How to Handle Food Cravings Part One
By Ellie Steele, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Advanced EFT Tapping Practitioner, Holistic Health Coach
If you’re reading this, first let me say, I feel your pain. Second let me say, there’s nothing wrong with you! Food cravings and emotional eating are extremely common and they have much more to do with our primitive brains in a modern food environment than with a lack of willpower or self-control.
I’ve personally struggled with food cravings and even something that might be considered “food addiction”, although I’m not really a fan of that term or ideology. Some people’s brains are more susceptible to addiction and I’m definitely one of them, but for many people, food cravings aren’t something deeply wired into your genetic blueprint.
When I begin my work with a client struggling with food cravings, one of the first things I ask is about their personal and family history of addictive behaviour. If that’s an issue, that might mean they have a brain like mine and we’ll need a deeper approach, but in many cases, food cravings have more to do with external factors and mindset that can be changed fairly easily with some nutrition changes, EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Tapping and some coaching.
So let’s start there.
One of the most powerful and effective tools for simple food cravings I’ve ever found, is EFT Tapping. Dr. Peta Stapleton is a clinical and health psychologist that specializes in eating disorders and is a pioneer in EFT Tapping research. She has been doing high-quality EFT research since 2010. A 2012 Griffith University study in Australiashowed that 4 weeks of EFT for food cravings caused significantly greater improvement in food cravings, the subjective power of food and craving restraint than untreated individuals. The improvements in food cravings and the subjective power of food were maintained 12 months after the study, indicating long-term resolution of food cravings. Another study published in 2019 showed that EFT reduced activity in areas of the brain associated with food cravings through fMRI imaging! It's like having an "off" switch for food cravings!
EFT Tapping is easy to learn and you can get the basics here in less than 10 minutes.
Applying EFT Tapping for simple food cravings is also quite easy. If you can think of a food you’d like to eat right now, pop on over to my YouTube video and try some tapping on it and see how it works for you!
If you find the EFT tapping didn’t work all that well, or only worked temporarily, don’t give up! You may just have a brain more like mine and you need more advanced tools and interventions. We’ll talk more about those soon or you can contact me for a free 15-minute consult and I can explain my unique approach to stress and emotional eating and stubborn food cravings using EFT, holistic nutrition and lifestyle coaching!
