Why Are My Cravings So High?
The Physiological Reasons You Feel So Out of Control Around Food
If your food cravings feel completely out of control, you're not imagining it, and it's not a willpower problem. There are specific physiological reasons your cravings are so high, and once you understand them, they become a lot more fixable.
“How do I get rid of this friggin' sweet tooth!!” “Why can't I stop binging late at night?!”
These are the statements I hear from almost every single client. It's been coming up a lot over the last week, in both my sessions as well as with friends and family. And whenever that happens, I know that's the Universe's way of screaming, "Hello, Jamie! Time to talk about this subject." Message received, Universe!
And because this is such a hefty topic, I'm going to split it into two. In today's piece, we're going to talk about the physiological reasons you have such intense cravings so you can begin to tackle them ASAP. And then next week, we'll cover cravings from the mental side: why you feel like you need your vices, how your mind is working against you now, and what you can do to feel not only more in control, but more compassionate toward yourself. Good stuff! So let's dive in today for why you feel out of control around food.
Note before we proceed: I'll mention binging on foods, but this is not talking about binge eating disorder. This is simply for when you feel those moments of loss of control around food. If you are struggling with binge eating disorder, while this article may provide helpful tips, this is not the comprehensive care you need.
Every single human on this planet has been in this scenario: you commit to "being good." You have the smoothie for breakfast, the salad for lunch, perhaps even sniff a carrot stick for a snack. And then you get home. And the stress or chaos of the day starts to feel like static electricity in your bloodstream that you can't quite discharge. You feel like you can actually sense the electrons buzzing around your atoms. If you were a cartoon character, your hair would be letting off sparks.
But you continue on, making your healthy dinner. And after you finish, the little hunger monster inside of you says, "Just go check out the pantry, okay? You're not quite full yet." Benign enough. You comply. You open the pantry door and you can feel the monster smiling wide, teeth barred like the Cheshire Cat. "This isn't going to be enough," it says. And you don't just hear him. You feel that message in your bones. And then, the monster takes over. You watch as he takes full control of you, unable to control your actions as you tear through the chips, the cookies, the tub of frosting. You house handfuls of chocolate chips straight out of the bag like a dog being handed kibble. Eventually you exorcise this monster, just in time to witness the crime scene, the only evidence left behind being the Oreo crumbs clinging to your chin and the melted ice cream remnants oozing from the tub.
And then, the shame sets in. The moment of fun is short lived as the tsunami of self-hate washes over you. Fun experience, right? 😵💫 But even though this happens to every single one of us, it's something we don't talk about. Because to acknowledge our humanity is to invite in shame. And if there's one thing I've learned in Being Human 101, it's that shame is quite possibly the worst emotion out there. But, we're going to learn to use that shame for good. To recognize what it's trying to communicate when it shows up, to repurpose that shame to more positive (read: actually helpful) emotions, and kick that little son of a gun to the curb.
But before we get to the fun, rewiring your brain for good part, let's talk about the physiological reasons that could drive you to binge. All of these boil down to what I very scientifically call "Panic Mode™."
As soon as you read those words, you could sense what panic mode feels like in your body. That buzzy, frantic, I-just-need-to-calm-down-ASAP-so-I-might-as-well-outsource-it-to-chocolate-chip-cookies feeling. You get to Panic Mode in a variety of ways, all essentially different ways of stressing out your body. Here are the five I see most commonly with clients, and have lived myself:
Skipping breakfast
Undereating overall
Skimping on carbs
Having caffeine on an empty stomach
Never taking a pause in your day
See below for why these are the five main physiological causes of a binge, so you can stop feeling at the mercy of the cravings monster!
Does Skipping Breakfast Cause Cravings Later in the Day?
Short Answer: Skipping breakfast raises cortisol, your stress hormone, which signals to your brain that food is scarce. This signal sounds the alarm bells, causing your body to seek out quick and easy nutrients (think sugar and refined carbs) to stay well nourished.
Long Answer: Breakfast haters, this one's for you! I see this all the time in the most well-meaning clients. They skip breakfast because they're not really that hungry anyway. Just a coffee will do. Might as well save calories for later.
Oh no no, this is not like budgeting. You can't squirrel away your calorie reserves for later and expect it to not bite you in the ass.
What happens when you undergo any kind of fasting is that cortisol increases to help you keep your blood sugar nice and stable. Not a bad thing at all — in fact, it's the function that keeps us all alive overnight or during periods where we just can't get to that next meal — but it can also activate Panic Mode. You're essentially sending signals to your body that there isn't food available. And even though your logical brain knows that you can get food almost immediately no matter where you are, your monkey brain doesn't quite get the memo. Sure, you might feel fine all day, even if you are a little extra hungry, because you're distracted with work or to dos and running on cortisol already. But this cortisol is fuel for the cravings monster inside of you. And by the time you get home, he's ready to take the reins. Once you get to that point, good luck being around anything with a sugar or sodium content.
