Cravings: How Your Food and Fitness Habits Can Affect Your Cravings

Do you get frequent cravings?

In this video, I walk you through a couple of food and fitness factors that may cause you cravings. You may not have even thought about these things, but they can play a huge role!

I don't think that there's anything wrong with wanting to eat some sweets and treats once in a while. I'm all about moderate and mindful eating, meaning that it's absolutely fine to eat your favorite things as long as you do it mindfully most of the time. I eat chocolate almost daily!

But sometimes cravings seem to be absolutely uncontrollable: You get the urge to eat something SUPER suddenly, and it's so strong that you feel like you can't wait another minute to get that thing. This is different from hunger obviously, because hunger builds up slowly and gets stronger gradually, but cravings can hit you in the face!

How Your Eating Habits Can Cause Cravings:

You're skipping meals
You don't eat enough calories overall
You “save” your calories for later
You never let yourself to eat your favorite things!

How Your Workout Habits Can Cause Cravings:

Long distance cardio can increase cravings
Too much HIT training can cause cravings
You always choose intensity & duration over restorative movement like walking or yoga which are so necessary once in a while!!
You're simply working out too much, burning way more energy than you're taking in!

Other lifestyle factors that increase cravings:

Stress. I think we've all experienced how when something's bothering us, we want to reach for that chocolate bar. Again, nothing wrong with eating chocolate but if we feel like we cannot stop and eat to the point of discomfort, that's what we don't want to experience.
Lack of sleep. I'm the first one to admit that when my sleep is bad, I crave things more! It's harder to feel full and satisfied when sleep deprived, so I could keep eating and eating.

Watch the video above to learn more about cravings and let me know if you have questions!

Kersten Kimura