The 30-Second Trick That Might Stop Your Food Cravings

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If you find it impossible to resist the 3 p.m. chocolate craving that hits you every day, you’ll be happy to know that you might be able to quash it — in just 30 seconds.

Two new studies presented this week at The Obesity Society Annual Meeting in Boston delved into ways to trick the brain into dismissing those junk food pangs.

Because as much as you may try to rely on willpower or mindfulness to fight the munchies, sometimes there’s nothing like a quick fix to hold you over until dinnertime (or dessert). 

Walking around the block, popping a piece of gum into your mouth, chugging a glass of H20. You’ve heard about these fixes, and now we’ve got another to add to your arsenal. In one recent study, researchers asked a group of obese patients to try three 30-second intervention tactics to reduce cravings: Tapping their forehead, tapping their toe on the floor, or staring at a blank wall.

The office snack stash can be brutally tempting — and you have to stare it down five days a week.

Researchers cued cravings by asking participants to imagine eating, smelling and tasting certain foods (try it: you can practically taste the cupcake you’re envisioning, right?). Before and after the intervention, the study participants were asked to rate the intensity of their cravings on a scale of zero (low) to 100 (high). While each trick successfully reduced participants’ longings, the most effective was forehead tapping (foot tapping ranked second). 

“[These interventions] were dynamic, that is, they included movement, which engages more regions of the brain than staring at a blank wall,” says study author Richard Weil, director of the New York Obesity Research Center Weight Loss Program at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City. “Engaging the motor cortex to create movement makes the task more complicated and so it requires more work in the brain, and thus, more distraction.”

Not down for 30 seconds worth of banging out a beat on your forehead? Weil says previous research has indicated that tapping for just 10 seconds might help to some degree, too. 

Thumping your foot: Pretty easy. Drumming your forehead: A little weird. But what if we told you there was a way to subdue hankerings in one minute — just by thinking?

Another study this week found that sometimes the best way to beat cravings is by tweaking your mindset. Researchers from Brown University used MRI scans to examine the brain activity of obese or overweight study participants as they looked at pictures of drool-worthy foods like pizza, French fries and ice cream. The researchers then tested a few different strategies, encouraging participants to focus on them for about a minute at a time. In a series of tests, they told them to:

Get distracted by thinking about something other than food.Accept and allow their thoughts as something they didn’t need to act on.Focus on the negative long-term consequences of eating those goodies.Think about the immediate rewards of indulging.

Unsurprisingly, thinking about how amazing a sundae would taste did not deter subjects from wanting to dig in. But the other cognitive strategies did diminish participants’ desire for disco fries and other unhealthy foods — particularly when they considered how they’d pay for it later if they gave in.

“This strategy evoked increased responses in regions of the brain involved in inhibitory control, which may suggest a mechanism through which thinking about long-term negative outcomes could serve to reduce cravings,” says study author Kathryn Demos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Miriam Hospital at Brown University.

While each of these tactics got good reviews in a lab setting, the jury’s still out as to whether they work in real life. Because let’s be real: The office snack stash can be brutally tempting — and you have to stare it down five days a week.

“From this study we don’t know if the effects can be sustained over longer periods of time, but our future studies will test this, and try to get a sense of how this strategy could be used in conjunction with weight loss efforts in everyday life,” Demos says.

Plus, it’s worth noting that each of these studies was conducted on overweight or obese participants. If you’re at a healthy weight, giving into cravings now and then is totally OK. 

“It is a good idea to have some flexibility when it comes to cravings for certain foods,” says Chris Ochner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. ”Always denying food cravings usually leads to feeling as if the person is in dietary jail and, eventually, everyone wants out.”

Thinking about the caloric price you’ll pay for eating an ice cream cone, or committing to tapping away your taste for pizza probably isn’t necessary unless you’re looking to make a serious change. 

