Quick Start Preparation Course (FREE)

Download our Quick Start Preparation course as our FREE gift to help you stop drinking alcohol and get the best start to your new life. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.

You mentioned eating suggestions to reduce cravings. Can you elaborate?

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 4 comments

What should you do to try and reduce your cravings?

Today, I want to talk about a question I received through email: you mentioned eating suggestions to reduce cravings in a previous video. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?

First, let’s talk about cravings a little bit.

Cravings are more psychological rather than physical.

It’s more to do with the things you’ve left out in life or the things that have gone from your life.

You quit drinking and now you’re living sort of a big hole in your life that the alcohol used to fill, and it’s those holes that cause the cravings.

We’re sort of automatic beings.

We like to go through habitual behaviours, to do these things as automatically as possible.

That’s where all our habits come from.

It’s to get through the day as efficiently as possible.

So, you do this one thing and then another thing follows, and another thing follows and you don’t have to put too much time into thinking about it.

When you take something out of your life and try and change a behaviour, you’re having to consciously bring the habit up into the surface.

You’re having to extract that behaviour out of your life and you’re leaving a big gap that used to be filled by the habit.

You’ve then got to start thinking about how to fill that gap, what you will do with the time, your mind, your consciousness.

All these things take a toll because you can no longer do it subconsciously.

Your mind doesn’t like that.

Your mind feels discomfort with that.

The basis of cravings come from that.

Now, a lot of this refilling the holes, because you have to do a lot more thinking about this, you have to feed your brain better.

And, for me, for the human mind, the one thing it runs the best on is carbohydrates.

They are the body’s fuel.

So, you need to get good, clean, healthy carbohydrates into yourself.

Try and get whole foods like brown rice, brown pasta, beans, lentils, anything like that.

Another thing about cravings is that this is not like a diet.

When you go on a diet, you’re denying yourself a certain part of your food.

You’re restricting calories or doing something which has got to continue and you don’t really get used to it.

Once you lose the weight, a lot of people start eating the same foods as they were before.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the cravings is something your body is forever going to crave.

When you’re reducing calories, your body won’t get used to that.

Your stomach might shrink a little bit.

You will get used to it to a certain degree but in the long run, you still require food and a lot of the time, your body will go back to where it was before, the default feelings inside yourself.

With alcohol, it’s different because you don’t need alcohol to survive.

You need air to survive, you need water and food.

You don’t need alcohol.

Your body will gradually, as you go over time, that craving for alcohol will dissipate.

All you’re left with then are memories of what you used to do.

Old times when you were drinking or places.

I’ve done a video about this recently.

The cravings will disappear.

It depends on how long you’re into this.

If you’re into this 4 months and still getting cravings, there’s something wrong.

You’re still thinking about the old life.

You can’t be craving the alcohol anymore, it’s something in your life you’re craving.

You have to get a grip on that.

There’s no food that is going to stop that.

It’s all in your head.

Most of the stuff is going to be from the head.

That’s where you have to deal with them.

You have ask where the cravings are coming from and what you can do about them.

Like I say, you have to get the determination from yourself and why you’re not drinking anymore. Use those as the bases for every sort of thought.

Go back to the basics.

Why do you want to quit alcohol?

Make a video about yourself and go and look at the video.

Look at it after, whenever you’re feeling strong cravings.

It’s all going to be dealt with inside your brain.

That’s it for today.

IF YOU CORRECT YOUR MIND, THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WILL FALL INTO PLACE.

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

You May Also Enjoy…

4 Comments

  1. Mick

    Hi Kevin, I didn’t make a video but did write myself a sort of list of notes, something to read daily along with daily watching your videos. Love your videos. Without them I would have not got to this stage, where I am getting the fun back. Probably not just the info but the inspiration, you have done it, you look good on it, you’re enjoying life after the booze.
    I suppose eventually the daily videos will stop. But the daily advertising and social/society brain washing will carry on. The advertising is not right and I feel strongly that alcohol should not be advertised and should be in a bottle with a health warning, just like fags. Alcohol is everywhere, celebrity jungle is a popular program in the UK, first thing most celebrities do when out the jungle is drink their free glass of champagne, (alcohol made fizzy because the monks that made it knew it tasted like the shit it is)

    Accepting there is little to nothing I can do to influence this, I have to accept the majority of society wants me to fail, so it promotes alcohol literally everywhere anytime of the day or night. Which is partly why people grave the shit months after it’s out their system.

