Why Your Brain Craves What Your Body Doesn’t Need, and How Your Breath Can Override It

Richard Edgerton
Oct 20
4 min read

Ever wondered why your brain tells you to eat things you know will make you feel worse later? That pull toward sugar, snacks, or anything fried isn’t weakness, it’s wiring.

Our brains evolved in a world of scarcity, not abundance. And now they’re trying to survive in a world of overstimulation. The result? Cravings that feel irresistible, and a daily battle between what we want and what we know is good for us.

But here’s the extraordinary thing: your breath can rewire the system.

The Ancient Brain That Still Lives in You

For most of human history, food was hard to find. When early humans stumbled on something high in sugar or fat, their brains lit up with dopamin, the chemical of wanting. That hit of pleasure was an evolutionary reward: “Eat this now, it might save your life.”

That same system still drives us today. But modern life flipped the script. The foods that were once rare, sugar, salt, fat, are everywhere, available 24/7, engineered to be irresistible.

Every time we eat one of these “hyper-palatable” foods, our brain’s reward system lights up like a pinball machine. Dopamine surges, we feel momentary bliss, and then, almost instantly, we want more.

Dopamine doesn’t make you happy; it makes you seek. That’s why one biscuit turns into the whole packet. Your brain isn’t chasing satisfaction, it’s chasing the next dopamine hit.

When Stress Turns the Volume Up

Cravings don’t only appear when we’re hungry. They show up when we’re tired, anxious, or emotionally stretched.

Under stress, your brain pumps out cortisol, a hormone that primes you for action. It also dampens prefrontal cortex activity, the part of your brain responsible for rational thought, long-term goals, and impulse control.

That’s why you can know something’s bad for you and still do it. The rational brain is literally offline, and the limbic system, your emotional, survival-driven brain, is in charge.

You’re not weak. You’re wired.

The Breath–Craving Connection

So where does breathing come in? Right in the middle of this neural tug-of-war.

When you slow and deepen your breathing, you stimulate the vagus nerve, the main communication channel between your brain and body. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your natural “rest-and-digest” mode.

That single physiological shift begins to rebalance your brain:

It quiets limbic overactivity, reducing the emotional intensity of cravings.
It reactivates the prefrontal cortex, helping you make more deliberate choices.
It stabilises heart rate and blood pressure, creating the physical conditions for control.

Put simply:

When your breath slows down, your cravings lose power.

The Hidden Link Between CO₂ and Craving

Here’s something most people don’t realise: many of us breathe too fast, too shallow, and too often. Chronic over-breathing lowers our tolerance to CO₂, the gas that helps regulate our blood chemistry and nervous system balance.

Low CO₂ tolerance keeps the body in a mild state of alert, restless, edgy, slightly anxious. The brain interprets that unease as something’s wrong and goes searching for quick relief: food, caffeine, scrolling, alcohol.

By training slower, more efficient breathing, particularly through the nose, you build CO₂ resilience. That means you become more comfortable in calm stillness, less agitated by discomfort, and less likely to reach for instant dopamine hits.

Your internal landscape changes. You’re no longer constantly trying to escape yourself.

Breath Builds Interoception, and Awareness is Everything

One of the most overlooked skills in performance, and in life, is interoception: your ability to read your body’s internal signals accurately.

Most people are terrible at it. We confuse thirst for hunger. Anxiety for hunger. Fatigue for hunger. Breathwork sharpens interoceptive awareness by training your attention inward to rhythm, pressure, heartbeat, and temperature.

As you learn to sense your inner state more clearly, cravings stop feeling like commands and start feeling like signals. You can sense what’s really happening underneath: maybe you’re stressed, tired, or bored, not hungry.

That’s a massive shift in self-control. Because you can only manage what you can feel.

Breath as the Pause Between Urge and Action

Every craving has a life cycle: trigger → tension → action → regret (often).

Breathing gives you access to the space between trigger and action, the moment where real change lives.

Even a single deep exhale activates inhibitory circuits in your brainstem and prefrontal cortex. It’s a biological “pause button.” That pause is where choice returns.

Try it next time a craving hits:

Notice the urge.
Inhale gently through your nose for 4 seconds.
Exhale slowly for 6 seconds, feeling your body soften.
Repeat for 3 rounds.

You’ll feel the emotional charge reduce. The craving becomes just a sensation, not a command.

That’s not willpower. That’s physiology.

For Athletes, This Is Game-Changing

Athletes know discipline. But even at the highest levels, the mental battle with cravings, nutrition, and stress never stops. Every marginal gain matter, and self-control is one of the most underrated.

Breathwork offers a new performance frontier: rewiring the craving brain.

Because when you master your breath, you don’t just manage stress, you master the invisible moment before every decision. The micro-pause that decides whether you reach for fuel or distraction.

That’s what separates reaction from response, and good from great.