How To Deal With Cravings

If you experience cravings, and you are wondering how to deal with cravings, welcome to the joys of being human. I know it doesn’t necessarily feel like this to some of you, but they’re not a sign that you’ve failed, that you lack willpower, or that you “can’t stick to a plan.” They’re simply your brain and body doing what they’ve been designed to do for thousands of years: nudging you toward energy, comfort, and certainty, especially when life feels busy, stressful, or tempting. Even the healthiest, fittest people you know get cravings. 

The difference isn’t that they never feel the pull of cravings, it’s that they’ve learned how to respond to it more skillfully.

That’s what this article is all about. The aim is to shift the way you see cravings and learning how to handle them with confidence.

Ultimately, habits shape outcomes. Aristotle is often paraphrased as saying, “We are what we repeatedly do”. Repetition builds identity. The same holds true of dealing with cravings. We want to build the identity of someone who is able to handle cravings skillfully. 

Stoic philosophy teaches us that we don’t control the impulse, but we do control the response. You simply can’t stop every craving from popping up, and believe me, I know this extremely well, as I live right beside a McDonald’s, so I get hit with these cravings often. Just as you can’t stop a raincloud from rolling in, you can’t stop the cravings. 

However, you can decide how you’ll act. 

That shift, from trying to suppress the urge to mastering your actions, is where progress really happens. 

It’s important to realise that mastering your cravings doesn’t mean you grit your teeth forever or ban every food you enjoy. It means you understand cravings for what they are (signals), why they show up (biology, emotion, habit, environment), and how to respond in ways that line up with your bigger goals. 

Learning how to deal with cravings isn’t about perfection. It’s about identity. Each craving is a chance to practice being the person you want to be. The one who takes care of their body, who makes conscious choices, and who can enjoy food without being controlled by it.

My aim with this article isn’t to hand you a rigid list of rules. It’s to help you build self-trust, and the kind of confidence where, when the urge arrives, you know exactly what to do.

But I do want to note that if cravings feel overwhelming, constant, or tied to deeper distress, that’s not something you have to handle alone. It’s wise to bring in professional support, whether this is a dietitian, therapist, or your GP. Seeking help isn’t weakness, it’s smart.

How To Deal With Cravings TL;DR:

Cravings shouldn’t be seen as failure, they’re normal signals from your body and brain. The key isn’t to “eliminate” them but to respond with skill. 

Start with quick tools (hydrate, wait, protein/fibre snack, pause again) to stabilise physiology.

Learn your triggers through journaling and awareness, then use CBT to challenge unhelpful thoughts and ACT to “unhook” from urges. 

Over time, reinforce wins with non-food rewards, practice mindful eating to break autopilot, and build sustainable coping habits. 

Remember that cravings are like waves that come and go. They are not commands that you must follow. Each one is a chance to practice the identity you want to build. We are what we repeatedly do, and you can become someone who is able to manage cravings.

How To Deal With Cravings: Fast Tools 

When a craving hits, the most important thing is not to panic and not to assume it means you’ve “failed.” A craving is just a signal. The trick is to have a default playbook, which is just a short, practical routine you can run without overthinking. It gets you moving in the right direction, buys you time, and often takes the edge off the urge. 

Here’s a sequence I often coach my clients to use:

Step 1: Drink water

Sounds almost too simple, but many cravings are actually mild dehydration in disguise. Your body is good at sending “I need something” signals, but it’s not always specific. If you haven’t had water in a while, your brain can interpret thirst as hunger. A glass of water (or sparkling water if you want it to feel more “treat-like”) often takes the intensity down within minutes.

Step 2: Wait 10-15 minutes

Most cravings rise and fall like waves. If you can surf the first wave, it usually breaks and fades. Set a timer if you need to. During that time, do something that takes your mind and body elsewhere (stretch, walk around, text a friend, throw on a song you like, etc.). 

You’re not trying to win forever; you’re just buying space for your brain chemistry to settle.

Step 3: Eat something small, protein- or fibre-based

If the craving persists and you suspect you actually need food, reach for a physiology stabiliser. Protein (Greek yogurt, boiled egg, a piece of chicken, etc.) and/or fibre (apple, carrot sticks, a handful of nuts, etc.) are the most effective “buffers.” This is because:

• Protein blunts hunger hormones and plays a role in steadying your blood sugar, thus preventing some of the spikes and crashes that drive cravings.
• Fibre slows digestion, stretches the stomach a little, and helps your brain register fullness.

