When you overindulge in any of your physical cravings, such as food, drink, or sex, you find that after the instant gratification passes, you will feel worse than you did before. There really is no happiness from overindulging in the physical. Even that moment of instant gratification is not really happiness. It is more of an addiction.
These physical cravings have such power over us because we place value in them, but at the same time feel guilty about it and try to push them away, which only makes us want them more. The only way to truly break the addiction of physical cravings is to realize they have no value. It may be helpful to allow yourself to overindulge guilt free in your physical craving, but afterwards be aware of how you feel. Is this what you really want? Is this happiness? You usually find that if we listen to our physical cravings rather than just the simple needs of our body, physically we feel bad.
So you release the physical cravings not because they are evil or forbidden or filled with guilt. All that is physical is neutral. We truly release the power they have over us if we realize they have no value, will not bring us happiness, and can only bring us pain. The pain of constant needing and lacking. The pain of emptiness when we constantly overindulge in that craving, only to need more and more because it never truly makes us content.
Nor do we want to go to the other extreme. To deny or restrict our physical needs is just as bad. To deny these basic physical needs, by over dieting, fasting, restricting or avoiding sex, will place value in it where it does not belong. If we push it away, we must fear it because it has some power, and that means we still place great value in it in our minds. Then the craving will still be there.
So food, drink, sex, and other physical needs, should be looked up without guilt, without special need, just neutral. Just like peeing or pooping, something that should be done for the maintenance of our physical body. Be present and listen to your body. When you are full, stop eating. When you are sexually excited, have sex or masturbate and stop dwelling on it. Satisfy them and even appreciate them without guilt, but do not dwell on them or give them a false function. Do not use them to fill the inner sense of lack and scarcity. That deep hunger inside cannot be filled by anything physical or external, but only by reconnecting with the Oneness with Source and the love inside you.
