In a recent interview, the fitness-focused celebrity couple Jackky Bhagnani and Rakul Preet Singh shared a hack that takes the adage of their ‘eyes being bigger than their stomach’ to a whole new level — the duo admit to scrolling through food delivery apps to quell their late-night hunger pangs and cravings, dubbing the technique as ‘psychosomatic eating’. Strip the fancy label away and the hack seems almost Dickensian in its level of denial and deprivation. And, as experts point out, it can influence disordered eating unless handled carefully.

Learning to listen

“Cravings are often signals from the body or the mind — they could be physical, linked to low blood sugar, mineral imbalances, gut dysbiosis, or hormonal fluctuations, or even emotionally rooted in stress, boredom or comfort-seeking. Simply dismissing cravings can backfire, creating guilt and binge patterns in the longer term,” warns Shimpli Patil, head nutritionist and lifestyle expert at Luke Coutinho Holistic Healing Systems.