1The pull towards bread, pasta and biscuits when you are low is not simply greed. Carbohydrate makes it easier for the brain to get hold of the raw material it needs for serotonin, so it gives a real if short lived lift.
Calling it self medication instead of a failure of character changes what you do next. You stop trying to out-discipline the craving and start asking what would meet the same need with a longer tail: eating something before you reach the desperate stage, protein alongside the carbohydrate, getting outside, company. The craving usually softens once the low is being met somewhere else as well.
Islamic evidence
Eat and drink with healthy enjoyment as a reward for what you have done (Quran 52:19). Enjoying food is described as a reward, not as something to be suspicious of.
“‘Eat and drink with healthy enjoyment as a reward for what you have done.’”
Qur'an 52:19
Psychological evidence
Across prospective cohorts, people eating closer to a healthy overall pattern had modestly lower odds of later depression. That finding is about the pattern of eating over time rather than single moments of craving, and it is observational, so other differences between those people could account for part of it. Still, it is a reason to look at the shape of the week rather than judging any one biscuit.
Lassale C, Batty GD, Baghdadli A, Jacka F, Sánchez-Villegas A, Kivimäki M, Akbaraly T. (2019). Molecular psychiatry · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Carbohydrate briefly helps the brain make serotonin, so reaching for it while low is the body finding the nearest lever.
Feedback
none yet2When you find yourself reaching for something sweet again, try asking what the reaching is doing for you instead of telling yourself off. Comfort, a small rebellion, a way to stay awake: the answer usually points somewhere useful.
Talk about being good or bad closes the conversation down. Curiosity keeps it open, and it tends to surface the actual job the food is doing, which is often soothing something that has nowhere else to go. Once you know what it is for, you can look for a second way of meeting the same need rather than running on willpower alone. Slower, but it holds.
Islamic evidence
If anyone is forced to eat such things by hunger, rather than desire or excess, he commits no sin: God is most merciful and forgiving (Quran 2:173). Need is told apart from craving without the person in need being condemned, which is the tone to take with yourself here.
“He has only forbidden you carrion, blood, pig’s meat, and animals over which any name other than God’s has been invoked. But if anyone is forced to eat such things by hunger, rather than desire or excess, he commits no sin: God is most merciful and forgiving”
Qur'an 2:173
Psychological evidence
Among 59 women, those under chronic stress showed a distinct pattern connecting comfort eating, abdominal fat and a blunted stress hormone response. It offers a physiological account of why stress steers people towards calorie dense food, so the pull is not simply a matter of resolve. The study was small and observational, so take it as a plausible mechanism rather than a rule about anyone in particular.
Tomiyama AJ, Dallman MF, Epel ES. (2011). Psychoneuroendocrinology · doi
Review detail
Why it works. A habit that is doing a job for you will keep coming back until the job gets done some other way.
When not to. If you are managing diabetes, this sits alongside your medical plan rather than in place of it.