#8 How do I handle urges?

An urge is defined as a powerful impulse, and in our context, we’re typically talking about the impulse to eat food. I struggled when writing this post to decide if I wanted to use the word “urge” or “craving.” Craving is typically used to describe the desire for a very particular food and does not convey the immediacy and “urge-ency” of the other word. (If you prefer the word craving, go ahead and replace “urge” with “craving” as you read.) Urge can be a verb, as in “She urged me to vote for her favorite candidate.” I feel this resonates with the feeling some of us have that there is another voice in our head talking to us forcefully, leading us to an action that another part of us does not wish to take. We feel “overpowered.” If we act on the urge, it’s usually called “impulsive” behavior.

First of all, you should be relieved to hear that urges are completely normal. There is nothing wrong with you! You should also know that an urge is simply a thought/feeling. As with so many things about eating, that is both the good news and the bad news! It means that you are completely in control of what you choose to do with the thought, whether to act on it or not. It’s all happening inside of you. The food doesn’t leap out of the cupboard and grab you by the collar and force itself down your throat, although the power of the urge can sometimes make it feel like that’s exactly what’s happening! (Similarly, your partner/friend/child cannot “make” you eat something when they offer it to you.) Your action is fully under your control. But what you tell yourself, inside your own head, will be the thing that makes the difference. Easy to say, hard to do. At least initially.

The urge is typically coming from what I call the “survival brain,” that part of our mind that is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. (For more on this, see blog post #7 in the series.) This explains the sense that there are two “parts” of your mind, two competing desires. One desire is to lose weight and honor your long-range desires for better eating habits. The other simply seeks short-term gratification. It can feel very powerful. But the urge cannot hurt you.

What follows is a 6-step, tried-and-true method for actually moving from feeling controlled by the urge to being the one in control of your actions. By the way, I’m going to talk about food urges in this post, but the technique that follows could equally be used to address urges for alcohol, for marijuana, for procrastination, for spending more time on social media that you’d like, for workaholism, for gaming, etc.

Step 1 Observe, don’t change

First, you are going to observe yourself going through the urge cycle and then eating the food. Just notice. Adopt a “neutral” attitude about what you will see. This means don’t judge yourself and don’t try to stop it. Try not to change anything

Pretend you’re a scientist in a white lab coat and start gathering data. Ask yourself, what food do I crave? When does the feeling come on? Where am I when it happens? Was there a specific cue in the environment, like an ad or a favorite TV character eating that food? (For example, since I stopped drinking alcohol, I do feel slightly “triggered” when I see people drinking wine out of beautiful glasses on a Netflix show. I’m able to just notice it, not act, and move on. It was more difficult at the beginning and keeps getting easier.) Did you drive past a restaurant or store that sells this food? Or is it a daily occurrence that depends mostly on the time of day, such as walking through the door after work? These are all circumstances on the outside.

What about “inside,” that is, your feelings? Does the urge come from feelings about an event that just happened, or maybe happened earlier that day? A troubling interaction with a colleague? Your performance on a task that you didn’t feel good about? Or did something really wonderful happen and you feel like celebrating? Notice all of your thoughts and feelings and see what might have come before (or what’s coming tomorrow that you may be worried about). Is the urge a pleasant thing? Is it uncomfortable? What feelings arise as you obtain the food?

Don’t be surprised or discouraged if you are unable to locate the thought or feeling that “causes” the urge. It’s not always to be found in your immediate experience. The urge can, over time, turn into a sort of “habit” while the cause is long-buried. Sometimes these patterns are ingrained from our earliest childhood. Think about it: we began eating as soon as we left the womb! Before we had language. Even if you can’t “remember” or discover the cause, you can still work with your thoughts and feelings to gain the upper hand over your actions. Sometimes the underlying cause can only emerge if we deny acting on the urge over a period of time. At this stage it’s important not to worry. The best strategy is to proceed with love and compassion for yourself.

Back to our timeline of “observe, don’t change.” Next, you’ll eat the food that you are craving. How does it taste? What happens as you eat it? Do you eat slowly, quickly? Do you eat more than you originally intended? Is it as good as you remembered? Do you truly enjoy it or are you distracted by guilt or self-judgment?

Then, how do you feel after you eat it? What are the thoughts going on in your mind immediately after you eat it? An hour or two later? Do you feel satisfied? Are you craving more? Are you mad at yourself, filled with regret or instead do you feel like you did something really nice for yourself? Remember, you are just noticing.

Step 2 Decide and Visualize

I assume that if you are still reading, it is because you want to stop acting on your urge. So now, you are going to make that decision, consciously. If you have multiple urges, pick one to work on. You might want to pick the one that seems “easiest” to tackle, for whatever reason. Or the one that feels “most important,” for whatever reason. But be selective. And try not to be “all or nothing” in your thinking. Don’t say “I’m giving up chocolate forever” or “I want to stop snacking through the day” or something way too ambitious. Whatever you learn from this first experiment can be applied later to other ones, so don’t worry. Most failure comes from tackling too much at once, so start small. Set yourself up for success. (But don’t be deterred by failure, either. Most often we need lots of failures before we succeed.)

Next, you are going to reinforce your decision— “My decision is not to act on the urge”—by “rehearsing” it in your mind, also known as a visualization. This won’t take much time and could yield big results. Most elite athletes use this technique. You can do this as part of your meditation practice, if you have one, or right after you turn out the lights to go to sleep. Or just anytime you have a free minute.

Close your eyes and imagine yourself having the urge. Think about the circumstances, the thoughts, the feelings. Notice that you have expectations around how “easy” or “hard” it will be to resist the food. Then try to be open to a different outcome of those expectations: it might turn out to be easier than you thought, or it may be harder than you thought.

