Controlling food cravings is extremely important for anyone who has decided they must lose weight.
It is in those moments of weakness that all the progress you've made on a diet can be lost.
Here are some simple tips and tricks that made it possible for me to finally transition to a super healthy diet that has ended my worries about excess weight forever.
#1) Take a complete mineral preparation.
Many times, food cravings are just your body's way of telling you there is some nutrient your body is lacking.
(Your body might not be able to tell you specifically, "I need some selenium," so your mind just assumes that a big dish of ice cream is the answer to controlling your food cravings.
) #2) Avoiding very calorie-restrictive diets is important in controlling food cravings.
When your body is actually STARVING for carbohydrates, its favorite source of energy, you will find it hard to think about anything else.
You need a diet you can live with -- one that will let you eat all you want of healthy foods.
Success in losing weight comes from eating foods that are nutrient dense, but low in calories.
#3) Exercise serves to stave off food cravings.
At the same time, it fills your mind with endorphins, the body's natural painkillers and mood elevators, leaving you feeling contented without eating.
Here, again, we're assuming you're getting enough energy from your diet so that you'll feel like exercising.
#4) Avoid even minute traces of food ingredients that trigger food cravings.
For me, the primary trigger ingredient is sugar in any form.
If there is sugar added to bread or a soup I'm eating, it will trigger a craving for more.
The easy way around this is to read ingredient labels for any food you are considering buying.
(An even better solution is to cook most or all of your foods from scratch, when possible.
) Besides sugar, there are many flavor-enhancers such as MSG and many related chemicals such as hydrolyzed plant protein, soy protein isolate, and yeast extract which are "excitotoxins" -- these are neurotoxins purposely added to our foods to make us eat more.
They are not only dangerous to your diet, but also can kill nerve and brain cells.
(Google "Russell Blaylock, MD, excitotoxins" for more info about these poisons in our food and their effect on food cravings.
) #5) One mental trick that has been very helpful to me is to remember that processed foods manufacturers will do whatever they can to cause us to eat more of their products.
They employ scientists to make sure we have food cravings!They add sugar to everything from breakfast cereals to bread, from salad dressing to spaghetti sauce -- all for the purpose of making us eat more.
I would suggest you develop an attitude of stubborn determination that they will not profit by their devious tricks to get you to give in to food cravings.
Refuse to watch food-commercial-filled TV programming.
#6) Understanding why losing weight is important to your health is very helpful in resisting the subtle mental triggers that cause lapses in your diet.
It is a fact that our unhealthy diet of too much fat, sugar, and refined carbohydrates is responsible for most of the chronic degenerative disease in the developed world.
A healthy vanity -- a desire to look and feel our best -- is also a useful motivator in controlling food cravings.
#7) Limit your intake of caffeine and alcohol.
Both of these can be triggers for giving in to food cravings.