MMS_UnmaskedtheCravings_Audio
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Dr. Julia Bowlin: [00:00:00] Craving isn't the enemy. It's a compass. It's pointing us back to unmet needs, unspoken truths, and forgotten parts of ourselves.
Welcome back to the Mindset Medicine Show. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, physician author, founder of Personal Awareness Medicine. You're listening to this episode on Unmask the Cravings and Why Pretending with Food keeps us powerless. We're peeling back another layer of illusion. This is the one that hides behind the refrigerator door because let's be real, we've all done that.
We say we're fine, but our hand is halfway into a bag of chips. Before the words even hit the air, we promise ourselves just one bite, and then suddenly the wrapper looks like a crime scene. For me, it started when I was really young. I wasn't sneaking vodka from the cabinet. I was mainlining sugar smarties, bottle caps, [00:01:00] chewy, gooey, gummy bears.
I loved them so much that they absolutely ruined my teeth, that sugar high. It was my first drug of choice. It dolled the ache of loneliness, perfectionism, and the pressure that I didn't have words for yet. Food was just never just food. It was comfort, control, connection, all wrapped up in a crinkly little foil.
And the truth is, the world trains us to perform the same dance again and again and again. We choose to use food or coffee or wine or kale smoothies as masks. We wear those masks so convincingly. That we start believing them ourselves. This episode isn't about judgment or shame or blame. It's about seeing truth beneath the mask, the stories, the emotions, the unmet needs that drive our cravings and learning how to meet them differently to make it a better way.
So let's take off the mask and face [00:02:00] what's really been feeding us. Let's talk about the psychology of pretending. Here's the thing about masks. They're not always bad. They start out as protection. It's a way to keep us safe, to blend in, to make sure that we are acceptable in a world that's allergic to authenticity.
When we were kids, we learned really fast that some parts of us might be well, too much, too loud, too sensitive, too emotional, too real, and in my case, too expressive. I was told that my facial expressions were too expressive. Well, there you go. So we learned to smile when we're crumbling and say, I'm fine.
When we're furious, reach for something, anything that will help us keep the performance going. Food just happens to be one of the easiest props on the stage. You can binge it, you can restrict it, you can praise it, you can hide it, and no one questions your motives because it's perfectly socially [00:03:00] sanctioned and it's a mass that we all just kind of agree that we can do.
You can skip dinner and people call it discipline. You can devour a brownie tray. People just call it stress. We have normalized disconnection as coping, but this pretending doesn't stop at the table. It shows up at work. When we say, no problem, I've got it all. While we are silently screaming inside. It shows up in relationships when we swallow our truth just to keep the peace.
I'm guilty of that one many times. It even shows up spiritually pretending to be zen and keen and calm when we are internally spiraling, hoping that the yoga mat can hold what therapy really should be handling. Here's the truth that stings a little bit. Every mask we wear has a cost. We trade authenticity for approval.
We trade truth for temporary comfort. [00:04:00] We trade presence. For performance and then we wonder why we're so freaking exhausted and underneath it all. The body always knows that knot in your stomach, the one that shows up when you say yes, but you really mean no. That's your body whispering. This isn't right.
That late night cravings for chips or wine or sugar, that's the body trying to get your attention, saying, I'm starving for something deeper. We have been conditioned to feed our feelings instead of feel them to numb the noise instead of naming it. But here's the power pivot. The mask served you once.
This is important. It served us, it kept us safe, gave us an outlet, but it might not be serving us now. It helps to keep us safe when honesty feels a little dangerous. Now it might be keeping us disconnected from our truth, [00:05:00] and that's something that we really can set free. So before I move into the hypnotherapy piece, I want you to take a moment, just right here, right now, take a second and just notice what masks tend to show up for you the most.
Is it the I've got it together Mask? Is it the I don't need help mask. Or maybe it's the, I'm totally fine. I just really, really love a big pizza mask. No judgment here. Just awareness. Because awareness is the first crack in this costume, and light always finds the cracks. Before I move on, I do think that a clarification needs to happen when food becomes a signal.
There is a spectrum of eating disorders and behaviors that I can't ignore without going to this a little deeper. So before I go deeper into the next content, I really wanna slow this down and draw on an important distinction. This is one that [00:06:00] gets blurred far too often in our culture, and it's the culture of diet dogma and quick fixes.
But here's the thing, there's a spectrum of how humans relate to food. This is the psychology of food, and an understanding of that spectrum could really help us step out of shame and into awareness. At one end, we have functional eating. That's when food serves its purpose. It's nourishment, it's connection.
