How Do Food Cravings Start

Last Updated On: 20 September 2025

Do you get food cravings? Has dieting helped you change it? It turns out that chronic weight issues aren’t about eating, they’re about stress, and diets won’t necessarily change what triggers food cravings in the first place.

Which means if you’re a serial dieter and haven’t got the results you expected then this is why. But I quickly want to say that it’s not your fault you’ve been going after the wrong thing, there’s a massive weight loss industry that’s weighted in it’s favour.

A biological model of understanding that I use, explains weight fluctuation, where if eating issues are something you’re dealing with then going after your stress triggers that sit underneath food cravings will serve you far better.  

Chronic eating issues

The science based model I mentioned earlier is a blueprint that turns the energy-in-energy-out model for weight loss on it’s head. This is because chronic compulsive patterns of behaviour are evidence of the body | mind | emotions doing their level best to deal with something that happened earlier in life. 

Those patterns show up for a variety of reasons, in a variety of ways through; coping skills, inherited family patterns, lifestyle habits, personal perception. 

Chronic weight issues have two distinct trigger routes to unpack. Some people have one, some people the other, and some people have both ‘running’

It’s a bit like the old steam train we have to let off steam, and overeating could well be the whistle that releases your stressors that in turn stops you from combusting. Overeating, that leads to zoning out and going into a carb coma – you know the drill – is one way of dealing with stress, but not necessarily the best way in terms of the amount of energy it robs you of in exchange. 

However, the good news it that whatever you have trundling on can be unpacked, which gets you into a very different head and heart space once you’ve got to the gubbins (technical term). 

What if diets have failed you?

You may have already gathered that weight issues are not about what we eat, and personally I floundered when I realised it.  Although I came to realise that diets didn’t work, for me, I didn’t understand why or more importantly what I could do with that.

I. Struggled. On. For. Another. Decade.

When you have weight, eating and food issues running and diets haven’t delivered for you it’s because comfort eating is a symptom and not a cause

Meanwhile stop feeling guilty and enjoy your indulgences until you feel differently because you may as well enjoy it. When you are ready my favourite tool to clear the build up of food cravings is EFT Tapping that’s well-known for changing this along with much more besides. Here’s what Kelly, a dance teacher, said about clearing hers:

“As soon as I started working with Jane, big changes started happening and I stopped constantly thinking about the next meal, and sweet things, my cravings vanished, and I’m not really sure how it happened!

The techniques seemed strange at first, but I soon got used to them especially when I started seeing the results and without really trying the weight started to fall off.

I found Jane easy to talk to, I didn’t feel judged and she was very intuitive always seeming to know what to say to bring about the necessary change.”

How does it work, well it doesn’t talk much about food that’s for sure, and Kelly’s quality of life changed exponentially afterwards, which was a joy to have been party to.

TASK

Here’s a task for today to set you on the road to thinking differently about your food patterns. Start by taking responsibility for what crops up, have a glass of water standing by, in case anything uncomfortable comes to the fore. Now take some time out to note down the following:

What time of day do you start thinking about food, i.e. planning meals, scouring the cupboards in your mind, etc?
Notice what you were thinking just before you drifted off into that
Did something or someone you’re not comfortable with come up into the room | conversation?
What was the feeling?
What or who does that feeling remind you of?
Then start looking out for it?

Let me know how you went on in the comments below, being careful not to share anything personal, but let me know if you found anything you weren’t aware of before. What difference it makes. Any questions.

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Until next time.
Jane

Lights | Camera | Action

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