Indulge. Sometimes. Don't Go Nuts

"Last week you told me to just eat the thing..." She blinked. Last time we had talked Melinda had been obsessing over the little bag of M+M's in her pantry for a week.
"Just eat the thing and get it over with." I had advised. This week as we sat at our once weekly post run yogurt fitness workshop I cautioned that "studies show giving in to cravings actually makes them stronger and more frequent." ( Among others).
So which one Was it? More confusing eat-carbs-don't-eat-carbs-only-eat-foods-that-begin-with-the-letter-R type of advice. The kind certain TV doctors indulge in all the time. Eat this don't eat that but we'll switch that around a week from now and in the end you won't know what you can safely eat and feel a little better off for just throwing up your hands and ordering a complete meal from the drive through menu. If the nutrition's bad and it makes you fat at LEAST it was a good deal.
Sigh.
So which was it? The story goes that feelings of deprivation lead to binge eating. But studies show that indulging cravings just makes the cravings more frequent. So here the theory:

Every time you do something habitual, you lay down neural pathways that you then have to alter if you want to break the pattern. This is especially hard if the habit involves something as important as food, because of the happy hormones food produces - seratonin and all its happy pals. SO if you're in the habit, say of eating dessert, or adding lots of sugar to your coffee or having yogurt with your favorite fitness guru every Tuesday night you'll start to feel deprived if you don't. Your brain will miss it. It's not just you - it's certainly not your weak will or lack of self control. It's not your inability to hold yourself accountable or your lack of self discipline. It has, I guarantee nothing to do with whether you are hard working enough or serious enough or whatever.

It is merely your brain functioning quite the way brains are supposed to function: we are as alive now as we always have been. Therefore whatever we've always done seems to be working just fine. Food related neural pathways are your brain's way of saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But
If you are overweight, clearly something IS broke and you Should fix it. It's your prefrontal cortex - your conscious humanny self (the bit of your brain that has advanced not-for-monkey thoughts) that looks in the mirror or reads the scale and realizes that culture, socialization, upbringing, TV advertising, that devil known as convenience food WHATever has got your neural pathways headed in the wrong direction.

So the question is, if abstinence causes binges and obsessive food thoughts and indulgence reinforces bad neural pathways WHAT do you do about cravings?

Indulge. But don't go nuts.

In other words: all things in moderation. So here's the magic formula:

1) Sometimes cravings are just impulses. I go into a 7-11 and literally everything is begging to be devoured. EAT everything. I feel a little like Alice in wonderland. These are things you can wait out. Give them 10 minutes. You'll probably forget what they were.
2) Resist cravings whenever you can. Maybe you can get your mind off them by doing something that really engages your brain word puzzles, a mystery novel, even scrubbing out the kitchen sink. Sometimes. That doesn't work. So rather than obsess over the thing until you end up eating 15 of them, just eat the thing. Don't beat yourself up. Just go for a walk and burn off some of the calories. Trade out tonight's steak dinner for chicken. Say no to that second glass of wine.
3) Resist cravings whenever you can, but still eat the foods you crave sometimes. Just don't eat them as a response to the craving. My worst cravings are usually for sweets and I eat sweets on a fairly regular basis, but I try not to reward every "EAT SWEETS NOW" impulse with the corresponding food. Sometimes I even try to satisfy a craving with something different - a pickle, some popcorn, a cup of coffee. It usually works, and I can successfully avoid building hard to undo goat trails through my gray matter.