Research suggests that up to 97% of women and 68% of men experience food cravings with almost 50% of the time, from each gender, succumbing to overeating or binges.

Cravings are not hunger, when we are hungry we eat almost anything, cravings happen for a specific food and even a particular type or brand within a group.

Cravings happen for many emotional and psychological reasons, however, studies show that there are three groups of foods that people crave the most by far, these are chocolates and ice cream, carbohydrates like bread and pasta and fried or fast food like french fries or hamburgers and they come from human characteristics that can be bundled.

People that crave these foods are the 'sensitive', 'lover' or 'emotional' type, personality traits include greater sensitivity to experience negative emotions, choosing compassion and romance over objectivity.

People in this group have trouble controlling urges, delaying gratification and some tend to be on the 'shy' and 'self-conscious' side.

Reception or signs of appreciation, love or affection often distract, diminish or eliminate the need to overeat for people in this group.

Carbohydrates are processed in our bodies to provide sugar to our blood and help release 'serotonin', the hormone responsible for 'happy feelings' in our brains.

People that crave these types of foods typically show imbalances in their person to person relationships, they can be either overwhelmed by those relationships or over-excited, leaving them feelings like frustration, anger, resentment, bitterness or 'too happy' or 'too excited' feelings.

Any time and activities 'spent' by yourself or alone, 'time only for you' quickly removes the need to binge or overeat.

These are the foods of choice for people that are overwhelmed, although not typically accepting it, with stress from work or family, just too much going on and struggling with keeping it all together. Typical personality traits for people in this group is 'overachievers', go-getters, what we normally recognize as people that "do well" under pressure, organizers, schedule oriented, fast pacers.

People in this group are running on empty, they just leave it all 'on the field', physically, emotionally or both, and are using food to re-energize and 'withdraw' emotionally and physically, at that moment, to have a pleasant re-energizing internal experience.

Recognizing to take care of the 'goose that laid the golden eggs' with better sleep, more physically relaxing 'draining' techniques to re-energize in a healthy way are keys for people in this group to stop their cravings.

You may experience one or more of these types of cravings, depending on the emotions that affect you at a given moment, and they happen in different intensities for each one of us, each depending on your lifestyle, relationships and emotional intelligence.

All these cravings come from 'learned' behaviors and you can 'un-learn' them, learn more about yourself, the signs and causes of emotional eating, tips and solutions and reverse habits that are making you unhealthy and overweight or obese.