Compare that to eating a sweet snack where sugar spikes your blood sugar quickly, then crashes it down, which actually makes you crave more. That’s why the “protein/fibre first” move is so powerful, as it puts your physiology back on your side.

Step 4: Wait again

Give your body a chance to process what you just gave it. Satiety signals (the hormones and stretch receptors that tell your brain “I’m good”) don’t arrive instantly, they take 10-20 minutes to register. Many people eat a snack and then immediately think, “I’m still hungry.” In reality, the signal just hasn’t caught up yet. Pausing before you reach for more lets your biology do its job.

Step 5: Notice hunger signals

Now’s the time to get curious: Am I truly hungry, or was this more about stress, boredom, or habit?

• True hunger tends to build gradually, feels physical (stomach growling, low energy), and is satisfied by a range of foods.
• Emotional craving tends to appear suddenly, feels urgent, and is usually for something specific (that brand of crisps, that type of chocolate).

This isn’t about judging yourself. It’s about building awareness. If it’s genuine hunger, you might need a proper meal or snack. If it’s more emotional or situational, you can practice one of the cognitive or behavioural strategies we’ll cover later.

Step 6: Keep your list handy

This routine only works if you can remember it in the heat of the moment. I encourage clients to literally write it down:

• Drink water
• Wait 15 minutes
• Have protein and/or fibre
• Wait again
• Check: true hunger or craving?

Stick it on your fridge, your desk, or your phone. The fewer decisions you need to make in the moment, the more likely you are to follow through.

So, the next time a craving hits, don’t ask, “How do I make this go away forever?” Ask, “What’s my next step in the routine?” One decision at a time is all you need.

Now, while this can be helpful in the moment, we can actually dig deeper and do more to deal with cravings. While it may be just that you are hungry or thirsty, very often there are deeper issues that need to be addressed.

Understanding Your Cravings

The first real step in gaining control over cravings long term isn’t about resisting them, it’s about understanding them. Too many people treat cravings as if they appear out of nowhere, as if they’re some mysterious force of nature that can’t be explained. But in my experience coaching clients, cravings almost always follow a pattern. Once you see the pattern, the “mystery” disappears, and with it, a lot of the struggle.

You need to do some basic detective work on yourself. When do your cravings usually strike? Is it always around three o’clock in the afternoon, when your energy is dipping at work? Do they sneak in late at night, once the house is quiet and you finally get a moment to yourself? Or maybe they only seem to appear when you see food (i.e. walking past the bakery, opening the cupboard, or even scrolling through social media where someone posts a picture of dessert)?

For some people, the pattern is tied to specific foods, and it is always the same brand of crisps, the same kind of chocolate bar, the same takeaway or whatever else. For others, it’s more general, and a sense of “I want something” that doesn’t go away until they’re chewing. The point is, cravings rarely arrive totally randomly. They’re usually connected to a trigger, whether that trigger is inside you (like stress or boredom) or outside you (like an advert or a smell drifting from the kitchen).

This is where keeping a craving journal becomes so powerful. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about writing an essay every time you want a biscuit. Just take a few seconds to jot down the time of day, what was happening right before the craving, how you were feeling, and what you did about it. 

For example: “5:30 p.m., stressful day at work, reached for biscuits, felt better for a few minutes, then sluggish and annoyed.” That’s enough. Over the course of a week or two, you’ll start to see the patterns emerge, and those patterns will give you clarity on how to deal with cravings in a way that is specific to you.

Now, at this stage, it is helpful to understand why do these cravings happen in the first place. The answer is part biology, part psychology, and part environment. From an evolutionary perspective, cravings were once a survival mechanism. Sweetness meant quick energy, fat meant long-term fuel, salt meant essential minerals. In the world of scarcity that we evolved in, those signals kept us alive. In today’s world of supermarkets, vending machines, fast food and 24/7 food delivery, the same instincts leave us evolutionarily mismatched. 

What used to be a life-saving radar now drives us toward abundance we don’t actually need.

Neuroscience adds another layer to the story. There’s a principle called Hebb’s Rule, which states that “neurons that fire together wire together”. If every time you feel stressed you reach for biscuits, your brain begins to link those two experiences. Stress equals biscuits; biscuits equal relief. 

