Chocolate Cravings

Every so often I have a client who needs help with chocolate. Several of them were eating one to two pounds of chocolate a day!

Since every thought that we have is expressed as a mental image, sound or word, physical sensation, taste, or smell, it was actually pretty easy to get rid of the compulsion, and rapidly at that.

Usually, when someone has a craving or compulsion to eat particular, foods like chocolate, they imagine it in a very enticing way. By changing the quality of mental representation slightly, its possible to eliminate the cravings and still enjoy the occasional indulgence. For someone who has been struggling with cravings that may seem impossible, but I've helped many people do just that.

It's common for people who crave chocolate to imagine the flavor and mouth feel of their favorite chocolate candy. If they simply change the imagined mouth feel to the texture of a baked potato the cravings disappear, and they then experience having control of their desire in a new way. It only takes a little mental rehearsal to shift the representation permanently.

I asked one client if their mental image of chocolate was life size, bigger, or smaller. She said it was bigger, and when I had her shrink it to life size it was "no big deal" any longer.

Another choice is to make chocolate undesirable by associating it with an unpleasant food's taste. Again, it only takes a few moments of practice to make the new thoughts permanent. People and cats learn quickly. My Siamese cat used to love to eat popcorn, until one day he got to a hot kernel before I could stop him. After that, he wouldn't touch popcorn again.