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7 Ways to Stop Unhealthy Food Cravings

How often are you overcome with the desire to devour a chocolate bar or cheeseburger? Even the most nutrition-conscious people have to learn how to cope with cravings, sometimes for not-so-nutritious foods. You might think that a longing for these unhealthy treats results from emotions, and that could be true — but not necessarily. “Cravings are usually stimulated by emotional cues, but then fueled by physiological ones as we imagine what it would be like to eat the food we want to have,” says Brian Wansink, Ph.D., professor at Cornell University and author of Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life. So to avoid mindless munching, you’ve got to determine the causes of your cravings and be set up with strategies to subdue them. Read on for tips to help you do just that.

It might seem simple, but people often neglect to determine their level of hunger before they start noshing. “Take a three-minute time-out and ask yourself, ‘What do I want? How am I feeling?’” advises Caroline Cederquist, M.D., a Naples, Florida–based physician who specializes in weight management. “Identifying that there may be no actual hunger is the first step in not giving in to every craving.” Keep in mind, though, that you very well could be starving and need to eat a full meal, says Wansink; if that’s the case, try consuming a healthy dish and then reassessing your desire.

“All cravings are important because they give you clues to what you’re feeling but also what’s happening in your body biochemically and metabolically,” says Cederquist. Some are a sign that your body needs more of certain nutrients. For instance, a strong taste for red meat could be a hint that you’re low on iron.

A blood test can measure whether you need to load up on any vitamins or minerals in particular. These sort of cravings that suggest a nutrient deficiency generally only occur in cases of extreme deprivation or pregnancy, though, notes Cederquist.

RELATED: 5 Healthier Ways to Detox (That Aren’t Juice Cleanses)

Your want for certain types of fare could also be a warning sign that you have a health issue worth addressing. If you’re constantly reaching for sweets and starchy foods, for example, it might mean that your body isn’t metabolizing carbohydrates normally, says Cederquist. That means your body isn’t able to move glucose into your cells for energy, so you end up feeling deprived and wanting to eat more carbs.

“This can occur even after someone has eaten a full meal,” she says. “It makes people think their cravings must be emotional, but it’s not necessarily the case.”

If you feel that might be the culprit behind your cravings, see a medical professional.

Once a craving comes on, says Wansink, “We tend to keep imagining what it would be like to eat the food we have in mind — the texture, crunch, smoothness, richness, and so forth. Doing that makes the craving more extreme.” Therefore, distracting yourself from the thought can be enough to make you forget about it. He advises chewing sugar-free gum, as simply having something in your mouth will eliminate your ability to imagine having food instead.

RELATED: Does Intermittent Fasting Really Work?

Before you start nibbling on whatever your mind wants, take a few minutes to drink a glass of water or walk around the block. These two steps help, says Cederquist, because they separate you from the craving. “That separation gives you the time and space to reflect upon the healthy diet you’re trying to maintain and how eating this food might take you off-course from that plan,” she says.

Another option is to sip something warm, like a cup of herbal tea. Drinking a hot beverage takes time, is filling, and stimulates the vagus nerve — which helps manage digestion and can decrease cravings, especially for sugary foods, says Cederquist.

If you’ve assessed your hunger, waited and can’t kick the craving, it’s time to give in — but in small doses. “Try eating only one-fourth of the portion size you really want, then put the rest away and distract yourself for 15 minutes,” suggests Wansink. “See how you feel after that time has passed. Chances are, you’ll be equally satisfied as if you had eaten the whole thing.”

RELATED: 7 Weight Loss Tips When the Scale Won’t Budge

One of the questions you should ask yourself when you first detect a craving is what you already ate today that could be triggering it. For example, eating candy or desserts can spur the craving for more sweetness, especially when eaten on an empty stomach, says Cederquist. To sidestep that kind of reaction in the future, she recommends including protein and fiber in every meal and snack; doing so can limit subsequent cravings by decreasing the blood sugar response.

If you follow these tips and still feel compelled to devour certain foods, Cederquist recommends consulting your doctor; he or she can test your levels of glucose, insulin, glycohemoglobin, triglycerides, and HDL — which can all be helpful to identify conditions such as metabolic dysfunction. Making a diagnosis like that can be your first step in figuring out a meal plan that can negate those nagging cravings and keep your weight in check.

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