Conquer Your Food Cravings

One of the most difficult things to overcome in achieving a change of diet and lifestyle is the food craving, scourge of all well meaning diet wanna bes. In order to control or even eliminate your cravings, you need to understand why you have them. Knowledge is power.

Cravings can be linked to habit, boredom and anxiety. If your craving for a certain type and amount of food comes at the same time each day, you have developed a food habit. If after dinner, you settle into the lounge chair with your glass of red wine, good book and bowl of mixed salted nuts, then you have developed a craving habit. Your body doesn't need these sugary and fatty calories, but because it gets them every day, same time, same location, you are salivating like Pavlov's dog when you come to the prospect of after dinner treats.

You have to break the cycle. You can do this by changing your location (don't settle in the lounge after dinner) or by changing your activity (go for a walk or phone a friend rather than reading a book). You may find that breaking up your dinner into two parts would help. Have a desert of fruit and yogurt about 1 hour after you finish your main meal. This will top up your stomach at the time you are usually looking for your fatty little treats.

You may eat when you are bored. You need to recognize the symptoms and ask yourself "Am I really hungry or am I bored?". Simple, yet effective. If you are bored, you need to find an activity you enjoy to take yourself out of this dead zone. Stuffing your face cannot be the enjoyable activity of choice; find something that engages your mind, not your jaws and stomach acid.

If you are an anxiety eater, you are probably eating a lot of food without even realizing it. It's quite a bit like chewing your nails. If you are anxious, you don't even realize you are chewing your nails till your fingers bleed. As with boredom, you have to learn to recognize the signs of anxiety in yourself and consciously separate that anxiety from the need...the need to feed. Treat your anxiety with something calming, no not another hot chocolate with extra sugar and marshmallows but with a hot bath, some yoga, a walk somewhere nice. You have to realise that there are other ways of dealing with your emotions that are much more positive than anxiety eating.

Of course the mass media are of no help to you, dishing up TV, radio, magazine and website advertising that stresses the importance of fulfilling your every food craving early and often. They are just trying to flog their product to you, cravings are not horrendous addictions that can't be fought off - you do realise that, don't you? See the advertising for what it is, not what it is dressed up to be.

Cravings can be overcome. They are not overwhelming and should be treated by you as a mild irritation not as an irresistible signal to drop everything and eat. Because if you keep on giving in to your cravings, you will never achieve a weight control diet and a healthy lifestyle.

If you really want to lose weight and get fit, you have to look your cravings in the face, recognize them for what they are and move on from them. You can do it, you just have to want to.