The Craving Loop: Beat Cravings When Stressed, Bored & Tired

The Craving Loop: Beat Cravings When Stressed, Bored & Tired
Ep.04 - 13 min

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Why do cravings hit hardest when you’re tired, stressed, or bored?
Whether it’s the 3 p.m. slump at work, the drive-home “screw it” moment, or the 9 p.m. pantry raid, those urges aren’t random—they’re predictable loops driven by biology, emotion, and routine.

In this episode, Luke breaks down exactly what’s happening in your brain and body when cravings strike—and shows you how to flip the pattern with his simple RER Method: Refuel · Examine · Replace.

You’ll learn:

• Why blood-sugar dips, stress, and decision fatigue make cravings feel unstoppable
• How your environment and evening rhythm trigger autopilot snacking
• The 3-question checkpoint that instantly tells you if it’s hunger, habit, or headspace
• How to keep the reward without the regret

By the end, you’ll have a plan to stop fighting your cravings and start outsmarting them - no guilt, no restriction, just rhythm and awareness.

At Prolific Fitness, we engineer life-changing body transformations - one tiny win at a time.

(Educational content only; not medical advice.)

Creators and Guests

Host

Luke Eiserman

Founder @ Prolific Fitness

What is The Change Room with Prolific Fitness?

Grab a locker and strap in. The Change Room is Prolific Fitness’ no-BS antidote for anyone who’s sick of yo-yo results and wellness waffle. Host Luke Eiserman and crew dish up irreverent, evidence-based training, nutrition, and mindset tactics that turn “I’ve tried everything” into sustainable, life-changing body transformations. New episodes every week - zero fluff, all progress.

Narrator: 00:00

Hit the change room. We're about to level up.

Luke Eiserman: 00:08

It's 3PM. You've had a busy and stressful day. Your inbox has been crazy. Meetings have been crazy, and you get to that time of day, and all you wanna do is you wanna go to the vending machine. Or maybe it's 05:30PM, day's been stressful, you just need a relief, and you drive past McDonald's, and you're like, I just need this.

Luke Eiserman: 00:27

I just need this for me. You know what I mean? Or maybe it's later at night, 9PM, let's say. Everything's quietened down, but you're craving like crazy. You just can't help the fact that your body is asking you to eat.

Luke Eiserman: 00:39

Now, is this common? All the time. I hear clients say to me consistently, hey, it's this time of day. It's 3PM. It's 5PM.

Luke Eiserman: 00:47

It's 9PM. And so the whole point of this is can we control this? Absolutely. These aren't just random. They're predictable.

Luke Eiserman: 00:54

And I think the big thing that I wanna go over is the reasons why this might happen. Body, brain, psychology, what is causing this? Let's deep deep dive into it. Okay? So, I mean, it's perfectly summed up by people who go, look, I just can't help by having Whitaker's chocolate after dinner when everything's finally quiet.

Luke Eiserman: 01:14

You know what I mean? And I've had a lot of clients come and say that to me. Now, there's a few reasons that this takes place. It's not a lack of discipline. It's timing.

Luke Eiserman: 01:21

It's chemistry. It's habit. And I wanna kinda uncover that today. Okay? Now, right before I do very, very quickly, just wanna give a client shout out to our client, Ross.

Luke Eiserman: 01:30

Now, he's amazing. He's an absolute champion. Without even asking, he's actually in the past printed out some car park signs for us and drilled them in. He's reinforced cupboards. He's brought battle ropes for us, all this kind of stuff.

Luke Eiserman: 01:42

But in the last couple weeks, he's actually fitted and mounted our TV to the wall. And so I'm just super grateful for clients like that. They're amazing. He's crushing it, but I just wanna give him a shout out because he's an absolutely amazing member of the community, and he just always can't wait to do more stuff for us. So hey.

Luke Eiserman: 01:58

Shout out to you, man. So let's dive into it. So the first thing is let's explain the problem. Why does it take place? What is actually going on in our bodies that causes these kind of cravings at repeatable times to happen?

Luke Eiserman: 02:11

Firstly, there are psycho sorry, physiological drivers rather. Okay? Things in our body. This is not your mind. This is not your emotions.

Luke Eiserman: 02:18

This is even though they're very closely connected with the body, and you can't really separate the two. There are physiological things that if you don't take care of them or make sure you have measures in place, are gonna trip you up. Right? So if you haven't eaten enough protein or fibre in the day or you've skipped meals, that is number one for making sure that we've actually addressed that. Because what's going to happen is if you aren't satiated, your body is going to do a couple of things.

Luke Eiserman: 02:48

Firstly, your blood sugar levels are going to drop. Cortisol is likely to rise and it's actually much harder to manage it when it starts to rise. But I think in amongst everything here, ghrelin is the body's hunger hormone and it is going to tell you to eat if you have not eaten or are not satiated. So the reason that's so important is there's already a concoction of stress and habits and complexities going on in your life, and if you haven't addressed the physiological part of this, am I actually addressing the fact that my body is genuinely hungry? You are just going to make it so, so, so much harder for yourself.

