Counting Craving Thoughts
awareness
Next time you have a craving, pop into the nearest restaurant and order a cup of tea, but keep the menu. Bring a piece of paper and a pen with you. Look around, smell, look at the pictures in the menu, and watch your mind. Notice the craving thoughts, the food-related thoughts of desire, and each time you notice a craving thought, note it by making a dot on a piece of paper. Spend at least five minutes watching your mind like this while making dots on the paper, one after another. As you do this, you might compare your mind to a stream or a river and yourself to a dispassionate observer who is sitting on the bank of this river, watching the craving thoughts pass down the stream, staying put where you are, without getting carried away. As you watch these cravings come and leave, take note of your mindful presence in this moment: here you are, just noticing the craving thoughts, not going anywhere, staying in the moment, not fleeing, remaining fearless. Finish the exercise by counting the craving thoughts. Ponder the result: you have controlled all these craving thoughts by not controlling them, just by being nonreactively aware enough of them to allow them to pass. Congratulations! Practice this at home (staring at a food you like). Should you satisfy your cravings after you have mindfully managed them? That’s really for you to decide.


It’s Just a Craving, for Crying Out Loud!
awareness
If you feel that these mindfulness exercises are a bit too esoteric, here’s a chance to get real. It’s time to practice mindfulness bravado! Set yourself up to have a craving (I am sure you know how). As soon as you have a craving, first put on your calm mindfulness cap: notice the food; don’t identify with it. Think, “This is just a craving. I am not a craving. This craving is just a part of me, a fleeting, transient, ephemeral, insignificant part of me, not even worth my attention.” Then add a touch of mindfulness bravado: do not just notice, but notice with the kind of scorn that does justice to the insignificance of this mental event. After all, it’s just another craving, one of thousands. And, indeed, where’s the crisis? Where’s the fire? You’ve been through this before; it’s just the same old banal stimulus-response connection in your brain. You saw something, it triggered you to have a craving, and so here you are, having a craving thought. Feel the scoff, throw in some attitude: “A craving—whoop-de-do! So what if it lasts! Have I ever had a craving that didn’t go away? Of course not! This too shall pass. Craving, my ass!”


Craving-Control Chair
habit change
Habits (healthy or unhealthy) thrive on cues. To develop a habit of craving- control, I’d like for you to begin to work on creating a craving-control routine. Begin by choosing a location for craving-control in your home. This will be particularly useful for after-work or late-night cravings. More specifically, identify a particular chair in your home, a chair you will use for craving-control. That’s really all there is to it. By designating a specific location for controlling cravings while at home, you are creating an environment of familiarity, an environment that will, with time, become associated with craving-control success. Having a place of this kind can help you build a tradition of confidence. With time, the craving-control chair will become a useful anchor to ground and center your craving-ridden mind. And, of course, avoid eating in the craving-control chair at all costs. Tip: for a long-term application of this sitting skill, I invite you to use the lotus or semi-lotus position as your craving-control chair. After all, when it comes to mindfulness, it’s not about what you sit on or where you sit; it’s that you sit. Let alone that the lotus chair is portable enough for all your life’s moves.


Craving-Control Success Record
habit change
Another step toward developing a habit of craving-control is to monitor your success. Get a pocket-sized note- book. Create a table of three columns. Label the first column “Date/Time” and the second column “Craving Intensity (0 to 10).” The third column is for writing down which particular craving-control strategy or combination thereof you used to control a given craving. You can use the first letters of the words “self- talk,” “distraction,” “relaxation,” and “mindfulness” (such as “M+R” for a mindfulness/ relaxation combination). Such a record will help you develop a sense of mastery and debunk the idea that you can’t resist a craving. You will know through personal experience that you have repeatedly and reliably managed cravings of varying intensity. What constitutes a craving-control success? It is making a craving go away completely, even if only for a moment. Take pride in your success. Whether or not you eat after you have killed the craving is irrelevant. This is a diary of craving-control success, not a food log. Aim for a hundred craving kills. Periodically, review the mounting evidence of your craving-control prowess.

Excerpt from Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time by Pavel G. Somov