Christmas is a time of busy-ness, family, stress, and a lot of food. It’s a time when most people feel they need to be in control of cravings, and then find themselves very out of control. If you’re struggling with cravings, the answer is the last thing you’ll expect.
By Kate Berridge, metabolic bariatric nurse specialist
Sam isn’t a morning person. She knows she should eat a protein-rich breakfast before she begins work but eating early makes her feel uncomfortable.
Instead, she starts her day with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
She knows eating a biscuit with her tea first thing in the morning is not on any food pyramid or dietician-approved list. It’s not something she’ll ever confess to anyone, especially those who know she’s had weight loss surgery.
She knows she should move the biscuit jar out of her sight. ‘Clean’ her environment.’ Not buy the biscuits in the first place. ‘Make’ herself eat properly. Prep a ‘good’ breakfast the night before.
Instead, she mentally beats herself up every morning and throughout the day because nine times out of ten mornings, she’ll start her day with a cup of tea and a biscuit or two.
The tea and the biscuits mean she’s not really hungry until later in the morning, so her real breakfast is often hours after she starts work.
Sam has a lot of feelings about this habit, and none of them are good. The critical voice in her head is already chattering to her as she gets out of bed. By the time she reaches the kitchen, it’s at full volume.
“You know you’re going to do it. You’re so weak. Why are you doing this? You had surgery to lose weight, this isn’t what you should be doing, this is why you got fat in the first place, all these little things add up.”
The criticism stays with her while she drinks her tea and eats her biscuit. Most days that first biscuit triggers a ferocious craving for a second one, and a voice in her head will say, ‘f**k it - if you’re going to eat one, you may as well eat two’.
That sets the critic off again.
An hour or two later when her body starts telling her it’s time for breakfast, the critical thoughts flood back in to remind her that a ‘good’ person eats a ‘good’ breakfast earlier in the day, not ‘bad’ biscuits. She’s disgraceful. A failure. Again.
Worse, even when Sam has a day of otherwise good food choices, she still beats herself up and feels depressed because she failed first thing.
Sam is facing a common issue I see in most patients who have had weight loss surgery, and those who are using GLP1 medications (Saxenda, Wegovy, Ozempic) or craving-reduction drugs like Contrave. She's fighting herself at every point in her day, trying to control things, but the harder she tries, the worse it gets.
“…what you resist not only persists but will grow in size.”
Carl Jung
While surgery takes away the biological ‘hunger’ signals and drugs dull it down considerably, Sam’s cravings aren’t anything to do with the physiological needs of her body.
Here’s how we can find out what’s going on.
GET CURIOUS
Why is Sam is choosing to start her day this way?
When I met with Sam, I was full of questions. It’s easy to be curious when you’re removed from the problem, so one of the key roles I play in my work with patients is offering them the curiosity they’re missing.
I’ve found the ability to be genuinely curious is the first valuable skill everyone needs to learn after surgery or if they're using weight loss drugs, and you’ll see why here.
Trying to be curious by yourself can be difficult because your powerful inner critic is going to jump in with a loud, negative statement first. Having an impartial guide there to help you stay focused and out of judgment is critical.
For Sam, just a few questions in and the revelations start tumbling out.
She quickly works out there are two parts to her morning ritual.
There’s a physical aspect. She estimates about 30% is a mild hunger sensation, but the thought of a full-on breakfast brings feelings of physical discomfort, that it’s too much for her stomach that early in the day.
But far stronger is the desire, the craving for tea and biscuits, which she estimates is about 70% of her need.
More questions and Sam reveals she has a stressful job requiring a lot of concentration throughout the day. She’s self-employed, so she lives with a constant nagging fear that she needs to hustle to ensure her business survival so that she can pay her mortgage and other bills. Plus, there’s the rest of her life, with family, community commitments, and travel for her job.
Anticipating the stress that will inevitably arise, she’s found one way she can soothe herself is to have tea and biscuits at the start of her day.
Before she got curious, Sam saw her morning routine as a frustrating behavioural loop that seemed impossible to stop. It was entirely negative, potentially affecting her long-term health, and ‘proof’ that she was ‘bad’.