The real kicker here is that this is a self perpetuating cycle. When you skimp calories earlier in the day and that leads to binging at night, you then have no hunger the next morning. So you skimp on breakfast, only to binge later in the day, only to not be hungry the next morning, and to binge that night, and so on, and so on. If you've found yourself stuck in this cycle, the only way to break it is to begin adding in breakfast. If you have no appetite in the morning, just start with something small like 1-2 hard boiled eggs and a handful of berries. You can always work your way up to a full breakfast.
Does Eating Too Little During the Day Cause Nighttime Cravings?
Short Answer: Undereating throughout the day puts your body into the same cortisol-driven stress state as skipping breakfast entirely, leading you to feel out of control around food by nighttime.
Long Answer: The mechanisms here are exactly the same as above, so I'm not going to get too in the weeds. But if you intentionally skimp all day long to save calories, your body will eventually backfire.
This is not to say you can't pursue weight loss or a calorie deficit. It's just to say that if you are pursuing weight loss, you need to do so in a way that's not a dramatic deficit (think cutting 250 calories from your maintenance per day, mayyyybe up to 500 depending on the person). You also need to spread calories evenly throughout your day. Think equal sized breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. When you send your body regular signals that it's being well fueled, it avoids activating Panic Mode and doesn't turn you into the Very Hungry Caterpillar by 7 PM.
Do Carbs Help Reduce Food Cravings?
Short Answer: Eating whole food carbohydrates at each of your balanced meals is one of the simplest ways to lower cortisol, because carbs signal to your body that fuel is available, calming down the stress response that drives your cravings.
Long Answer: My favorite thing about my job might be telling women that they can eat more carbs. Well that and seeing them come alive and feel amazing and live the lives they came here to live. But yeah, the carb thing is pretty cool too.
Here's what you need to know about carbs and stress. I like to think of carbs as the direct antidote to cortisol, the stress hormone. When you're eating like a biohacking ketotarian, your cortisol has to rise in order to help you produce blood sugar from stored forms of glucose and from other nutrients like fat, through processes like gluconeogenesis and beta oxidation. When you eat carbs, you tell your body, “Hey, we're cool, we can stop this stressful process.”
Now, this is not me telling you to gorge yourself on pizza and pasta, even though my Italian grandpa has been telling me to do that for years. You want to moderate your carb intake (think about 1/2 to 1 cup per meal) and aim for whole food carbs such as fruit, beans, starchy veggies, and whole grains for the majority of carbs you're eating. Add 1-2 servings of these "safety signal foods" to each meal to prevent entering Panic Mode. Think a cup of berries with breakfast, 1/2 cup beans on your salad, an apple with your snack, and a cup of roasted potatoes with dinner.
Can Caffeine on an Empty Stomach Make Cravings Worse?
Short Answer: While there are no studies directly proving this, it is one of the most consistent patterns I see clinically: caffeine on an empty stomach accelerates a blood-sugar-like crash that drives intense cravings later in the day.
Long Answer: This one always gets the most backlash. So, reader, please hold your verbal abuse for just ten minutes to hear me out. And if, by the end of this article, you still have fury in your heart... well, still please don't attack me. I have the nervous system of a potato chip. But, feel free to simply ignore this tip (at your own peril).
If you've been on the internet in 2026, you've likely seen a post (or two, or fifty billion) telling you that you absolutely must avoid caffeine on an empty stomach or else you'll spike cortisol and eventually irreversibly tank your adrenals. And here's what the research says on this: nothing. There are no studies showing that drinking coffee on an empty stomach increases cortisol more than drinking coffee with food because there are ZERO STUDIES on this topic. But over here, I am evidence based, not evidence bound. What this means: I use common sense to guide my practice and how I operate with clients. And what I've seen in pretty much every single female that I've worked with (men, if you're here, you guys are built different. Your tolerance for this insanity might be a little higher.): drinking caffeine on an empty stomach increases your stress and, while it might decrease appetite in the moment, it brings the cravings monster to life in the latter half of your day, making it almost impossible not to succumb to cravings.
What makes sense from a physiological perspective is that having anything on an empty stomach increases its rate of absorption. So if you have caffeine with nothing to soak it up, so to say, you're going to rapidly absorb it. You can think of this rapid absorption of caffeine like a blood sugar spike. You feel that buzzy high, only to come crashing down. And it's in that low point where anything and everything sugar coated starts calling your name. To prevent this from happening, wait until you have your breakfast to have your caffeine, stick to just 1-2 cups, and avoid it after noon. If you have the caffeine habits of a Gilmore Girl, I'm so sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Just looking out for you.