That wiring gets stronger each time you repeat it. Soon, the craving isn’t just about hunger, it’s about a deeply ingrained habit loop. The good news is that journaling and awareness start to break that loop. By noticing the pattern instead of blindly following it, you begin the process of rewiring.

Then there’s also the food environment we all live in that we need to take into account. Companies spend millions engineering foods to be hyper-palatable, meaning the perfect combination of sugar, fat, and salt that lights up your brain’s reward centres more than whole foods ever could. Add in constant advertising, office snack culture, and the fact that food is available almost everywhere you go, and you start to see why “just use willpower” is a losing strategy. You’re not weak for feeling the pull, you’re swimming in an environment designed to push your buttons. 

So, the first step isn’t fighting cravings head-on. It’s shining a light on them. Notice when they happen, what tends to set them off, and what response you default to. Once you’ve mapped out the landscape, it becomes much easier to design strategies that actually fit the real cause, whether that’s adjusting your meal timing, managing stress differently, or changing the cues in your environment.

Cravings aren’t random. They have triggers. Your job is to find them.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Strategies

Cravings don’t just live in your stomach, they live in your thoughts. CBT is the part of coaching where we slow the moment down and work with the story your brain is telling. 

Thoughts → feelings → actions is a loop, and when we change the thought, even slightly, we change the loop. 

There are a number of CBT tools we use in our coaching process, but some of the most effective ones for dealing with cravings are as follows:

Challenge Unhelpful Thoughts

When a craving hits, most people don’t just feel the pull toward food, they also hear a cascade of automatic thoughts in the background. These are fast, familiar, and incredibly persuasive. They sound like:

• “I deserve this.”
• “I’ve blown it already, so what’s the point?”
• “I’ll start again tomorrow.”

These are well-worn mental scripts your brain has rehearsed over and over, and because they show up with such speed and certainty, they often feel true in the moment.

The goal here isn’t to shame yourself for having these thoughts, as that only makes the craving louder. Instead, the skill is to notice, name, and gently challenge them. You don’t need to bulldoze the thought; you just need to balance it with something more accurate and helpful.

Here’s how I coach this process:

1. Catch the thought. When you hear that inner script (“I deserve this”) pause and notice it. Imagine holding it in your hand for a moment instead of letting it run the show.
2. Say it out loud (or in your head). Giving it a voice separates you from it. Instead of being the thought, you’re now observing it.
3. Offer a truer, more balanced alternative. Something like:
   • “I deserve this after today.” → “I deserve care after today, and care looks like something that actually helps me feel better in an hour, not just right now.”
   • “I’ve blown it already, so why not keep going?” → “One choice isn’t the whole day. I can make the next one better and be proud of the pivot.”

Over time, this practice shifts the loop of thought → feeling → action. By editing the thought, you edit the loop.

Two coaching tips to make this work better:

• Believability beats perfection. If your replacement feels cheesy or fake, you know you won’t use it. Aim for a version you believe at least 60-70%. You don’t have to go from “I can’t resist this” to “I’m an unshakable monk with iron discipline.” A more believable step might be, “Resisting feels tough, and I think I can try a 10-minute pause.”
• Use “and” instead of “but.” This small word keeps multiple values on the table instead of cancelling one out.
  • “I want the chocolate and I want to feel good tomorrow. What move serves both?”
    This framing allows both truths to coexist. You want the treat, and you also care about your long-term health. That simple shift opens up more flexible, creative choices instead of black-or-white thinking.

The bigger picture here is that cravings aren’t just about physiology, they’re about the stories your brain tells you in the moment. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by their judgments about things.” The same applies to cravings. The craving itself isn’t good or bad, it’s just a sensation, a thought, a wave. What matters is the judgment you attach to it. If you tell yourself, “This craving means I’m weak, I must obey it,” you’ve handed over the steering wheel. If instead you say, “This is just a craving, not a command,” you’ve created the space to act in line with your values.

If you can learn to edit the story, even slightly, you change the outcome. And like resistance training, it’s not about doing it perfectly once. You have to do the reps often enough that the new script eventually runs automatically.

Practice Thought Replacement

You are not your thoughts. They are not your identity, and they can be edited and replaced. Thought replacement is a trainable skill. You won’t nail it the first time, but it does get easier with practice.