Luke Eiserman: 03:22

So your brain has got its reward center going, hey, I'm hungry, make sure you get some food. Number one: making sure that we address that. There are circadian rhythms as well, and you probably know circadian rhythms from sleep. It's actually a cycle of your body's hormone fluctuations on a daily basis that allow you to have a repeatable sleep and alertness kind of fluctuation. Now, does your circadian rhythm actually drop your alertness towards the afternoon and evening?

Luke Eiserman: 03:50

So the idea of you actually not being as alert to make good decisions is actually just part of biology. It's okay, we don't fight it, we just need to know that. Are obviously psychological drivers, right? So decision fatigue is a really big thing. People are stressed and they've been carrying that stress and making decisions all day.

Luke Eiserman: 04:10

Now you have to make good decisions in the evening as well. What an absolute nightmare, right? What an absolute nightmare. Stress also pushes cortisol up, your body has likely got a lot of stress hormones if you've had a stressful day, and firstly, cortisol makes it harder to make good decisions, but also it actually craves relief. So a lot of the time you'll go to foods that produce dopamine and serotonin to reduce cortisol and make you feel that, I feel fine again, okay, I feel good, okay?

Luke Eiserman: 04:38

And so again, I think this is the big part of this is that when your body is craving relief from cortisol, from stress, it knows that if you go to that piece of food in the past, it's given you that relief. And so guess what it's going to do next time you need that relief? It's going go to that same thing because we've wired it as a habit. Your brain knows that that's the solution. I'm going go to that when I'm stressed.

Luke Eiserman: 05:01

Okay? Environmental triggers. These are pretty obvious. When the cue is easy, the response is automatic. It's not even a choice.

Luke Eiserman: 05:09

Know? If you have candy in your drawer, you know what I mean? Or if there's vending machine close, that's a harder one, but you're going to go to it if there's chocolate in the pantry. These are all things where sometimes there's not enough of a delay created between the thought and doing the thing that sometimes you actually just act without much thought at all. So it's not about weakness, that's a big thing.

Luke Eiserman: 05:28

It's actually a perfect storm of habit and environment and biology and hormones that cause these repeatable things. As long as we know that, we can address it. So what is the fix? Okay. We've got a methodology that we refer to as RER.

Luke Eiserman: 05:42

Okay. So this is one we put a bit of time into thinking through. Refuel. Number one. Examine and then replace.

Luke Eiserman: 05:49

I'll make sure I get it right, you know? Let's not mess up the methodology. Refuel, examine, replace. R E R. Okay?

Luke Eiserman: 05:55

So what does this look like? The first one is refuel. Make sure you're refueling early in the day. So what does that look like? Make sure you can have consistent meals through the day if you notice that you get hungry, and that's going be making sure the meals that have protein in them and they have fibre.

Luke Eiserman: 06:08

The recommendation that we give usually is about 30 to 40 grams of protein in a meal is a really good idea of how much you're looking to get. The idea is we want to make sure that we're having foods that are going to satiate us. If you're going have carbohydrates as well in these meals, make sure that they are, if you can avoid it, simple sugars, things that are going to be really easy to digest and fast, like candy, for example, or even a piece of fruit. Nothing wrong with a piece of fruit, but realising that that's actually going to be much faster digested and it's not going to keep you satiated as long as potatoes might. You know what I mean?

Luke Eiserman: 06:45

Obviously, candy versus potatoes, they're two obviously different options. If you can go for slow acting carbs, they'll usually digest slower and keep you fuller for longer. Okay? Awesome. So that's a big part of this.

Luke Eiserman: 06:57

Now, I think the the key to remember for the refuel section is it's hard to out willpower bad fuelling. Okay? So you it's possible, but usually not on an ongoing basis. It's hard to out willpower bad fuelling. So fuel yourself right.

Luke Eiserman: 07:11

Okay? So number one is refuel. Number two is examine. Examine the trigger. We have to look at why this is happening.

Luke Eiserman: 07:17

So when a craving hits, you're not going to fight it. You're going study it. We're going to look at what's actually causing this thing and how we can address it. So is it hunger, habit, or headspace? Okay?

Luke Eiserman: 07:27

If it's hunger, it might be a physical cue. That just means we need to set up the meals in a way that are going to keep you satiated. Right? Eat something real. Protein, fiber.

Luke Eiserman: 07:35

Okay? Habit. Is it a habit thing? Like, are you doing it without even thinking of it? Is it a certain time of day?

Luke Eiserman: 07:40

Is it a certain location? Is it a certain if there's a cue that sets it off, like if there's a place, an environment, something you see, something in the pantry, it sets it off. Those are examples of habit. And then the the easiest fix is to change the cue, the thing that sets it off. So in this case, there are things you can do in terms of swaps, making sure you don't keep food in your pantry that you don't want to eat and going and getting it on occasion when you want it.