It's sometimes even comfort. You might reach for soup when you're sick or a cookie after a long day, not because you've lost control, though. But just because you're human, it's emotional. Yes, but it is still functional. You're functioning okay. It's the body and the brain working together to self-soothe, stabilize, and satisfy.
And here's the key, without harm. Then there's what I call dysfunctional or coping based eating. This is where food starts being [00:07:00] used more as a tool for emotional regulation than for nourishment. You're not just eating to fuel, you're eating to feel or to not feel. It's not constant, but it is patterned.
Food becomes a placeholder for unmet needs, such as safety, comfort, control, belonging. You might recognize that when you're eating mindlessly. You might be hiding something or feeling a quiet undertone of guilt afterwards. The behavior still functions. It just functions in a way that's compensating for emotional disconnection.
And then let's take it to the far end. So we already talked about functional eating and dysfunctional or coping based eating. Let's touch a little bit on clinical eating disorders. Okay. This is the far end of the other side. This is the diagnosable, the medical, and the deeply serious. I had a horrible eating disorder requiring multiple hospitalizations when I was young.
These are conditions like anorexia nervosa, bulimia [00:08:00] nervosa, binge eating disorder, and avoidant or restrictive food intake disorders. In these cases, the relationship with food becomes compulsive consuming, harmful, both psychologically, physically, or both. It's not about food anymore. It's about control, punishment, identity, and survival.
The eating behavior is no longer functional in a clinical eating disorder. It's destructive. And when that happens, professional help isn't optional. It's essential. This is when the nervous system, the hormones, the brain chemistry are all in distress and someone specialized with compassionate care is really needed.
A therapist, physicians registered dieticians trained in eating disorders are the team that helps you if you have this, restore safety both in the mind, body, and the spirit. So where does that leave most of us? Somewhere in the gray, not the diagnosable, but definitely potentially [00:09:00] disconnected. We might not fit the DSM five criteria, which is the psychiatric coatings that we as physicians use, but we feel the tug, the tug towards control, towards perfection or towards pretending, and that's where awareness work, mindset medicine, and hypnotherapy become really powerful allies.
They meet you at the edge before the pattern becomes pathology. Help you rewrite the emotional contract you've had with food. Let me give you an example. Angela lived in that gray space for years. She was high functioning, discipline, even admired. But behind that image, food was her emotional currency. It was a reward, a punishment, a regulator.
She got help after her third relapse into those old cycles, not because she was weak, but because she finally recognized that her survival system has really outlived its purpose. That's what healing is, replacing an outdated survival system with a [00:10:00] conscious connection. So if you or someone around you is realizing that the relationship with food is becoming toxic, controlling, then this might be speaking to you, not about you, okay?
But it might be speaking to you. So stay here if you're somewhere in the gray, this awareness is medicine. And in the next segment I'm gonna start talking about how those cravings. I've been trying to tell you something all along.
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Dr. Julia Bowlin: Let's take a hypnotherapy moment. I call this one the mirror of truth. It's a visualization exercise. If you are safe and you can not operating a machinery, and you can close your eyes, you can close 'em if you want, but if you don't close them, just kind of soften your gaze a little bit. Let's take a slow, deep breath in
and let your shoulders drop [00:12:00] away from your ears. Let's take another couple breaths. We're gonna breath in quickly for four seconds. Hold for four seconds and let it out through our pursed lips for eight,
hold for four, and out for eight.
In for 4, 3, 4. Hold for 4, 2, 3, 4, and out for eight with your lips.
Feel yourself softening and relaxing. And I want you to imagine that you're standing in front of a mirror, not the kind that reflects your body though. This is a mirror that reflects your truth. It is calm, it's moving, it's silver. It's alive with [00:13:00] light, its surface ripples slightly just like water. It's responding to your breath.
And as you look into the mirror, notice what you see looking back at you, not your reflection, but the energy behind it. Maybe the energy is tired. Maybe it's over-functioning. Maybe it's hiding behind perfection, performance and people pleasing. Now, imagine this mirror showing you not judgment, but understanding this is the mirror of truth, not shame, and it reveals without condemning.
As you breathe, you see a younger version of yourself. The one who's first learned that food or control or being good keeps you safe. That image of you is not wrong. That image was surviving. [00:14:00] Now, step closer and look into their eyes. They've seen a lot, and even though they've been running this program for years, they're ready to hand it back to you.
Because they're the one, the part of you
who knows the truth now, and this mirror, it whispers silently. I see you. I thank you and I release the
need to hide behind this anymore.
Pause and breathe into that release. Now let's let the reflection shift again. This time showing a version of you standing in full awareness. Not perfect, not fixed. Just honest, real, and rooted honesty. That's where the healing begins. Not by controlling, but [00:15:00] by seeing.