But now she’s curious, Sam can see her behaviour is a way she’s learned to comfort herself at the start of her day, not a weakness or a fault. It’s her version of a warm, loving hug and words of reassurance.
The next step isn’t intuitive, but it is crucial, and it's not what any patient ever expects.
WHY THE ANSWER IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE
Sam now has more information on why she chooses tea and biscuits each morning, and it’s not because she’s a bad person.
She can also see how she pays an enormous cost with the spiral of negative thoughts before and after. Heavy criticism is the first thing she hears when she wakes up, and the negative thoughts continue to beat her up throughout the day, taking a toll on her mood and adding to her already-high stress levels.
Worse, it’s slowly but surely becoming more vicious, and she’s feeling more desperate.
The answer to her spiral and distress is beautifully summed up by Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, who wrote about this problem in the 1920s.
It's simple, but not easy.
“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.”
Carl Jung
So how did Sam accept her morning habit and how did it help?
“Now I realise there’s a function to it. Before, I was trying to avoid it, control it, tell myself I had to stop. When I couldn’t, I turned on myself in a way I’d never accept from anyone else.”
These days, most days, Sam has her morning cup of tea and a biscuit. She sits down and tries to be present with each sip of tea and each bite of biscuit.
“I love it – I’m doing nothing else but enjoying the moment, feeling the warm soothing it offers and taking it in.”
There are still struggles. Often, despite being mindful and accepting, her craving for a second flares up. That restarts her inner critic’s negative dialogue.
Again, Sam has learned to practice accepting it by being in the moment, continuing to enjoy her process, and relaxing into it.
“It’s fulfilling, I feel comfortable, I satisfy the craving. Most days, I find halfway through the second biscuit. I’m happy, and I’m not interested in finishing it.
“But better than that, I don’t feel deprived. By doing this, I’m far less likely to double down later in the day and eat far more than just two biscuits. I've offered myself comfort when I needed it, and I haven’t spent all day beating myself up.”
In my experience, when patients have an internal war of anger, disgust and shame raging in their heads, they’re more likely to be overwhelmed and binge on food when it all becomes too much.
This potent mix of negative thoughts and feelings is far more powerful than the physiological effects of surgery or drugs, and the biggest reason why people make food choices that leave them increasingly desperate as time goes on.
People who live or have lived life in a bigger body have a lifetime of these thought processes and resulting emotions, and then hating themselves for ‘giving in’.
But a craving - a need for soothing, comfort - is an entirely understandable response to something, whether that’s a toddler having a meltdown, a customer yelling, or anticipating a day that will contain stressful moments.
By accepting your behaviour when a craving hits, your mood stays higher. You can enjoy the sensation of soothing and understand that you need to comfort yourself.
You’ve spent a lifetime reacting to stress using food; it’s how you’ve always soothed yourself, and often, it’s the best step at that moment. It’s going to take time and a lot of acceptance to change well-worn patterns that are deeply woven into your brain.
The magic of curiosity, compassion, and acceptance is that they lead to a higher level of consciousness. The more you practice, the more likely you are to be able to respond mindfully to a situation with self-care, rather than react in the moment.
A reaction is a flash that happens without thought or consideration for what we’re going through, reinforced by severely critical thoughts. It's much harder to make good choices when we're in this state.
The more we stay conscious, the more we learn we can respond thoughtfully and with understanding. This is the essence of self-care and gives us space to make good choices, like eating less of something or choosing an alternative way to soothe ourselves.
Self-care might be Sam checking in with her body after the first biscuit. She can close her eyes and feel where the tea and biscuit are sitting in her stomach. That moment of sensation gives her brain time to connect with feelings in her body, checking whether she's physically full or close to full. Taking in that sensation naturally reduces the power of her craving for the second biscuit if she takes time to listen to her body.
It might be that some days, while she’s boiling the kettle, she practices somatic breathing:
- take a deep breath in through the nose for four seconds;
- hold for seven seconds;
- breathe out very slowly through the mouth for eight seconds, pursing the lips and making a 'woosh' sound;
Repeat at least four times, ideally twice a day.
This breathing technique triggers the parasympathetic nervous system. It controls your body’s rest and relaxation response, lowering blood pressure and heart rate.
In a study of 90 metabolic bariatric patients in 2023, the group who practised 4-7-8 breathing consistently recorded lower anxiety levels and higher quality of life scores.