Why Do I Binge Eat at Night After a Stressful Day?
Short Answer: If you don’t deliberately lower stress throughout the day, it accumulates to the point where it feels almost unmanageable to your nervous system. At that point, the fastest way to bring yourself back down is to binge on carb or sugar rich foods.
Long Answer: Now go back to when I first brought up Panic Mode. Visualize that feeling in your body. Really. I want you to take 10 seconds to just close your eyes and picture what that feels like.
It's something like an intense buzzy feeling, right? Now think about how you feel when you're running from meeting to meeting, when the emails just won't stop coming in, when there's no silence in your day at all, you can't even bear the idea of not taking your phone into the bathroom with you. Essentially, you're out collecting this static electricity all day. So the first thing you want to do when you finally get home, when you finally get a breather, is to discharge. And the easiest, fastest way to do that is to binge on your favorite carb heavy snack.
I like to explain this phenomenon to my clients like this: imagine you're on a roller coaster. Each stressor pulls you higher and higher up that roller coaster. If you never take time to pause, calm down, or self-regulate, you end your day at the top of the coaster. Once you're up there, you have no choice but to come crashing down, and binging on your favorite foods is an easy way to drop down fast. On the other hand, if you take the time to do 4-7-8 breathing between meetings, to take a walk with zero inputs (that means no playlists, podcasts, or phonecalls), to pee in peace, you bring your roller coaster down each time. Then, you end the day at a manageable height that only takes a quick little breather to get you back to the bottom.
If stress relief is new to you, know that this doesn't have to look like meditating for 30 minutes twice per day. Just check in throughout the day as to where you are on your roller coaster, and consciously choose those breathing breaks, pauses, or even 5-10 minute meditations to bring yourself back down.
What I See in Practice
Yes, these five physiological causes are supported by the research, but it’s also something I see on a nearly daily basis with clients. Just the other week, I met with a client who felt like she simply could not take control over her cravings. She had even gone through the lengths to throw out all sugar-filled treats in her house, but would end up spending most nights driving to the gas station around the corner to grab a pint of ice cream, a candy bar, or sleeve of cookies once she became exhausted of fighting her own willpower.
As we dug deeper, we saw that she was skimping on breakfast, erratically eating carbs (think almost no whole food carbs before dinner to save up for plenty of more refined carbs by dinner), and never taking a second in her day for a break. Even her wind down time was filled with watching tv while bouncing between scrolling instagram and playing games on her iPad. Once we got her eating breakfast, balancing out her intake, adding more whole food carbs, and taking intentional pauses, she reported the cravings downright disappearing in just a single week. She said that while a cookie or ice cream still sounded good, they didn’t have the same pull over her like they did just a week before. So much can change in such a short amount of time when you play with the right inputs.
Now you're well acquainted with the top physiological reasons for a binge. Next week, we'll talk about the mental component of a binge, cravings, or vices and how you can quiet that craving monster's voice. In the meantime, there are two resources I love for binge eating, poor relationship with food, and cravings. And those are the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth, and this podcast with Stephanie Mara, a somatic dietitian, and Michelle Shapiro. If you're struggling with these issues, check out these resources. Let me know in the comments if this was helpful. I'll be back again next week with even more info!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are my food cravings so intense?
Intense food cravings are almost always a physiological signal, not a willpower failure. The most common drivers are undereating during the day, undereating whole food carbohydrates, improper caffeine intake, nervous system dysregulation, and blood sugar instability, and nervous system dysregulation. When your body enters a stress state, it raises hunger hormones and specifically drives cravings for high-sugar, high-sodium foods as a fast energy and mineral source.
Can stress cause nighttime binge eating?
Yes, directly. Unmanaged stress throughout the day keeps cortisol elevated, which, in turn, raises your hunger hormone ghrelin. By evening, the combination of unmanaged stress and increased hunger hormones leads you to seek a quick fix: a sugar or carb rich binge to reduce stress and satiate that intense hunger. Building small decompression breaks into your day is one of the most underrated strategies for reducing nighttime cravings.
What causes weight loss resistance in women?
Chronic cortisol elevation is one of the most underaddressed causes of weight loss resistance. When the body is in a persistent stress state, whether from undereating, overexercising, chronic illness, poor sleep, or emotional stress, it essentially sends signals to the body to slow everything down and hold onto nutrients to survive this stress state. As these women experience weight loss resistance, they ironically cut calories even more or work out even harder, which can perpetuate this high cortisol issue. If you are someone who’s been eating very few calories and training very hard, the answer for your weight loss journey might be reducing dieting and exercising while you work on nervous system support.
