When it comes to food cravings, it can seem like the only way to avoid them is to run for hills or staple our lips together so we can’t eat. Food cravings can be very intense and can seem to run our lives, but they don’t have to and we can make our lives easier. This article goes over 5 things you can do to lessen them and gain control.
1. Eat Regularly – When it comes to intense food yearnings, many people find they start to experience them mid afternoon and they continue into the evening. In a society that is highly strung and works, works, works its no surprise that many people skip breakfast. When we skip breakfast though we will experience these in the afternoon and want to eat high fat, high calorie dense foods to make up for the calories we missed out earlier on in the day. It can feel like we never catch up so these food yearnings continue into the evening. If you want to make life easier on yourself make an effort to get breakfast in. Get a high calorie breakfast and you will help avoid problems in the afternoon. Having a large fruit smoothie with 5-10 pieces of fruit (bananas for example with some water) will help you get lots of calories in and feel sustained until lunch. It will also help you avoid the desire for junk foods. Eat regularly and you avoid them a lot more.
2. Keep Occupied – A lot of the cravings we experience in the evening tend to be as a result of television watching. TV watching is actually rather dull and often we desire snacks to help us suppress the feelings of boredom. So if you want to avoid them but usually use this time to watch TV and end up vegging out, try doing something different. Find a new hobbie, get creative – paint, learn an instrument, dance, or exercise. Use your evening productively and enjoy it and snacking will be a thing of the past.
3. Help Minimize Them – Sometimes no matter what we do we feel like we just need something in our mouths to take the distraction away from our craved food. You could try chewing gum or sucking on a lollipop to ease the feelings. The more you overcome them and don’t binge on the food you crave, the easier they will be to deal with and less you will need to rely on brushing your teeth and chewing gum to help suppress them.
4. Water – Another thing you can do is drink plenty of water. Some of us confused signals of hunger. What we may very well need is water – so make sure you are hydrated and drink lots before considering eating.
5. Wait it out – Sometimes just waiting 10-15 minutes is enough for the it to go away. There are plenty of things you can do to distract yourself in this time. If you find it difficult to think of something make a list so that when you are experiencing the desire to eat something when you aren’t hungry, you can just pick something off the list to do. Once you get past it you will feel much more empowered and feel more confident in your ability to kick the next craving to the curb.
These 5 tips are a great starting point for anyone wanting to overcome overeating for good.
Struggling with emotional eating? Check out our article on how to stop emotional eating and stop cravings for good.
No related posts.