Start by identifying your most common unhelpful line. Maybe it’s “I can’t resist chocolate when I see it.” Now engineer a helpful counter that preserves your agency: “I can’t control seeing chocolate, but I can control my next action. I can choose something that satisfies me without derailing me.”

If that still feels too big, build a bridge thought: “Resisting feels hard right now, and I think I can try a 10-minute pause.” 

A quick drill:

1. Write your go-to unhelpful thought.
2. Rate how convincing it feels (0-100).
3. Write a balanced alternative you can believe.
4. Re-rate. If it’s under ~60, tweak the wording until it lands.

Over time, you’ll notice that the moment the old script starts, you can load up the new script and replace the old one. Do this often enough, and you will rewire your brain.

Use Behavioural Substitutions

Sometimes the fastest way to change the story is to change the scene. If a craving is tied to a behaviour (opening the cupboard when bored), swap the behaviour, don’t just argue with it.

Boredom cravings respond well to movement and novelty: a five-minute walk, a set of air squats, two minutes of stretching, or brewing a tea you genuinely enjoy. 

Comfort cravings respond to comfort delivered differently: a hot shower, a weighted blanket for ten minutes, a phone call with someone who makes you laugh, or a short playlist that changes your state. 

If it is about taste, go for smart swaps that scratch the itch with fewer consequences. For example, dark chocolate savoured slowly, yogurt with berries, roasted chickpeas, apple and peanut butter. 

The key is to replace the ritual: same cue (I need something), different routine, better result.

Delay and Distract

Cravings are waves. They rise, peak, and fall, often within 15-20 minutes. If you can ride the first wave, the ocean calms. I often coach clients to set a timer and fill that window with structured distraction. Put your hands and brain somewhere else.

Tidy one drawer, water the plants, step outside for sunlight, message a friend, or do a quick “reset” task (wash your face, change rooms, light a candle). You’re not avoiding life with this, you’re buying enough time for your physiology and attention to reset.

The win here isn’t “I never ate the thing.” The win is “I proved I can create some space before I decide.” That space is what we need, as it eventually allows us to deal with the cravings long term.

Cognitive Restructuring 

When in doubt, pull out paper (or your notes app) and run this quick for/against check. Ask, “Does eating this actually deliver what I want?” Then split the page:

• For: What benefits will I get in the next 10 minutes? How about the next 2 hours? The rest of the week?
• Against: What costs will I feel in the next 10 minutes? How about the next 2 hours? The rest of the week?

Add two clarifying questions:

• “Do I genuinely enjoy this food when I eat it slowly?” (Many people discover the first two bites deliver 90% of the pleasure.)
• “Could I get the same benefit another way?” (Stress relief via a walk, taste via a smaller portion or a smarter swap, connection via a call.)

This is how you make an informed choice. Often, you’ll still choose the food, just in a portion and context that aligns with your goals. 

Implementation Intentions: Pre-Decide the Next Move

Willpower loves a script. An implementation intention is a simple if-then plan you rehearse ahead of time so you don’t negotiate in the heat of the moment.

• If it’s 3 p.m. and I feel the snack urge, then I drink a glass of water, have a protein-rich bite if I’m truly hungry, and set a 15-minute timer.
• If I open the cupboard and see sweets, then I take three slow breaths, close it, and walk to the kettle to make tea.
• If I’m driving home stressed, then I play my “de-stress playlist” and call a friend before I reach the house.

Make these ridiculously specific with a clear time, place, and first action. The clearer the plan, the less friction you’ll feel. 

Bringing It Together

Dopamine tends to ramp up in anticipation of a reward (the cue and the expectation) more than during the actual eating. That’s why the thought of the biscuit on your desk can feel louder than the enjoyment of the biscuit itself. 

CBT helps by interrupting the cue → meaning → action chain. When you change the meaning (“This will fix my stress” becomes “This will give me five minutes of taste and two hours of slump”), the anticipated reward shifts, the dopamine ramp softens, and the urge becomes more workable. 

Plato talked about the tripartite soul: appetite (the craving), reason (your ability to think), and will/spirit (your drive). When a craving hits, appetite speaks first, and it likes to speak loudly. CBT is the practice of strengthening reason so will has something solid to act on. Reason evaluates, reframes, and plans, whereas will carries out that plan. The more reps you put into reasoning well in small moments, the more automatic it becomes when the moment is big.