And then “make a movie” in your head. See yourself not acting on the urge. What do you do instead? What do you “say” to yourself? Let the movie play out to the end. What happens? How do you feel about not consuming the food? How do you feel about yourself at the end when “the credits roll”?

Step 3 Acknowledge and Allow

Back to the timeline. "I'm feeling the urge now.” Here it is. This is what you’ve rehearsed. This is the crux of the technique.

You’ve been here before, but the difference now is that you have made a decision in advance that you are not going to act on the urge. You are going to just watch your feelings go up, down, around, wherever they want to go.

Instead of acting on the urge, replace the anxiety you might feel with the following image: picture yourself in a swimming pool and you have a large, inflated beach ball. The beach ball is the urge. If you hold the ball down under the water, using your arm muscles, it takes quite a bit of force, right? Eventually you will get tired and let go. What happens? The ball shoots up high in the air and then falls back to the surface of the water. The more we try to repress/suppress the urge, the stronger it becomes. Instead, just enjoy your time in the pool and let the beach ball float there on the water. Let the feelings be. You will notice that the desire for the food comes and goes, other thoughts come in, you get distracted. You are not using “will power” but rather lovingly, gently observing your thoughts and the feelings in your body, accepting everything, not trying to change or force anything. How long is it lasting? Where in your body do you experience the urge? There are no wrong answers. You are waiting it out.

Step 4 Move, “Surf”, Speak

If you wish, do something physical while you're watching the feelings (or do the journaling exercise, see Step 6, below). You could just stand up and change rooms (good idea to go away from the pantry and refrigerator). Do one short yoga pose. Go outside and take a few deep breaths or walk around the block. It's ok to distract yourself with reading a book or working on a puzzle or doing art or watering a plant, but be alert to the possibility that your brain may be trying to “trick” you into looking the other way and leading your hand into the chocolate. If the urge is actually growing in strength, you might want to talk back to it, aloud, saying, “Hey, urge. You can't make me do it. I'm in control here. I'm acting in a loving way right now. I’m choosing to ignore you.”

You may feel a sort of anxiety that builds and almost a feeling of “inevitability” that you are going to eat, to cave in to the urge. This is false. It is NOT inevitable. The future is not yet determined but is in your own hands.

Please know that the urge cannot hurt you. Most people are unaware of the thought, but deep below the surface of our minds we may believe that the urge must be obeyed or something terrible will happen. Something much worse than us eating a chocolate bar. It's irrational but deeply human to feel that this situation presents a “threat” to our very survival. It is a thought error being performed by our brain whose job it is to protect us at all times.

Eventually, the urge will go away.

Step 5A If you did not give in to the urge

Congratulations! You made it through the urge without acting on it. Enjoy this moment, know that you were stronger than the survival brain that is driving you to eat. And move on to the next part of your day or evening. Smile inside to yourself knowing that the more times you do not give in to the urge, the easier it will be to resist it the next time (this is a scientific fact). But also know that if you do “mess up” another time, it does not mean anything about your character, except that you are in a learning process. And know that urges are normal and never go away 100% over your lifetime. But we get better and better at dealing with them and they become “no big deal.”

Step 5B If you did give in to the urge

Congratulations! What? If you gave in to the urge this time, do not define this as a "failure" but an opportunity to learn for the next time. Don’t make it “mean” something negative about you. No one EVER has 100% success immediately. (Is that ever possible with any skill that we attempt? No.) If you don't mess up sometimes, you can't prepare yourself for the more challenging situations that might present themselves. It's a practice, like meditation, learning how to play tennis, play the piano, or anything else that's worth learning. And again, some people have urges for much of their lives. You will have lots of practice, and if you keep working with this process, you will prevail where most people do not. Eventually you will think: “Oh, there it is again. No big deal.”

Step 6 Highly recommended: Journal

Because this experience of urge can be so intense, so internal, it helps to put your thoughts and feelings into words, on paper, where you can cultivate a sense of distance or control, in the positive sense. It also allows you to develop love and compassion for yourself, this person who is trying so hard to accomplish something.

There are three possible points in the cycle where you might want to do some writing. Each one yields different rewards. You can write during one or all of these.

A) Step 2, when you are deciding to tackle the urge

Possible questions to ask yourself include: Why do I want to tackle this urge? Where do I want to be in a month? Six months? How does acting on the urge make me feel about myself? What other ways do I prefer to feel? Do I feel like I “should” do this work, but don’t really “want to”? How do these thoughts serve me? Are there other thoughts I could be thinking that could serve me better?

B) Step 4, when you are “waiting out” the urge

One of the activities you can choose to do while “surfing” the urge is to journal. Write about any of the questions below or just capture your stream of consciousness, what you’re thinking. Keep the pen moving. Don’t think too hard, just write. Start with your body. How do you feel in your body? Where is the urge happening? What can you do for that part of you, something that would feel soothing or loving? Speak gently to yourself. If judgments come up, try rephrasing them into compassionate things you would say to a friend if they were in this situation. Observe how the feelings move and change. Be honest and curious. Record what’s happening if that feels right. Or cry, wail, write down heavy emotions, if that’s what’s coming forth.

C) After Step 5, the next day

Write with a little more distance from the experience. What was the experience like? What surprised you? What was easier or harder than you expected? If this is not your first attempt, how did it compare to an earlier experience of trying to wait out the urge? What worked? What didn’t work? What would you do differently next time? Let your creativity emerge.

That’s it! I hope these suggestions are helpful.

Let’s talk. I can help!

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