with increased levels, which causes you to feel more hungry and less full. Not only by a lack of sleep but this also is affected by decreased quality of sleep. I'm sure we've all had a night out of drinking, woke up hungover and craved a bacon, egg, and cheese. Part of that craving is because of the disrupted sleep and sleep quality. Lack of sleep can lead to an increase in cortisol (the stress hormone) which can decrease serotonin and dopamine. All of these combined can increase your cravings and needs for these foods even further.

The takeaway here is to prioritize protein, real/whole foods, and sleep. Prioritizing these will not only affect cravings but will also carry over into other aspects of health. There may be other reasons why you have cravings. Maybe it is your exposure to junk food all the time. Maybe its your environment. Either way, these are good first steps to take if you are someone who suffers from constant food cravings.