Craving is widely described as a strong desire, one that threatens our agency by overriding self-control, intentions, and choice. While the harmful effects of craving on individuals’ well-being are extensively studied, the experiential qualities of the craving process - and how they unfold over time - have received little attention. Our ongoing qualitative study which uses both first- and second-person phenomenological methods investigates the lived experience of craving in the context of compulsive overeating. Participants are asked to provide first-person reports of their craving experiences using a journaling app throughout the week. These app entries serve to identify salient craving episodes, which then are recalled and systematically explored in a phenomenological interview at the end of the week. Building on findings from a pilot study, our current work is guided by two working hypotheses: i. craving has an absorbing structure in that it progressively narrows one’s attentional scope, and over time increasingly dominates one’s imaginative and perceptual capacities; ii. participants’ sense of ‘losing control’ is closely linked to their altered experience of time during craving.