    But I think there is a biological reason as well. This is a note I wrote to myself. I am not medically trained but do have a master’s degree in research.

    This is a note to myself and where my research points to date, I realise I haven’t triangulated all the info, some of it is written in a simple language so I can internalise it. I don’t ever want to forget it and fall for all of society marketing tricks. Marketing does work or the bastards wouldn’t spend so much time and money on it.

    My Note, may be of help to others.
    Interesting that scientist now know that dopamine does not give us pleasure. Dopamine teaches us how to get pleasure. It helps us learn the most effective way to stimulate the brains pleasure center. The alcohol artificially stimulates the brains pleasure center. The dopamine that taught us to remember where the best water was and even how to find it being used against us.

    But the Brain tries to protect and maintain homeostasis (maintain its parameters within the normal range) and protect itself from this over-stimulation. The brain turns down the pleasure center (not the dopamine???) i.e. it turns down the pleasure it receives from alcohol overtime. This is known as tolerance, not the desire to get it, this is known as craving.
    This is why people become desperate to drink more, yet receive little or no pleasure even after 2 bottles of wine. Oh they still fall over and talk shit, but no pleasure. (Frontal lobes not functioning, that s all)

    The Dynorphin (a sort of pleasure killer) the chemical the body creates to turn down the pleasure, it may be actually worse for you than the alcohol. It also stays in your system for 3 to 11 days. So everyday pleasure don’t even register because of the high levels of Dynorphin.

    Worse still over time your pleasure centers become damaged or even partly dissolved. So even after the Dynorphin has gone out of your system you feel depressed. You are not motivated by things you used to like.

    This can take months if not a year a more to repair itself (18 months, more??) It will normally improve gradually and you will feel marginally better once the Dynorphin has gone. But repairing the pleasure center will take time because you have damaged it with the repeated doses of Dynorphin.
    Warning even after the fun comes back you have hard wired part of your brain. So if you have even one drink you turn on the process just like throwing a switch. So you rapidly return to where you was. Your Brain is not going to let you get pleasure from this shit, but unless educated it’s hard not to believe society so the dopamine that your brain produces gets miss directed down a well-trodden path at a subconscious level. Craving (craving is not pleasure, alcohol cannot give you the pleasure you crave, Dynorphin will flick in by the bucket load if you try it)
    You may even find months of not drinking can be followed by a couple of pints turning into a full blown 15 pint night, throwing up and fighting the full works. (not pleasure, Dynorphin, regret and depression)

    Good news is if don’t drink and why the fuck would you (see above) you will be fine and function like a young man who never took drugs. Alcohol is a drug.
    Alcohol is a very harmful drug, why the fuck isn’t this taught in schools??

    Reply
  2. Mick

    I do hope my above comment is useful and does not come across like too much of a rant. If it does I apologize.

    Reply
  3. Paul

    Hello,

    I have not had a drink in over 3 months. It was extremely helpful that I also changed my eating habits dramatically. It seems like all those people who knew everything about “alcoholism” have ducked for cover when they found out that I am now practicing control over everything that goes into my mouth – no more commentary from any of them! Is there a source/link to all of your experiences/advice on healthful eating? What is your new way of eating like? Sounds like a whole new course/book to me!

    Paul

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Hi Paul,
      there’s not really many individual videos about eating, I just tend to ramble on a bit about it. I’m setting up another website in the New Year to cover nutrition, exercise, and practising good psychology. Not sure when, probably around March or April.
      I eat a whole foods plant-based diet and love it. It’s the healthiest thing I’ve come across. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, you’ll feel lots more energy.

      Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.