Not all food cravings lead to overeating. Your body can give you legitimate cues that certain nutrients are needed, or even that a certain food will fulfill an emotional need.  If you find that a reasonable amount of a desired food satisfies you, wonderful.  Eating one cookie may satisfy a sweet tooth. But if one cookie leads to another, and another, and then, “I can’t believe I ate the whole box,” that’s a problem.

Although scientists look for characteristics that separate bingers from non-bingers, given enough stress, just about anyone is likely to turn to Haagen-Dazs.  However, though stress is unavoidable and unpredictable, here are ways you can strengthen your capacity to become “binge-resistant.”

Get adequate nutrition. According to food addiction expert Julia Ross, MA, MFCC, dieting, which she calls “a euphemism for starvation,” is the major cause of food cravings and eating disorders. In Never Be Sick Again, Raymond Francis agrees.  He says anyone who’s overweight is suffering from malnutrition and needs to eat more (healthy, nutritious foods), not less. Regular, balanced meals are best.

Supplement. Cover your nutrient bases with a foundational program. Specific nutrient deficiencies have been linked with food cravings (like magnesium with chocolate), and many nutrients are involved in feeling good and dealing with stress. If you have gut bacteria imbalances, you’re not absorbing food adequately, so extra supplementation is mandatory. Specific nutrients address blood sugar issues; glutamine reduces carbohydrate cravings.

Supplement Neurotransmitters. Some people, especially those prone to addictions, are low on these feel-good chemicals. See Julia Ross’s book, The Diet Cure, to determine if you’re one of them.

Avoid/eliminate toxins. Toxins, including artificial sweeteners, can stimulate cravings.

Address underlying health issues, including chronic infections, imbalanced gut bacteria, thyroid-adrenal insufficiency, and blood-sugar imbalances,

Drink up. Dehydration can masquerade as hunger, and drinking water helps ride out cravings, especially when mixed with powdered vitamin C.

Get your zzzs. Sleep deprivation causes cravings for carbohydrates. If you’re unavoidably sleep-deprived, focusing on vegetables, protein and healthy fats will help you resist overeating carbohydrates and junk foods.

Move it! Exercise is a great stress reducer, especially outdoors, and another way to minimize and ride out cravings.

Reach out. Instead of reaching for another cookie, reach for the telephone and call a friend you know will be compassionate and supportive.

Write about it.  Journaling about your eating can be cathartic and informative, and can help you get some compassionate distance from what you’re going through. It helps identify problem foods as well as strategies that have helped in the past and may help again.

Be good to yourself. To cope well with stress, we need to be able to self-soothe.  A rat study found that those who had not been nurtured well (licked and groomed by their mothers) as pups were more apt to binge eat (on Oreo cookies!) when stressed. Some of us learned to blame and judge ourselves when we ran into difficulties (like succumbing to uncontrollable food cravings) rather than being kind and compassionate. But it’s never too late to unlearn these unhelpful responses, give ourselves unconditional love no matter what, and do things that we enjoy and will make us feel better