And when you're ready, take one more slow breath in and step away from the mirror. Knowing that truth doesn't break you, it frees you.
And gently open your eyes and come back to the present now. I'd like to discuss a little bit about the science behind that mirror experience, the neurology of emotional signal disassociation, fancy words, but the simplicity of is, it's not just a mental feel good exercise. There is neuroscience in action here.
When you visualize yourself stepping back from old patterns, you see it in your mind's eye. Your brain isn't pretending, it's actually rewiring, and here's how it works. Every craving, every compulsion, every emotional reaction begins with a signal loop between your body and your brain. [00:16:00] That signal starts in the limbic system.
I've spoke about this before. This is the emotional processing center, and it governs survival, reward, and threat perception. When you feel stress, loneliness, or fear, the limbic brain fires an alert and the body goes searching for a quick way to soothe that discomfort. That's where habits like emotional eating come in.
They're not moral failures. They're the body's attempt to restore equilibrium. This mirror of truth exercise activates your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for conscious awareness, reasoning, and long-term decision making. When you observe and imagine yourself, instead of automatically reacting, you're teaching your brain a new sequence.
Something stimulates you. You become aware of it. You pause and then you get to make a choice. You see a stimulus, you become aware of the [00:17:00] stimulus. You pause. Then you can make a new choice. That pause, even if it's two seconds, literally changes your neurochemistry. Your cortisol stops and lowers, your dopamine release slows and serotonin.
Your grounding neurotransmitter has a chance to rise. This is not woo woo. It's neuro re-patterning. Now, the dissociation part of this emotional signal stuff that we just got done doing isn't about detaching or avoiding. It's about a compassionate distance where. Who you are and what you feel is a little bit apart, it gives you, as an outside observer, you're not saying, this isn't happening.
You're saying this is happening and I can watch it without being swallowed up by it. In hypnotherapy, we call this observer consciousness. It's the bridge between the subconscious reaction and your conscious regulation. By shifting the [00:18:00] role from the reactor, instantaneously doing something to the observer, your nervous system starts to downshift out of survival mode.
Your vagus nerve activates, your heart slows, and your body registers safety. That's where real healing work really becomes possible, because safety is the soil where awarenesses take root. So every time you pause, breathe, and observe your behavior. Instead of judging it, you're training your brain to decouple emotion from your identity.
This is big. That's the essence of emotional signal disassociation. It's why practicing this is so important because it compliments psychotherapy, mindfulness, coaching work, all of that then all comes together. This decoupling and seeing yourself as an outside observer, enabling yourself to [00:19:00] be stimulated.
Stop. Be aware that you are stimulated. Take a pause and look at it as an outsider, and then you can use your prefrontal cortex to make a better decision. Again, this process strengthens that inner muscle of neutrality and allows you to respond with a choice rather than compulsion. The goal isn't to never feel cravings, stress, or emotions again, because let's face it, we're humans.
The goal is to feel them without being hijacked by these emotions. That's what emotional freedom really looks like. Awareness with agency. Almost every single one of my new coaching clients want peace in their head, peace and calm in their mind. The ability to calmly think without being triggered or feeling pressured, this process really can help with that.
So let's take just a, a reflective moment here and let's talk about the pause [00:20:00] between craving and the choice. Let's bring it down to real life, because theory only matters when it touches that plate in front of you, or it touches the pantry, or the moment that you're standing in front of a fridge at 9:37 PM So imagine this, you've had a long day.
Your inbox is still full, the dishes are stacked. The quiet of the house just feels heavy, and you open the fridge. Ah, there's some leftover lasagna there staring right back at you, even though you just ate hours ago. Your old pattern says, I deserve this. I earned this today. It was a rough day. Functional you functional.
You knows you're not really hungry, you're seeking comfort. Here's where awareness becomes the medicine though. Pause even for five seconds. Just take a breath, stare at the lasagna, and instead of judging the craving, just greet it. Meet it where it's at, and go. Ah. [00:21:00] There's that signal my body is asking for something.
Comfort, rounding, maybe even a little connection with another human being. Now, apply the mirror and disassociation work we just practiced. See yourself standing there, not as a hungry person, but as an aware observer. Watching the craving rise like a wave. You see the craving coming in. You're looking at the lasagna.
Your brain's going, yummy, yummy, yummy. It's gonna make me feel better. It's gonna be delicious. I'm gonna be happy. Don't stop it or push it away. Just notice the wave. Notice its size. Is it a small wave? Is it a tsunami? Just notice the pole and notice its urgency. And
then ask quietly, what am I really hungry for right now?
