Craving is a natural reaction to things we desire, and we generally react in two ways when we crave something:

<ol><li>Resisting the pull: We take the uncomfortable option to resist the urge and kill our craving.</li><li>Indulge: We give in to the craving, which has several costs: Money, Regret, Shame, and Indigestion, to name a few.</li></ol><ol>
</ol>

Cravings and Indulgence

Self Improvement

The usual reaction of resisting or relenting to cravings can be replaced by awareness about the craving and approaching it with curiosity. 
Observe the body's reaction and the mind's tingle towards the thing that is craved and see if it lasts long if just left to itself. This diverts the mind's attention by engaging it in a curious self-analysis and makes us aware of the craving, helping us make adjustments in our routine, as we get to know the cycle of these sensory events.

Responding To Craving

<div>
<img src="https://www.raptitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/gianluca-gerardi-h99d5WiFqrc-unsplash.jpg">When I walk past the mural painted on the side of my local FoodFare, I often experience a very specific and compelling mental image: the silky underside of a Ritter Sport dark-chocolate-with-whole-hazelnuts bar.
I've spent a lot of time admiring this particular surface. It's about three inches square, smooth except for the hemispherical bulges where the hazelnuts show through. The nuts are coated in layer of chocolate so thin it's sometimes translucent. The top of the bar is less interesting: a standard grid of break-apart squares with a logo on each one. The much more charismatic bottom side is what speaks to me, and the manufacturers evidently understand this, seeing as they <a href="https://www.ritter-sport.de/en/products/detail/Dark-Whole-Hazelnuts">print it on the label.</a>
This store offers thousands of items, but I associate it most strongly with this one chocolate bar, in part because it's my standard "treat myself" item, and also because there's a needlessly large display of them right beside what is often the only open checkout. This makes it almost impossible to buy anything without having to decide whether this is one of the times I will purchase and eat this 560-calorie ingot of fat and sugar.
Now, apparently, I can't even glimpse the exterior of the building where this favorite treat lives without its hazelnutty image leaping right into my brain. Like all mental images, it appears larger and nearer than anything my eyes are taking in-the street, the mural, the towering Westminster United church. It's nearer even than my eyelids, so there's no looking away.
This involuntary pondering of confectionary possibilities must have evolved at some point. Some hominid, living somewhere in prehistory, was the first individual to be able to somehow see- in his mind!-glistening white grubs and stout mushrooms before he even overturned the log. This strange mental trait would have strengthened his survival chances, but he also would have been perturbed during walks through the forest in a way his peers could never know.
Four hundred thousand years later, his distant descendant finds himself unable to pass the painted brick exterior of a grocery store without experiencing a vivid, magnetic force arising from within his own mind, urging him to seek and devour a nearby hazelnut-encrusted treat, even though he knows it will not aid his evolutionary fitness one bit.
We don't choose to crave things. Cravings grip the mind without our consent, forcing us to choose between two uncomfortable responses: resist the pull, or indulge it. Indulging is rewarding but has costs-money, regret, shame, indigestion. But resisting is difficult, and even when you succeed, you feel let down in a different way, like realizing it's Tuesday after believing for a moment that it was Friday.
The classical response to craving is to be tough and rational. When the mind is gripped by visions of between-meal muffins, or urges to check Instagram while you're studying, you must gather your willpower and tell yourself no.
I've been exploring a third possible response, which isn't new but is being <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3434285/">newly studied</a> as a better way of overcoming cravings. Instead of resisting or relenting, you can get curious about the experience of craving itself. 
This strange, involuntary experience that's prodding you to eat, drink, or bite your nails-what is it? What does it feel like in the body, and look like in the mind? How long do these phenomena last, if you neither resist nor indulge them?
The idea is to observe the sensory experience of your craving with the spirit of a biologist studying a mysterious, elusive animal. This does at least two helpful things.
Firstly, it gives the mind something engaging to do while the craving occurs. If you're intently observing the craving, your attention isn't available to become entangled in the should-I-shouldn't-I rhetoric. You can't be rationalizing or self-scolding while you're investigating the physical and mental sensations that make up the craving.
Secondly, the more familiar you are with the life cycle of cravings, the less trapped you feel by them. You begin to see that cravings aren't impasses that demand a hard choice, they're sensory events that arise and pass.
<a href="https://amzn.to/2usdNc3">Judson Brewer</a>, a doctor and researcher who uses this method clinically, encourages people to continue mindfully studying their experience even as they indulge in the chocolate, cigarette, or impulse purchase. When patients try this, they often report a surprising discovery: the experience of indulging isn't especially pleasant. When you pay close attention, the chocolate is too sugary to enjoy, or the cigarette actually tastes bad, and uncomfortable feelings often accompany any pleasure. 
This suggests that what truly compels us in these moments is the desire to get rid of the craving. We want to return to a mental state unperturbed by strong urges, and we know indulging will do that. But maybe there's a much less costly path to that same place.
***
Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@foodography">Gianluca Gerardi</a> </div>

When I walk past the mural painted on the side of my local FoodFare, I often experience a very specific and compelling mental image: the silky underside of a Ritter Sport dark-chocolate-with-whole-hazelnuts bar. I've spent a lot of time admiring [...]

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