RENEWAL LAB

SURF YOUR SUGAR CRAVINGS

Cutting back on sugar may be the single most beneficial change you can make to your diet. The American Heart Association recommends limiting added sugar to nine teaspoons a day for men and six teaspoons for women, but the average American has almost twenty teaspoons a day. A high-sugar diet is associated with more belly fat and insulin resistance, and three studies have found a link between shorter telomeres and drinking sugared beverages. (In the next chapter we’ll talk about sugary drinks in more detail.)

When you get a craving for sugar (or any other food that isn’t good for you), you need a tool to help you cope. Cravings are strong, and they’re backed up by dopamine activity in the reward center of the brain. Fortunately, cravings are impermanent. They will pass. Psychologist Alan Marlatt has applied the idea of “Surfing the Urge” to help people with addictions resist their cravings until those cravings dissipate. Andrea Lieberstein, a mindful eating expert, has found this practice works even better for food cravings when adding a heart focus to the end, taking the edge off of the craving with feelings of compassion and kindness.

Here’s how to surf your cravings:

SURF YOUR CRAVINGS

Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Picture the snack or treat you’re craving: Conjure up its texture, its color, its smell. As the image becomes vivid, let yourself feel your craving. Let your attention wander throughout your body to observe the nature of this craving.

Describe this craving to yourself. What are its sensations and its qualities? What are the shapes, sensations, and any thoughts or feelings associated with it? Where is it located in your body? Does it change as you notice it, or as you exhale? Feel any discomfort. Remind yourself this is not an itch that needs to be scratched. This is a feeling that changes and will pass. Perhaps imagine it as a wave that builds, crests, and dissipates back into the ocean. Breathe into the sensation, and let it release tension, as you notice the waves falling back gently.

You might put your attention and your hand on your heart, imagining a sense of warmth and kindness flowing outward from your heart. Let this sense of warmth spread throughout your body, enveloping the sense of craving with loving-kindness. Take a moment just breathing in this feeling of compassion for yourself. Now look at the image of the food again. What has changed? What are you aware of? You can experience the craving without acting on it. Just notice it, breathe, and envelope it with a sense of loving-kindness.

You can record yourself reading this script (using, for example, the Voice Memo app on the iPhone) and listen to it whenever a craving arises. You can also download an audio version of this script from our website.

TUNE IN TO YOUR BODY’S SIGNALS OF HUNGER AND FULLNESS

By mindfully tuning in to your body’s cues of hunger and fullness, you may be able to reduce overeating. When you pay attention to your level of physical hunger, you are less likely to confuse it with psychological hunger. Stress, boredom, and emotions (even happy ones) can make you feel as if you’re hungry even when you’re really not. In a small pilot study led by psychology researcher Jennifer Daubenmier at UCSF, we found that when women are trained to do a mindful check-in before meals, they have lower blood glucose and cortisol, particularly if they are obese. And the more they improve on mental and metabolic health, the more their telomerase increases.22 In a larger trial, psychology researcher Ashley Mason found that the more men and women practiced mindful eating, the fewer sweets they ate, and the lower their glucose was one year later.²³ Mindful eating seems to have a small effect on weight but may be critical to breaking the craving sweets–glucose link.

Below are some mindful eating strategies that I (Elissa) and my colleagues use for our studies of weight management. They are based on Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training, a program developed by Jean Kristeller, a psychologist at Indiana University. (See more resources on mindful eating.)²⁴

1. Breathe. Bring your awareness to your entire body. Ask yourself: How physically hungry am I right now? What information and sensations help me answer this question?

2. Rate your physical hunger on this scale:

Try to eat before you get to 8 so you’re less likely to overeat. Definitely don’t wait until you’re at 10. If you’re famished, it’s easy to eat too much, too fast.

3. When you do eat, fully savor the taste of the food and the experience of eating.

4. Pay attention to the hunger in your stomach, to the physical sensations of fullness and distention. (We call this “listening to the stretch receptors.”) After you’ve spent a few minutes eating, ask yourself “How physically full do I feel?” Rate your answer:

Stop when your score is 7 or 8—in other words, when you’re moderately full. Your biological signals of fullness, caused by increases in blood sugar and satiety hormones in the blood, kick in slowly, and you won’t feel their full effect until twenty minutes later. Stopping before you get those signals, before you’ve eaten too much, is usually the hard part, but this becomes much easier once you start paying attention.