Do you sometimes spend a whole day salivating because you know there’s a jar of ice cream in the freezer? Does an opened bag of chips tempt you to eat again and again until the shiny bottom appears? More and more people suffer from this kind food cravings. Where does that irresistible urge come from? And what to do with it? “I’d say give in and enjoy it.”
A food craving is a kind of uncontrolled eating, explains Michaël Sels, chief dietician associated with it Antwerp University Hospital (UZA) and author of Nice long life. “We’ve seen that kind of behavior increase in recent years.” According to the expert, the explanation for this lies in several factors. “We in the Western world have not lost a massive amount of willpower in the last thirty years. No, but the environment in which we live and work has changed massively. We are surrounded by food stimuli from morning to night.” People who work from home snack more often. “In recent decades, employers have focused on a healthy workplace, but the kitchen table or desk at home has often not yet been adapted. The distance to the refrigerator is then not great.”
The availability of food has increased, just like the portions. “Technology and marketing also play a role in this story,” Sels continues. “The walk from the Groenplaats to the central station is no longer done on foot, but with an electric scooter.” The relentless flow of marketing, in turn, creates an eternal and unsatisfied need. “That means that the things that end up on our plates are different from what they were, say, fifty years ago. Order a pizza at midnight? In a somewhat urban environment, that is no problem at all.” All of this leads to people listening less and less to their ‘gut feeling’.
Intuitive eating
“Cravings often have to do with learned behavior,” Sels continues. “People feel that a snack is part of ‘really relaxing’.” Stress is therefore a major trigger for food cravings. “People who follow a strict diet are noticeably more affected.” Undereating all too often leads to overeating. It’s a vicious circle.
Dietitian Alessia Rooferalso known as ‘the mindset dietitian’ and author of Bee Bee Diet, saw in her own practice the effects of such a disturbed relationship with food. “I noticed that my clients were always very focused on the number on the scale. It determined their mood and motivation.” Looking for a way to healthy food To convey this more positively, she came across intuitive eating, an eating philosophy developed in the 1990s by two American dietitians. “Intuitive eating means that you distance yourself from all the eating rules and beliefs about food that you have, in order to learn to listen to your own feeling and body again,” Alessia explains. “That does not mean that it throws scientific recommendations overboard, on the contrary. It is an interaction between: what does my body crave, what do I feel like, and what is healthy?”
It is an anti-diet that wants to get rid of diet culture. “From childhood we learn to ignore signals such as hunger and satiety, just think of statements such as ‘you have to finish your plate’.” Like Sels, Couvreur agrees that people who follow a diet are more likely to suffer from cravings. “In a diet, certain foods become ‘forbidden fruits’, and you know how that goes: what is not allowed, you want all the more.” Eating restrictions lead to eating cravings. “We see that people who follow a diet sometimes even dream about the things they are not allowed to eat.”
Intuitive eating is eating according to one’s hunger pangs, “so that it feels right for you both physically and mentally.” Just because everything is allowed, the appeal of ‘unhealthy eating’ is weakening. “I went through that process myself,” Alessia admits. “I saw sweets in particular as a kind of ‘extra to enjoy’, after which I invariably felt guilty. Just by eating those things when I feel like it, the special is gone. It’s also not the case that if you give yourself unconditional permission to eat everything, you will eat unhealthy. Just eat only ‘unhealthy’ things for a week, you will get tired of it and crave more nutritious meals.”
Try to eat more according to your gut feeling, after a while the guilt feelings disappear.
Take a warm bath
How do you best get rid of cravings? “I would say give in and enjoy it,” says Alessia. “That sounds simple, of course – there are often underlying causes such as stress or emotions – but in principle it comes down to this. Try to be aware of your eating rules, and ask yourself if they teach you anything. If not, try to eat more according to your gut feeling. After a while, the guilt will disappear.” Even those who eat intuitively sometimes have cravingsit sounds, “but the urge won’t get that big, because you can just eat it”.
Michaël Sels also recommends eating full meals. “Cutting out a certain macronutrient such as carbohydrates is not a good idea. This creates an energy shortage.” He gives other tips for breaking through learned behavior: “Seek relaxation in other ways, by applying a nice body lotion or taking a warm bath, for example.” In any case, it should be clear that a food craving is not a purely physical phenomenon: “I sometimes read that a craving for chocolate would indicate a magnesium deficiency,” laughs Alessia. “So it doesn’t work that way.”