Sometimes the answer will surprise you. It might be [00:22:00] that you're tired and you just need rest. It might be that you're lonely and you need your tank filled and you need some
affection. It might be that your brain and your day was just so crazy, you just needed silence. That's usually me. I needed silence.
It might be just a moment where no one needs anything from you stepping outside of your space. Once you name that truth, you've already started to shift the pattern. You've moved from reaction to response from autopilot to authorship, and if you still choose to eat that lasagna, that's okay, but now it's a conscious act, not a coping reflux.
That's what functional awareness looks like. Real life, no guilt, just growth. So let's jump from now becoming aware of your habits and your patterns, your triggers to understanding. It's that moment, that [00:23:00] tiny pause between the cravings and the choice. It's where everything begins to change. That pause is subtle.
It's almost invisible, but it is the most powerful pivot point you have because once you can see the pattern, now you can start to understand it and understanding it is where freedom begins. So let's zoom out a little bit. Let's look at some larger patterns. The cultural scripts we're, we're always seeing the hidden payoffs, the quiet agreements we've made with ourselves.
They keep us looping through the same habits because these cravings aren't random. They are just messages written in the language of survival. So let's decode them together. Let's learn about the patterns behind cravings. When we talk about cravings, we're not just talking about food, we're talking about patterns, deeply rehearsed, culturally reinforced, emotionally familiar patterns that have been running this show for years.
Think about it. We live in a [00:24:00] culture that rewards overdoing, overworking, and overgiving, and then blames us for overindulging. We're told to treat ourselves when we're stressed, then we're scolded for every very habit that helped us survive the stress. We weren't supposed to feel something in the first place.
I'm gonna say that again. We're told to treat ourselves when we're stressed, then we're scolded for the very habits that helped us survive the stress we weren't supposed to feel in the first place. It's confusing because it's designed that way. Our entire system runs on disconnection. Disconnection from our bodies, disconnection from our emotions.
Disconnection from our enoughness. So food becomes the middleman between who we are and who we think we should be. It's quick, it's legal, it's socially acceptable. No one questions our second cup of [00:25:00] coffee or our evening glass of wine, or the 11:00 PM ice cream because they're socially acceptable. But each of those moments tells a story.
It's a story about what we've been taught. To silence for some that pattern Started early, a scraped knee, got a cookie, a heartbreak, got a pint of ice cream, a stressful day, got a drive through dinner. The message was simple. Don't feel fix it. And we learned to reach for something external before we ever learn to listen internally.
And that's the tricky part is these patterns often work. For a while, that sugar rush, that salty crunch, that temporary fullness delivers a quick hit of dopamine, and that's the brain's reward chemical. It's not weakness, it's wiring, and I've been saying that over and over again, the same neuro [00:26:00] pathways that helped us survive emotional pain as kids still fire when we are an adult and when life gets too heavy.
But here's where awareness turns into transformation. You can break a pattern even if you don't understand it. And the truth is, cravings often have payoffs. They give us a moment of escape, a sense of control, a hit of comfort, a pocket of permission to stop thriving in just a little bit. Just give me a break.
Just give me a break. So the real question isn't, why can't I stop? The real question is, what am I still getting from this? When we can see the hidden function of the behavior, we can start to replace it, not with restriction or shame, but with choice. And maybe that choice looks like calling a friend instead of reaching for food.
Maybe it's stepping outside the house and taking three deep breaths or screaming outside, or journaling [00:27:00] for five minutes before deciding what to eat. Just a pause, just a change in behavior just for a little bit. It's not about perfect behavior, it's about a conscious shifting participation in something else.
Because when you emerge with your patterns consciously, you stop being at war with them. You start partnering with your behavior to understand what all these signals are trying to teach you. The body is always telling us the truth. We just haven't been taught to listen. That gut punch, that stiff neck, that tight throat, that head tension signals.
Folks, these are just signals that something needs to be addressed, but in a different way. Your body is brilliant and it's always trying to tell you what to do. So let's start listening. All right, let's do a little integration and activation. Alright. You know me. Let's take a deep breath probably 'cause I need to breathe as much as you do.
So let's take a [00:28:00] nice deep breath. We peeled back a lot of layers today. Cravings, masks, survival loops, and now it's time to really make it real. Not perfect, not performative, just real. Here's the truth. Awareness is only half the equation. Integration action is what it turns awareness into freedom, that release that loss of tension all the time.
So let's make this personal. Think about a moment this week when cravings showed up for you. Maybe it was food, maybe it was the need to scroll to disconnect. Maybe it's retail therapy and shopping. Maybe it's trying to control something or just busyness, constant state of busyness and to-dos. That is your default.