Luke Eiserman: 08:05

Obvious example, don't keep food you don't want to eat in your drawer. That's another obvious example. What's another good example? If you know that it's 5PM when you get home, you sit on the couch, and then sitting on the couch causes you to veg out and then eat what you don't want to eat, maybe something as simple as when you get home, having a healthy snack ready is changing the queue, and then just knowing you go for a quick twenty minute walk. Something as easy as that can actually replace how you just fall into these habits.

Luke Eiserman: 08:30

You know? So hunger, habit, and the last one is headspace. Have a think about headspace because if it's a stress thing, what your body is trying to do is it's trying to get relief from a lack of chemicals or too much chemicals. So for example, if your body is, you know, pumping cortisol and it needs relief from that cortisol, that's very often where you'll go to these foods. If you're bored and you want some stimulation, then you'll go to foods that give you dopamine and serotonin.

Luke Eiserman: 08:58

So I think, in this case, noticing what's causing that and essentially allowing yourself to find a different way to achieve the same thing. There are for example, if you are stressed, if it's a stress thing, go for a walk, have a shower, you know, do some journaling, call a friend, watch a comedy video even. You know what I mean? If you're bored, a of the same things can apply. You can watch a comedy video.

Luke Eiserman: 09:18

You can go for a walk. You can also have foods that are gonna stimulate you. Even things like herbal tea are a great hack because they've got temperature, they've got color, they've got flavor, they've got, you know, there's a there's kind of a mix of sensations. Going to things that you know work for you for stress or for that sensation, I think is a really big thing too. So the key on this one is feed the body or the mind or the emotions.

Luke Eiserman: 09:43

Don't feed the pattern. If that pattern's happening, instead of feeding the pattern, we actually then just look at what's causing it and then address that. So R E R Refuel early E is Examine the trigger and the third R is Replace the ritual. So this is the idea that it's often we can actually if it's a habit, we can actually tackle the cue, the things that's causing it in the first place, but a lot of the time it's really hard to do that. You can't stop just being stressed very easily without really working through the mental habits that get you there.

Luke Eiserman: 10:15

You can't just wake up and be like, I'm not going be stressed tomorrow. And it's not always that easy, right? In this case, how do we manage that? Well, we essentially just replace the ritual. We replace the thing that gives us what we're after.

Luke Eiserman: 10:27

If your body's craving, you go to this thing and your body knows, your brain knows it gets that dopamine, gets the serotonin, it drops the cortisol because you've built this habit around this response, we need to find a different thing. So replace. We need to replace the ritual. Okay? So the the takeaway here is that cravings aren't random.

Luke Eiserman: 10:47

Cravings are very predictable, repeatable. You can track them and fix them. And I think that's the big thing is that we don't judge them, we just pay attention. So R E R. Okay?

Luke Eiserman: 10:58

Whatever time it is, whatever situation it is, I want you to run that. Okay? Make sure that we have refuelled early, so make sure you're refuelling. E, examining the trigger, making sure we know what it is that's causing this thing in the first place. Is it hunger?

Luke Eiserman: 11:12

What was it? Hunger, habit, or headspace? So what is the thing that's actually triggering it? And then also replace the ritual. Okay.

Luke Eiserman: 11:19

What can I do differently? And it's different for each person, and I would actually recommend that you dive into it and have a look to see what it is for you that might do it. For me, I know that going for a walk makes a massive difference. I know saunas make a massive difference. I know watching comedy videos make a massive difference, which sounds crazy.

Luke Eiserman: 11:37

I know working out makes a massive difference. There are things that you will find works really well for you. Okay? And so my micro challenge for you is to notice this stuff, run RER in the next week, and I want you to let us know. Just send me a DM.

Luke Eiserman: 11:51

So a couple of things. Firstly, want you to send me a DM about how you found this, and you can reach us on Instagram at prolificfitness dot c o. But the other thing actually, and I appreciate you guys staying to the end, but I think in this case, we actually in terms of some foods, a lot of people struggle with food swaps. So you like sweet foods, and I don't recommend you get rid of them completely. If you want some recipes that are actually really satiating, high protein, low calorie density, and are sweet because it's usually what people crave towards the evening, let me know because we've actually built out a bunch of them internally.

Luke Eiserman: 12:24

So I'll actually get friends from our team to get those together. And if you send us a DM asking us for those recipes, we will actually send you a list of those recipes that we've kind of got in the archives. So absolutely reach out, but also reach out to see how this has gone because I actually really wanna know how this has gone for you. And always, look, we are open to feedback. We want to hear how you're doing, if there are questions you have because obviously questions mean we can help you.

Luke Eiserman: 12:50

Okay? So that's all for today. I kept it I wanted to keep it nice and short, and so hopefully, I actually don't know what the time is on that one, hopefully that one's a nice punchy one. As always, look, we are here to create life body life changing rather body transformations, and obviously this this episode is a way of us being able to do that. So please let us know if you have questions.

Luke Eiserman: 13:10

Otherwise, I'll see you in the next one. It's been great having you along. Talk soon.

Narrator: 13:15

Hit the change room. We're about to level up.