This isn’t about never wanting food. It’s about being the kind of person who notices the story, edits the story, and then acts on purpose. You’ll challenge the first thought, practice a better one, swap the behaviour when it helps, delay long enough to choose, and use quick restructuring when you need to. Layer in a couple of if-then plans and you’ve built a sturdy bridge over the urge.

But sometimes you need more.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Approaches

If CBT is about challenging the story in your head, ACT takes a different tack. It says: “Thoughts are just thoughts. You don’t have to fight them. You also don’t have to obey them.” For many clients, this approach is refreshing. Instead of debating whether the craving-thought is “true,” ACT teaches you to notice it, name it, and let it drift by without automatically turning it into action.

You may have noticed the way that we often fuse our cravings with action. “I thought it, so I must do it.” In that fused state, the thought is the command. But in reality, thoughts are more like suggestions from your mind. Some are useful, some are ridiculous.

Think about the strange thoughts you’ve had before, like wanting to throw your phone off a bridge or suddenly imagining blurting something awkward in a meeting. You didn’t act on them, because you recognised them as just random sparks of the brain. 

Cravings, though, can feel different. They show up with a body sensation that makes them feel urgent and non-negotiable. You have also likely indulged them before, and gotten at least some momentary pleasure (whereas you likely get very little pleasure from blurting out something awkward in a meeting).

ACT teaches “defusion”, which is the process of separating the thought from the action. A few practical ways to do this:

• Name the thought. Say to yourself: “Ah, this is my ‘eat the whole bag of crisps’ thought.”
• Thank your mind. It’s trying to help. “Thanks, brain, I see what you’re doing.”
• Let it float away. Picture the thought drifting down a river on a leaf, or tied to a balloon that floats into the sky. You don’t fight it, you don’t act on it, you just let it go.

The trick is practice. Don’t wait until your strongest craving shows up. Start with small ones and build your strength. For example, you might work on your urge to check your phone in a meeting, the itch to buy something you don’t need online, and the thought to snack when you’re not even hungry. The more reps you put in, the more skilled you’ll become when the intense cravings arrive.

Another helpful metaphor from ACT is urge surfing. Cravings rise like waves. They can be strong, and sometimes overwhelming, but no wave lasts forever. Rather than panicking or trying to bulldoze the urge, you imagine yourself riding it, balanced and calm, until it naturally fades. You don’t fight the water, you don’t sink under it, you just stay steady on the board until it passes. Many clients find this image liberating because it reframes cravings as temporary weather, not permanent truth.

A thought experiment I often use with clients is imagining a committee meeting in your head. One voice, the “Craving Committee Chair”, is loud and insistent: “Eat the chocolate. Eat it now!” But there are other members in the room: the health-focused voice, the long-term goal voice, the “I want to feel good tomorrow” voice. ACT is about letting all the voices be heard without automatically letting the loudest one dictate the vote. When you defuse from the craving voice, you make space to hear the rest of the committee.

There’s also a deeper, almost existential layer here. Every craving is a test of freedom. If you act automatically, you’re not really choosing, you’re just reacting. But if you can step back, notice the thought, let it drift, and then decide consciously, you’re exercising freedom in the truest sense. Each time you choose differently, you’re not just resisting a biscuit, you’re actively shaping who you are becoming and actually developing your free will abilities. In that sense, cravings aren’t enemies; they’re opportunities to practice freedom.

Ultimately, using ACT principles doesn’t promise that cravings will vanish. They won’t. What it offers is a skillset. The ability to notice thoughts, separate from them, and choose action based on values, not urges. The mistake most people make is waiting until they’re in the grip of their strongest craving before trying these techniques. Don’t do that. Start small. Practice defusion when you feel a mild urge, surf the little waves before the big ones, and remember that every rep makes you stronger.

Cravings will always knock on the door. With ACT, you learn that you don’t have to open it.

Long-Term Reinforcement

So far, you’ve got a toolbox of quick-response strategies, a detective’s mindset for spotting triggers, and skills for working with your thoughts and urges. But the reality is that cravings are not a one-time battle. They come back, sometimes daily, sometimes in waves. That’s why reinforcement matters. 

It’s not enough to win one round, you want to train your brain, body, and habits so that over time, your default responses actually shift. The reps you do now build the strength to make future cravings easier to handle.

