It’s helpful to know the difference between hunger and a craving.

Hunger comes on gradually. Our stomach starts to growl, we feel a tad lightheaded or we just feel empty without much energy.

Emotional/mindless/habitual hunger comes on suddenly. Out of nowhere, we’re in the mood for something. If we really paid attention to our stomach we’d realize we weren’t physically hungry.

Then there’s mouth cravings. Mouth cravings can happen whether we’re physically or emotionally hungry. It’s when our mouth or tongue is craving something sweet or fatty or salty.

If we really pay attention to our body and mind we’d realize mouth cravings are really only in our mouth. They aren’t driven by our mind saying ‘comfort me’ or ‘help me escape reality for a few minutes.’

Mouth cravings typically occur after we eat certain foods. And the fix is easy.

For example, whenever I eat Italian food with some sort of marinara sauce I crave chocolate. And it’s really not emotionally driven. My mouth just feels like it wants something sweet.

So instead of giving in, I (try to!) have some grapes or an orange or better yet as soon as I’m done eating I floss, brush my teeth and use mouth wash.

I’m literally scraping the craving off my tongue. It works every time.

The challenging part is that so many of us enjoy the 5 minute escape of eating whatever it is we want. We don’t want to get in the habit of brushing our teeth even though we know it’ll work!

I’ve seen this time after time.

Clients are afraid to let go of their temporary escape so they purposely don’t brush their teeth.

It seems harder to just brush our teeth than to give in to our cravings. It’s like taking a bottle away from a baby. But as babies eventually grow out of using bottles – so can we.

We just need to try it. Try brushing your teeth immediately after a meal and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you forget about the craving.

If you never give yourself an opportunity to figure out what it is you really want, you’ll always resort to eating junk. And eating junk, unfortunately, has never made us feel more awesome than eating healthfully has.

Try snacking on some grapes or an orange – it will fix your cravings. Even better: try coming up with a nightly activity that’ll be soothing so you don’t have to give in to your mouth cravings at all.

A client sent me this article about a trainer that purposely tried to gain weight. Apparently, he wanted to be able to better empathize with his clients on why they’d miss workouts and continue to eat junk.

So he traded in the lean proteins and fruits and veggies and complex carbs for fatty, fried and sugary foods.

He said, “I’ve become quite addicted to the kinds of fatty sugary food that is bad for you, and it’s going to be hard to get out of that habit.”

He then goes on to say, “Once you start eating an unhealthy diet, it is tough to break that cycle. I used to enjoy healthy food and eat a lot of lean meat, grilled fish and green leafy vegetables.

But now I’ve got the taste for chocolate, biscuits and fizzy drinks. The energy these foods give you is short-lived, so your body is soon wanting more.”

He said he also feels sluggish all the time.

There are a lot of interesting golden nuggets in this article.

I don’t even want to mention the fact that he was a trainer and had no idea what his clients were going through!

Regardless, I do understand how hard it is. That’s exactly why I started MyBodyTutor! I was working in Corporate America and I found myself constantly making excuses. Constantly rationalizing my poor eating and lack of exercise…and I hated it!

We truly are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act. But a habit!

I was in the habit of forming bad habits and making bad choices.

Just like we can get into healthy habits meal by meal, workout by workout, we can easily get out of healthy habits just like this guy did.

Great habits are very hard to form. Bad habits are very easy to form.

The more I exercise, the more I want to exercise! The less I exercise, the less I want to exercise!

The more sugar I eat, the more sugar I want! The more salt I eat, the more salt I want!

Unhealthy foods that are loaded with salt and sugar (especially) are mentally and physically addicting.

Each time we eat sugar, we’re further reinforcing learned behaviors. It’s very hard to break the habit. Believe me I know!

Here’s the obvious kicker:

The only thing that’s going to change things is changing things! And the only way to stop craving sugar is to actually stop eating it!

We’re not robots, though!

Saying you’re never going to eat sugar again is ridiculous. Start with a crazy small goal of, say, just today! No refined or processed sugars.

The only sugar you can eat is natural sugar in the form of fruit or in real food. But just start with your next meal. That’s it! And go meal by meal.

Realize each time you have an intense craving for sugar, and each time you feed it with natural sugar, not refined, your changing what your body wants.

Each time you give in, your further reinforcing those cravings.

And I’m not saying you can’t ever indulge in cake or cookies or candy. But we can all agree that we feel so much better when we’re ‘off’ sugar, for the most part.

Flex your sugar muscle!

The more you say no, the easier it’ll become! The more you say yes, the harder it becomes to say no!

The homo economicus view of human beings states that we think and choose unfailingly well, and we fit within the text book picture of economists.

