Decode craving: the 3 part loop

In our last email, I told you a story about some MIT rats and an energy-saving system in the brain called the habit loop.

Today, let’s break it down.

A habit loop is made of three parts:
👉 A cue
👉 A routine
👉 A reward

• The cue is a trigger—something that tells your brain, “Hey, it’s time for that thing we usually do.”
• The routine is the action that follows. It can be physical, mental, or emotional.
• The reward is what your brain gets out of it—the feeling or outcome it’s learned to expect.
  
  

Here’s how that looked in the MIT rat experiment:
Cue: the click of the door
Routine: run the maze
Reward: get the chocolate

Now let’s bring it closer to home:

Drinking Habit Example 1

• Cue: getting home after work
• Routine: reaching into the fridge and cracking open a beer
• Reward: that first long, satisfying exhale

Drinking Habit Example 2

• Cue: feeling anxious walking into a party full of strangers
• Routine: ordering a cocktail and taking a sip
• Reward: the edge comes off, nerves settle

So what glues this loop together?

Our old friend: Craving.

Craving it’s not a flaw of the brain or addiction talking, but a stored habit loop saying: “Hey, I know what happens next—and I want it.”

In fact, craving is what drives the habit loops. 

And once we understand how it works, we can start to work with it—not against it.

Want to hear a quick story about how craving shows up in the brain?
👉 Check out this week’s new Deep Dive video in your library. 

It’ll make a lot of things click.

More soon,
Jeanette