WARNING: DON'T USE SELF-CARE TO BEAT YOURSELF UP
So now you know a couple of self-care techniques, but you might not think of them in the moment. You might only remember to be mindful or breathe every so often.
Just because you logically know better doesn’t mean you’re going to DO better. More likely, you’ll default in times of stress to what you’ve always done – eat.
Even the most enlightened person will never choose self-care 100% of the time, or even close to it. But if you can do it one time out of 10 stressful moments, that’s 10% more self-care than before.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS?
The weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year are full of stress. There’s extra childcare when school ends, the financial stress of gifts, relatives visiting – including those you’d rather not spend a lot or any time with – obligations, hot weather, more visitors, loud parties, the list goes on.
For people who use food to soothe themselves, this time of year is a particularly potent mix of high stress and an environment filled with high-calorie, readily available food options.
There’s also more likelihood of cravings hitting as our nervous system responds to this stress and more need than usual to self-soothe.
We choose food because it’s a very quick way to regulate our emotions, or – and this is really common – to mask emotions completely so we can look calm, happy, and all the other ‘good’ behaviours that other people expect to see.
In my experience, a lot of patients have this idea of a utopia Christmas in their mind, where everyone is happy and jolly.
The thing is that your Christmas fantasy isn’t real. If you have that memory from your childhood, I can almost guarantee it wasn’t like that for the people (adults) who were there, who were almost certainly masking their emotions with food and alcohol, trying to create that same utopia.
Life always has challenges. The strong urges you feel to eat are always because of a powerful, primal need inside you for acceptance and love. The one person you can rely on for both is you. By being curious and conscious when you can, you can choose to bring compassion and acceptance to your choices.
You might still eat the biscuits, the pavlova, the gooey cheese. When you do, I’m asking you to go all in. Enjoy the taste and texture, spend time with each bite, and relish the feelings of relaxation and pleasure that move through your body. This moment is your life and the memory you'll carry forward.
Every time you do this, you'll almost certainly find you'll eat less than if you weren’t conscious. You’ll be more aware of when it stops being pleasant, and your stomach says, ‘I’m close to full’ or 'I'm full'.
Even better, it’s not going to be followed by hours of highly critical thoughts. You're not going to feel deprived either.
This process isn't a cure. You’re going to bounce. There will be times you’re able to be present and a lot more when you’re not. Even the most mindful meditators in the world – monks who spend literally years of their lives practising – fall into unconsciousness reactions and negative thought spirals.
HOW AN APPOINTMENT WITH KATE CAN HELP YOU
The ability to be genuinely curious and compassionate with yourself isn’t innate. These abilities don't just magically appear when you have surgery or take drugs, or lose weight.
These methods can give you a 'honeymoon' of months (drugs), up to a year (surgery) where you lose weight and all is good. Then one day... the cravings start creeping back in. Small at first. Then, increasingly louder. It's completely normal and exactly what we expect.
Kate’s research for her Masters of Nursing found it’s especially difficult for people who have lived or who are living in bigger bodies to access curiosity, compassion and acceptance because there’s a lifetime of criticism embedded in their thought processes. Being this kind to yourself is possibly something you've never experienced before or even seen.
More likely, the caregivers around you modelled a vicious inner voice (something they learned from their parents). You almost certainly learned – from around three or even earlier – that sternness, criticism and control were the way to make yourself ‘good’.
Kate’s role is to help guide you through the process of awakening curiosity, compassion, and acceptance and practice them in situations where you struggle.
Often, the inner critic sneaks in and manipulates a situation without you being aware of what’s going on. Usually, it disguises itself as logic. For example, ‘I know all this, I just can’t do it because I’m bad/weak/lazy.’
It can be hard to catch your own inner critic starting up, which is why having someone like Kate hearing it and directing you back to curiosity is so helpful.
Kate’s role is similar to that of a personal trainer guiding you through a beginner’s weight-lifting course. You need good form and technique, someone keeping an eye out for when you deviate, and who can push you a little into discomfort so you can see what you’re capable of. What you're capable of is always remarkable once you have the skills and take time to practice.
If you’d like to make an appointment, please email us for more information or click here for more details.
