Here’s a fun question: what’s really causing your cravings?
What makes you reach for barbecue potato chips, cookie dough ice cream, or that one specific brand of chocolate — the same one, every single time?
For some of us, a craving is just a fun little treat now and then. No big deal. But for a lot of women, cravings feel much bigger than that. They can lead to binge eating, guilt, and a running list of everything that feels wrong with how they eat. If that sounds familiar, I want to say something before we go any further: nothing is wrong with you. Your cravings are not a character flaw, and they are not proof that you lack discipline. They’re a signal. Today, we’re going to learn how to read it.
Cravings are not just about food
Here’s what most diet culture gets wrong: it treats cravings as a willpower problem. Eat less. Try harder. White-knuckle your way through the 3pm sugar urge and call it strength.
But research in psychology and neuroscience tells a very different story. Cravings come from a mix of things: your biology, your emotions, and your relationships, all interacting at once. Scientists call this a biopsychosocial model. It’s a long word for a simple idea: your body, your mind, and your social world are having one conversation, not running three separate systems. When one part is under strain, the others feel it too.
This is at the root of the Birthright Method. And exactly why I built the m.a.n.t.r.a method the way I did: one integrated system instead of a stack of separate fixes. I’ll walk you through that in a bit. First, let’s look at where cravings actually come from, because the answer might surprise you.
Hungry for company
Cravings don’t only come from hunger. Sometimes, they come from loneliness and a deep, wordless need for connection.
Researchers at MIT ran a study where participants spent ten hours in total isolation, with no phones, no conversation, and no company. Afterward, brain scans showed activity in the same region that lights up when a hungry person looks at food. The lead researcher, Rebecca Saxe, explained it plainly: people who are forced into isolation begin to crave social contact the same way a hungry person craves a meal.
Other studies back this up. Social isolation boosts activity in brain areas linked to rumination and visual imagination. This means an isolated mind often spends more time vividly picturing food. Isolation changes brain pathways that control appetite. As a result, certain foods, like sweet, salty, or high-fat ones, feel more rewarding than usual.
Put simply: loneliness can feel a lot like hunger. And when your brain registers that kind of hunger, it often reaches for the fastest, most familiar comfort available. So the next time a craving hits out of nowhere, it’s worth pausing to ask yourself an honest question: am I hungry for food, or am I hungry for connection?
Stress: the other major driver
Stress is one of the most common craving triggers there is. And loneliness is frequently part of what causes that stress to begin with, alongside work pressure, financial strain, or tension at home.
Here’s what’s happening inside your body when stress takes over. Your system releases cortisol, a hormone that raises your appetite and pulls you toward high-calorie, high-comfort foods. Your brain wants to feel calm quickly. Sugar and fat can provide that relief almost right away. But this feeling usually fades in just a few minutes.
This is exactly why the m.a.n.t.r.a method includes weekly “activation exercises”, breathwork and guided meditation. These aren’t wellness extras tacked onto a nutrition plan. They’re one of the actual tools. When you teach your nervous system a different, steadier way to find calm, the automatic pull toward stress-eating starts to loosen. Because your body no longer needs the shortcut as badly.
It’s not only emotional. Biology and habit matter too
Loneliness and stress are a significant piece of the puzzle, but they’re not the whole picture. Cravings also come from your hormones, your memories, and the quiet habits you’ve built without ever noticing.
Hormones. Ghrelin and leptin are the two hormones that regulate hunger and fullness. Ghrelin signals your body to eat, while leptin signals that you’re satisfied. When sleep, stress, or an unbalanced diet throws these hormones off, cravings tend to spike, often for the exact foods that offer quick energy.
Memories. If chocolate cake meant birthdays growing up, or popcorn meant movie night with people you loved, your brain built a lasting link between that food and that feeling. Years later, the craving can resurface even when the original occasion is nowhere in sight. This is simply how memory and reward work together, and understanding it takes the shame out of the equation.
Daily habits. Poor sleep, dehydration, or even standing in a particular room at a particular hour can trigger a craving, because your body has learned the pattern and now expects it. This is why so many of us crave something sweet right after dinner, or something salty during the late afternoon slump. It isn’t randomness. It’s conditioning.
You need to pay attention to this. now.
Cravings take up real mental space, and that’s worth taking seriously. Research shows that when people are actively craving a specific food, they perform measurably worse on memory and focus tasks. In one study, participants craving chocolate scored lower on math and memory tests than participants who weren’t craving anything at all.
That tells us something important: a craving isn’t a small background feeling you can simply ignore. It’s using up energy your mind needs for other things. Understanding where a craving comes from isn’t self-indulgent. It’s practical.
Practical ways to work with your cravings
You don’t need a rigid meal plan to change your relationship with cravings. You need a clearer understanding of what’s driving them, and a few steady practices to work with instead of against. Here’s where to start.
- Notice the trigger before you act. Before reaching for the food, pause and ask what’s really going on beneath the urge. Are you stressed? Tired? Lonely? Bored? Simply naming the feeling is often the first step toward working with it instead of numbing it.
- Limit easy access to trigger foods. This isn’t about restriction or deprivation. It’s about giving your habits less to work with. Cravings often fade on their own when a food isn’t sitting in front of you, because the habit loop never gets triggered in the first place.
- Take care of the basics. Water, sleep, and gentle movement all influence your hormones, and your hormones directly influence your cravings. These small, unglamorous shifts tend to matter far more than any single food rule.
- Swap in what actually nourishes you. Replacing heavily processed foods with whole, real foods helps your gut and brain communicate more clearly. Over time, this genuinely can shift what you crave in the first place, not just what you allow yourself to eat.
- Reconnect with people, on purpose. Since loneliness can drive cravings just as powerfully as hunger does, one of the most effective things you can do is reach out. Call a friend. Join a group. Show up somewhere in person, even briefly. This matters more than most of us realize, and it’s often the piece that gets skipped.
The whole-person approach
Cravings are not a character flaw. Which means you can’t manage them with sheer willpower. They’re a signal, pointing to stress, loneliness, a hormone shift, or an old pattern your body picked up somewhere along the way. When we only look at the food itself, we miss the real story underneath it.
This is the whole idea behind the m.a.n.t.r.a method. Most programs pick one lane and stay there. A nutritionist for your gut, a therapist for your mind, a retreat for your soul. And leave you to piece the rest together on your own. I built the m.a.n.t.r.a method differently, because your gut, your nervous system, and your emotional patterns were never separate problems to begin with. They’re one conversation, and they respond best when they’re treated that way.
Over 90 days, you’ll move through six connected phases — Map, Align, Nourish, Tend, Release, Activate — drawing on Ayurvedic nutrition, modern psychology, and Sufi healing together, not one at a time. Along the way, you’ll receive teaching audios, guided breathwork, and activation exercises that build on each other, week by week. By the end, you won’t just be holding more information about your cravings. You’ll have a genuinely different relationship with food, with stress, and with yourself.
Learn more about the m.a.n.t.r.a method and start your 90 days.
If cravings have felt like a mystery to you, or like something to feel quietly ashamed of, I’d love for you to see them differently. Starting today.
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