That's when life feels too big or too quiet. We step into these behaviors. It's not always eating. Now, replay the moment, like you're watching it on screen. You're just seeing it from [00:29:00] afar. Maybe it's Sia tone or black and white. You're just watching it. Notice what happens right before the craving hit.
Before the craving to eat something or to grab your, your phone, to scroll, to go shopping or. Do, do, do, do, do. Be busy. What was happening right before that? What emotion
or thought showed up first
was boredom, loneliness, frustration, or
maybe just that vague hum of total exhaustion. You know, there's this sense of exhaustion that we've all come to normalize and we're looking for something to fix it when the truth. We just
need sleep and a break. That's your entry point. Cravings aren't
random. These cravings to do these behaviors are not random.
They're emotional messengers and they're just dressed up as hunger. So I want you to ask yourself [00:30:00] three questions. Well, these are what I call the mindset medicine three A's a's like ABC's, the three A's mindset medicine. Three A's for craving clarity. A number one, acknowledge the signal. Something in me is asking for attention right now.
Don't label it as good or bad, just see it. Okay? Notice a signal, something in the body, right? A number two is allow the emotion, give the feeling a name. Are you sad? Are you overwhelmed? Are you needing rest? Are you just aching? 'cause you're overwhelmed? Emotions lose power when they're recognized. So let's stop suppressing them and acknowledge and allow the emotion.
And the last three is to align the response. So acknowledge the signal, allow the emotion, and lastly, align the response. Once you've named it, ask yourself, what do I actually need right now? What's the truth? Do I need [00:31:00] connection? Do I need quiet? Do I need to go to bed early or take a 20 minute down instead of eating a whole brownie that we know is gonna keep us from sleeping no matter what everybody says, it's got caffeine in it.
And then food before bed. Disrupt sleep. Prove it. Again, this is not about denying food, it's about reclaiming choice. Because every time you respond consciously, instead of reacting automatically. We're rewiring our brain towards peace and self-trust, which is big. Self-trust is so big, and we have to build those little tiny things.
Layer by layer, those small, steady rewires add up to something Extraordinary. Inner authority. Inner authority, where you get to choose. When I work with clients, I call this a pattern pivot. It's the moment where we realize that craving isn't the enemy. It's a compass. It's pointing [00:32:00] us back to unmet needs, unspoken truths, and forgotten parts of ourselves.
Once we stop fighting those and start listening, everything changes. So here's our activation challenge for the week. Next time you feel the urge, whether it's food control, alcohol distraction, just pause. Whisper to yourself. Ah, this is my signal, not a sentence. Then breathe, take some breaths into it.
Lowers your cortisol, oxygenates the brain. Now, let's name it for what it is. Choose awareness not autopilot. That's what functional eating and functional living is really about. It is not perfect behavior. It's powerful honesty, and that is how you unmask cravings for good. Not by resisting them, but by understanding them.
[00:33:00] If everything we talked about today feels big, good because it is big, this kind of change doesn't happen in one insight, one episode or one perfectly mindful moment in front of the fridge. This is a long-term rewiring process, and it's a process of teaching your brain, your nervous system and your heart to communicate differently after years, maybe even decades of emotional static.
And I want you to hear this from someone who's been on both sides of that struggle. I understand the pull of anxiety, the grip of perfectionism, and the false comfort that food or alcohol or unhealthy behaviors can bring. I do. I get it. Without rewiring my own patterns, without learning how to quiet my mental chaos and to listen behind the cravings, my anxiety and my relationship with food could have eaten me alive, literally.
So when I say I understand how hard this is, I really do, but I also know it's possible because the same brain that learned to [00:34:00] survive can absolutely learn to thrive. Rewiring isn't glamorous. It is daily. Micro moments of awareness, breathing instead of reacting, pausing instead of punishing yourself and choosing presence over performance, over time, these moments stitch together into peace.
They really do. So wherever you are in this journey, remember we are not broken. We're just becoming conscious, and consciousness is the ultimate form of healing. So take a slow breath in, let your shoulders drop. Feel your feet on the ground because we're safe. We're here, and we're learning a new language.
The language of our own awareness. If you want to go deeper with today's work, download the free worksheet that goes with this episode, unmask the Cravings. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to www.juliabolinmd.com and go to podcast episode on [00:35:00] Unmask the Cravings. It'll walk you through the three A process, help you track your personal cravings over time, and as always, if something you heard today stirred something deep, please reach out for professional support.
You deserve care that matches your courage. Until next time, may you be happy, be healthy, and be fulfilled.
Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about mindset medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional [00:36:00] life.
