My name is Tomasz Kopec and I work as a GP in London. For the last ten years, I’ve also been helping people living with diabetes improve their lifestyle.

In practice, that often means sitting with someone who knows perfectly well what healthy eating looks like and trying to work out why, despite all that knowledge, something keeps getting in the way.

Very often, that something is a craving.

I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times. It usually goes like this.

She was fine all day. Breakfast was sensible. Lunch was sensible. She even went for a walk at three o’clock. Nothing about the day suggested impending nutritional collapse.

Then nine o’clock arrived.

She was standing in the kitchen with the fridge door open, not especially hungry and not really making a decision. By the time she properly noticed what was happening, the wrapper was already in the bin.

She told me she had no willpower.

She had been telling herself that for about fifteen years.

I didn’t think willpower was the main problem. Willpower is useful when you are actually making a decision. Quite often, by nine o’clock, the decision-making department has already closed.

Hunger and cravings are not the same thing

Hunger is usually slow and broad. It builds gradually and is fairly patient. Most foods will satisfy it.

A craving is different. It is faster, narrower and very specific.

Hunger says: “I could eat.”

A craving says: “Chocolate. Now. We can discuss the consequences later.”

Cravings also love routine. They often appear at the same time of day, in the same place, after the same trigger. The sofa. The television. The drive home. The stressful meeting. The moment the children finally go to bed.

The brain is extremely good at learning patterns, including the ones we would prefer it had quietly forgotten.

None of this is a character defect. It is an automatic loop doing what automatic loops do.

Why attention matters

Here is the part people usually find surprising.

A craving tends to grow inside focused attention.

Focused attention works like a spotlight. One thing becomes bright and everything else fades into the background. This is useful when you are working, reading, solving a problem or trying to remember where you parked.

It is less useful when the spotlight lands on a biscuit.

The more attention you give the craving, the more of your inner world it occupies. You notice it, think about it, argue with it, explain why you shouldn’t have it and then think about it some more.

At some point, the biscuit has become the main strategic issue of the evening.

The biscuit hasn’t changed.

Your attention has.

Broad attention works differently. Instead of squeezing attention around one thing, you allow more of your experience in at the same time: your body, the room, sounds, both hands, the space around you and, somewhere within all of that, the craving.

The craving is still there.

It just stops being the whole picture.

This is not about fighting cravings

That matters.

The aim is not to suppress the craving, argue with it or stand in front of the cupboard with clenched teeth trying to prove that you are a person of exceptional moral strength.

You let the craving be there.

You simply stop giving it all of your attention.

That shift can be trained.

Over time, cravings can begin to feel less like instructions and more like sensations. Something you notice rather than something you automatically obey.

And once there is a little space between the craving and the action, choice comes back.

That is really the whole idea. Not more food rules. Not more restriction. Not another system you start enthusiastically on Monday and quietly abandon by Wednesday afternoon.

Just training attention.

A free exercise: the craving pause

The exercise takes about ten minutes.

Sit somewhere quiet and notice the craving. Then gradually widen your attention instead of concentrating harder on it.

Most people find that the pull of the craving drops by two to four points. Sometimes it disappears entirely. Sometimes the number barely changes, but the craving feels different: softer, less urgent, less like an order.

Either way, the grip has loosened.

The exercise works because it doesn’t fight anything. It simply stops feeding one signal all of your attention.

What you can do next.

Cravings do not behave exactly the same way in everyone because attention does not work exactly the same way in everyone.

Some people narrow very quickly and become locked onto one thing. Some drift wide and lose structure. Some function brilliantly while everything is organised and then struggle as soon as the routine breaks.

The way your attention works may shape the way your cravings appear, and it can also influence what is most useful to practise first.

If this way of understanding cravings makes sense to you, I’d like to invite you to complete the Attention and Cravings Assessment below.

It takes around ten minutes and shows how your attention tends to operate around food, hunger and cravings.

The results are free. No email address required. No payment. No strings attached.

You are safe. Just scroll down.

If the results feel surprisingly accurate, you can also leave your email address. I’ll send you a free personalised insight into how your attention may be contributing to your cravings, together with a personalised four-week outline of what may be most useful for you to practise first.