Every time you ride out a craving or make a choice that aligns with your long-term goals, that’s a rep worth reinforcing. Too often, clients tell me, “Well, I didn’t eat the biscuits, but that’s just what I should do.” No. That’s progress.

And here’s the tricky part; you can’t use food as the reward. That only wires the craving loop deeper. Instead, build a menu of non-food rewards that feel genuinely enjoyable. Maybe that’s a hot bath after dinner, half an hour reading a book you love, watching an episode of your favourite show guilt-free, or taking ten minutes to work on a hobby. The point is to create a positive feedback loop: craving shows up → you handle it skillfully → you feel rewarded. That loop builds momentum.

However, many cravings aren’t really about hunger at all, they’re about emotion. Stress, loneliness, sadness, boredom… food becomes the plaster we slap on feelings we don’t want to sit with. And, unfortunately, it works, at least for a few minutes. But then you’re left with the same emotions, plus frustration about the food choice.

Here’s where long-term reinforcement comes in: instead of numbing the emotion, start naming it. Journaling is one of the simplest ways. Write down: “Right now I feel stressed and restless. My urge is to eat. I want comfort.” Even that act of naming creates space. Sometimes the craving shrinks right there.

Other times, what you need is connection. Talking to a trusted friend can scratch the itch for comfort better than biscuits ever could. Ultimately, emotional eating isn’t a weakness, it’s just a coping strategy that isn’t serving you anymore. Building better coping strategies is what you need to do. 

One of the most powerful drills I give clients to help with this long term, isn’t about resisting food, it’s about slowing down with it. I call this the mindful eating experiment, and it almost always delivers a surprise. I was first thought this by our very own resident expert, Brian O’hAongusa, and it has been a great help ever since.

Here’s how it works. Think of the food you often crave. It could be a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar, or a bag of Haribo. Instead of eating the whole thing quickly and absentmindedly, I want you to turn it into an experiment.

First, set the scene. Don’t stand by the cupboard or eat while scrolling on your phone. Sit down at a table, take the food out, and give it your full attention. This might feel odd at first, but that’s the point. You’re about to see the craving in a different light.

Now, pick one piece. Hold it in your hand. Notice the colour, the shape, the texture. Smell it. Anticipation is part of the experience, and often it’s the strongest part. Already, you might feel your mouth water or your urge spike. That’s normal, as this is your brain’s dopamine system firing in anticipation.

Place it in your mouth, but don’t chew right away. Notice how it feels on your tongue. Then, as you chew, pay attention to the flavours as they arrive, change, and fade. Notice the texture breaking down. Ask yourself: do I enjoy this as much as I thought I would? Do I actually like the taste, or was I hooked more on the idea of it?

When you finish that piece, pause. Sit with the aftertaste. Do you want another? If so, repeat, but slowly again.

Here’s what usually happens. A lot of people realise that the food isn’t as delicious as their brain promised it would be. Sometimes the first two bites give them 80-90% of the pleasure, and the rest is just habit, hand-to-mouth autopilot. 

Some discover they only needed a small amount to feel satisfied. And yes, a few even lose interest entirely. I’ve had clients come back and say, “I honestly don’t even like chocolate anymore.” (If chocolate is sacred to you, fair warning, this exercise can “ruin” certain foods.)

This exercise works because cravings thrive on speed and autopilot. You get the urge, you eat fast, you barely notice, and the brain logs the loop: craving → food → relief. But when you slow down, you interrupt that cycle. 

You test the assumption at the heart of the craving: “Eating this will make me feel better.” Sometimes it does, briefly. But more often, the food delivers less pleasure than expected, or a fleeting high followed by regret or sluggishness. Once you see that clearly, through direct experience, not just theory, the craving loses much of its power.

Think of this like a CBT experiment. Instead of taking the thought at face value, you put it under the microscope. Does this food really do what my brain says it does? Is this actually the solution I’m looking for, or just a habit loop playing out?

The best part is that you don’t have to cut the food out entirely. You can still choose to eat it. But now you’re eating with awareness, not compulsion. You’re in charge of the experience rather than letting the experience run you.

This drill is deceptively simple, but it’s one of the most eye-opening ways to change your relationship with cravings. It turns autopilot into awareness, and awareness is where real choice begins.