According to economists we will choose what’s best for us.

Clearly, this is not the case. Research in psychology and behavioral economics proves we are very, very irrational creatures.

On one hand (I like to call this our long term self / rational mind) we know what’s best for us. We know we shouldn’t overeat, drink and smoke.

On the other hand (I like to call this our short term self / irrational mind) we’re highly impulsive and succumb to temptations all the time.

We could also call these two minds our cold and hot sides. Cold being rational and hot being irrational. A temptation then is anything we consume more of when we’re hot/irrational/short sighted.

Here’s the challenge: Right now (2:45 EST on Friday), I feel pretty good. No cravings. I plan on going to the gym later on and I feel focused and on point.

However, in 3 hours when I plan on going to the gym, I might feel tired. Being tired helps our irrational mind get louder. So does being hungry. So does being anxious.

Research has proven, and we obviously don’t need research to prove this, we grossly underestimate how we’ll feel and act when we’re tempted – which in turn, wakes up the hot/irrational part of our brain.

Right now junk food isn’t in front of me. I’m thinking rationally. I’m good to go.

But, if you put my favorite treats in front of me (I’m not even going to write them) it would be an entirely different ball game.

A few lessons can be learned:

1. Don’t have any temptations near you. In your house, car, desk, whatever.

2. Tell your loved ones / friends / etc., that you’re on a mission and that you’d appreciate if they didn’t bring you your favorite treats or keep them around.

3. Protect yourself from getting irrational. Remember: Hungry, tired, and anxious are the 3 killers.

4. Don’t go where there will be temptations! Sometimes we can’t control this but many times we can. A client told me how she read an article about doughnuts in the LA Times and all day long she was thinking about doughnuts. Why do that to yourself?

Don’t underestimate how hot you can really get! But see, right now, we’re cold so we’ll rationalize and say things like “Na, I’m good! I’ll be fine!”

Remember, Tiger Woods destroyed his career as soon as he landed in Las Vegas because clearly he can’t control himself and he knew that. We all know our weaknesses.

America has become a food fun house of sugary, salty and fatty delights.

The ultimate question is: Do you feel happier when you eat this junk?

When we eat junk, the feelings we get are very momentary. We can create one more moment of good feeling but it never lasts, of course. In fact, the moment we’re done eating the junk the good feelings fade.

It’s very fleeting.

And this right here is the classic description of the body’s reward system. The good feeling we get is very short lived. It’s what makes the behavior reinforcing. Because it doesn’t last, we want to do it again!

We have all been conditioned by food and the cues that remind us of that food. It focuses our attention, promotes anticipation and builds desire.

Large companies have done an incredible job designing foods that capture our attention. They absolutely know that sugar, salt and fat sell!

For 1000’s of years human body weight stayed very stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work.

Then in 1980 something changed. Our population was getting bigger.

In 1960, when weight was still relatively stable in America, women ages 20 – 29 averaged about 128 pounds. By 2000 – the average weight of women in that age group had reached 157!

A similar trend was apparent in 40 – 49 year olds. In 1960 the average was 142. In 2000 the average was 169!

We were entering our adult years at a significantly higher weight, reflecting the gains that had taken place during childhood and adolescence. And from age 20 – 40 many of us kept gaining. Rather than a few pounds, the average adult man was gaining more than a dozen pounds in those years.

While on average everyone was getting heavier, the heaviest people in the population were gaining disproportionately more weight than others.

What happened?

Certainly food has become more readily available in the 1970’s and 1980’s. We have larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants, more local food places and a culture that promotes out-of-home eating.

But what’s been driving us to overeat?

This is because eating certain foods (those that contain lots of sugar, salt and fat) makes us want to eat more of them, whether we’re hungry or not.

The more sugar, salt and fat we eat – the more sugar, salt and fat we’re going to want to eat!

It’s no longer about hunger!

It’s about ‘rewarding’ our body. The more we eat crap that contains that stuff – the more we’re continuing to ‘reward’ the body and the more our body is going to crave that ‘reward’.

Keep that in mind. Your perpetuating the problem. Kind of like giving money to a homeless person. 9 times out of 10 they’re going to use it to buy alcohol.

Just like they need to be rehabilitated so do we. Like anything – the best way to start is to start small.

With your very next craving. Don’t give in to it. Don’t listen to it. Don’t believe it.

Let your mind play tricks on you. Let your mind obsess over a certain piece of food. Laugh at it.

But don’t give in.

Try brushing your teeth, eating fruit, drinking water, chewing gum or consuming yourself with a job or a hobby or a project!

One fight at a time you can break the cue, urge, craving, habit cycle that’s oh so vicious.