Ultimately, long-term reinforcement is about more than willpower. It’s about rewiring. Each time you reward yourself with something non-food, you teach your brain that control feels good. Each time you sit with an emotion instead of eating it, you prove to yourself that you can handle discomfort. Each time you run the mindful eating experiment, you challenge the belief that the craving food is the magical solution.

Over months, these small reps add up. Cravings stop feeling like battles and start feeling like opportunities. Every wave you surf strengthens your identity: I’m someone who makes conscious choices. I can enjoy food without being ruled by it.

That’s the real win we are looking for. It’s not never craving again, as that is just unrealistic. You can become the kind of person who knows exactly how to handle a craving when it arrives.

Build Coping Skills Over Time

Unfortunately, there isn’t one magic trick that makes cravings vanish. Instead, what works is building a toolkit of coping skills. Skills you can rely on again and again, no matter what life throws at you. This is where CBT and ACT really shine. They aren’t quick hacks. They’re long-term strategies for rewiring how you think, how you feel, and how you respond.

Ultimately, cravings don’t exist in isolation. They’re influenced by your physiology (blood sugar, sleep, stress), your environment (food cues, routines, advertising), and your psychology (thoughts, emotions, beliefs). If you want lasting change, you need skills that cover all three. That’s what CBT and ACT give you.

Here are some of the core skills to practice and strengthen over time, that will help you to deal with cravings long term:

Recognise Your Triggers

Awareness is always step one. Whether it’s the 3 p.m. office slump, late-night TV, or emotional stress, knowing what tends to set off your cravings makes them predictable instead of mysterious. When something is predictable, you can plan for it. And planning beats willpower every single time.

Separate Thoughts from Behaviours

Just because a craving thought shows up (“I need chocolate right now”) doesn’t mean you’re required to act on it. CBT teaches you to challenge that thought and offer an alternative, while ACT teaches you to “defuse” from it and let it float by. Either way, the skill is the same: recognising that you are not your thoughts. You can observe the craving without automatically obeying it.

Develop a Flexible, Forgiving Mindset

Rigid all-or-nothing thinking is one of the biggest traps around food. “I had one biscuit, I’ve blown the whole day.” That mindset fuels overeating far more than the actual biscuit does. Building coping skills means developing flexibility: you can have one treat, enjoy it, and move on without guilt. You can make a less-than-perfect choice, then get back on track at the very next meal. Flexibility keeps the long game intact. Forgiveness allows you to learn from slip-ups instead of spiralling.

Create Habits That Feel Natural and Sustainable

The best coping skills aren’t flashy. They’re the small routines you build into daily life. Stocking protein-rich snacks, keeping water on hand, practising a short pause before eating, or having a few “go-to” non-food coping strategies (walking, journaling, stretching, calling a friend, etc.). Over time, these habits become automatic. Once they’re automatic, they stop feeling like “work” and start feeling like just how you live.

You can think of coping skills like resistance training. You don’t build strength in one workout, you build it rep by rep, week by week, layering small progressions. Some days you’ll feel strong; other days you’ll feel like you’re struggling. Both are part of the process. The important thing is that you keep showing up and keep practising the skills.

With CBT and ACT as your foundation, every craving becomes just another rep. Every time you recognise a trigger, reframe a thought, or ride out an urge, you’re reinforcing the neural pathways that make future cravings easier to handle. Over time, cravings lose their power. They likely won’t disappear, but because you’ve built the confidence and skill to handle them without fear, they simply won’t have power over you any more.

Beyond the Craving: Wider Perspectives

Up to this point, we’ve been working on the personal, practical side of cravings: the quick tools, the psychology, and the mindset shifts. But cravings don’t just live in your head or your stomach. They sit at the crossroads of biology, culture, philosophy, and even economics. Stepping back to look at the bigger picture not only deepens your understanding, it can also give you extra motivation. I would also feel like I haven’t fully prepared you if I left you thinking that this was all personal responsibility. You have to realise you’re not just battling yourself, you’re engaging with universal human challenges and powerful systems. 

The Universal Tension: Pleasure vs. Flourishing

Every craving moment brings up an age-old human dilemma: the pull of short-term pleasure versus the pursuit of long-term flourishing. 

Do I go for the instant hit of sugar, or the steady energy that supports tomorrow’s training session? 

Philosophers from Aristotle to modern psychologists have wrestled with this trade-off. The truth is, the craving itself isn’t wrong, it’s part of being human. 

The question is whether you let that short-term desire dictate your choices, or whether you lean into practices that help you thrive over the long haul.

The Brain’s Tug-of-War

Neuroscience gives us another lens to view things. In the heat of a craving, two brain systems are at play. The limbic system (your emotional, reward-seeking brain) lights up like a pinball machine when you see or even think about food. The prefrontal cortex (the rational, planning part of your brain) tries to step in and say, “Hold on, let’s think about tomorrow.” 

Craving moments are essentially a tug-of-war between those two systems. 

Every time you pause, reframe, or ride the urge out, you strengthen the prefrontal cortex’s grip on the rope. Over time, this repetition literally rewires your brain toward better self-control.

As someone with ADHD, I battle with this more than most, and I can tell you from lots of experience, you can build a stronger prefrontal cortex and strengthen your self-control.

Cravings as Social Contagion

Cravings aren’t just an individual experience, they spread like some sort of social contagion. Think about office snack culture where one person brings in donuts, suddenly everyone’s “just having one.” Or family gatherings where the expectation is to pile your plate high. 

These social cues amplify your personal urges, making cravings feel not just like a personal want, but almost like a group ritual. Recognising cravings as partly social frees you from thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” and helps you see, “I’m swimming in a culture where this is normal. And, I can still choose differently.”

The Food Environment and Emerging Science

There’s growing research on whether ultra-processed foods are genuinely “addictive.” Many are engineered to be hyper-palatable with the perfect mix of sugar, fat, and salt that hijacks your brain’s reward circuits more powerfully than whole foods. 

Add to this the availability (food within arm’s reach 24/7) and the marketing pressure, and you start to see why cravings are so common.

At the same time, medical approaches are emerging, like GLP-1 agonists (e.g., Ozempic) that blunt appetite signals. These raise big questions: if cravings can be dialled down with medication, what role should personal habit, mindset, and environment still play? 

For some, these tools will be life-changing. But even then, the deeper work of aligning choices with values remains. Just removing the craving also doesn’t remove the emotions the food was solving. 

Systems Thinking: From Personal to Collective

Finally, zoom out even further. When you manage your cravings skillfully, you’re not just helping yourself, you’re ultimately resisting a food environment designed to profit from your automatic behaviours. Every time you pause instead of eating mindlessly, every time you substitute or surf an urge, you’re contributing to a wider ripple effect: less reinforcement for engineered hyper-palatable foods, more space for cultural shifts toward health. 

It may feel like a small personal act, but multiplied across millions of people, it becomes collective resistance against a food environment that has been engineered to work against us.

Ultimately, you’re not just fighting your own sweet tooth. You’re part of an ancient human struggle, a neural tug-of-war, a cultural current, and a food environment that is rigged against you. But you can fight against it. While I know it can feel very frustrating at times, learning how to deal with cravings is possible. It takes work, but it is possible to reduce their power.

How To Deal With Cravings: Final Thoughts 

Cravings are normal. They’re not proof that you’re weak, broken, or doomed to fail. They’re simply part of the human experience. They are an echo of our biology, our environment, and our habits. Because they’re normal, they’re also manageable.

The work you’ve just walked through isn’t about eliminating cravings; it’s about learning to respond to them in ways that serve you. You now have a set of tools that cover the immediate (drink water, pause, eat something stabilising), the psychological (challenging thoughts with CBT, defusing from them with ACT), and the long-term (rewarding yourself, practising mindful eating, building coping habits). These are skills, and like any skill, they get easier and stronger the more you practice.

Start simple. For the next week, pick one craving a day and track it. Write down the time, the trigger, what you felt, and what you did. Use your quick-action playbook: water, pause, protein, wait. Layer in a CBT or ACT technique if you can (challenge the thought, or let it drift past like a cloud). These are not massive, life-altering steps. They are small, repeatable reps. But Aristotle had it right when he said (paraphrased by Will Durant) “we are what we repeatedly do”. Each rep shapes you and builds your ability to handle the cravings in future. Each craving moment is a chance to practice becoming the person you want to be.

If cravings ever feel overwhelming, if they’re tied to deep emotional struggles, or if food feels out of control, it’s wise to seek professional support. A therapist, dietitian, or coach can help you untangle the bigger picture and give you more structured guidance. Reaching out is not weakness.

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