Do your food cravings always win?
Can you count the diets you’ve been on that were wiped out because your cravings got the best of you?
It seems we can make all kinds of good decisions to eat healthy, exercise, REALLY lose weight this time. Then we get a little stressed, or we catch the aroma of something, or we see someone else eating what we love. It is at that moment that all resistance and willpower fade away and we give in to our cravings!
Satisfying the craving often fills us with guilt or even self hatred. We feel like a failure because once again we have let the craving be in control. This lowers our self-esteem and we enter a cycle of not feeling good about ourselves and satisfying our craving because it provides comfort.
So what are some ways to deal with cravings? Here are a few ideas.
1. The food you crave should NEVER enter your home. Your family may complain, but work on getting them on your side. Explain that this is for your health and sanity and you need their support.
2. When you get a really bad craving, STOP and first drink a glass of water. Then, set the timer if you have to, but wait 15 minutes before you give in to your craving. Chances are it will have passed.
3. Table grazing at a party is very dangerous. First, graze at the vegetable end, but don’t really graze. You need to pick up the food and put it on your plate. Then you need to relocate! MOVE away from the table and engage someone in conversation. Oh, yes, keep a glass of water with you.
4. When you see someone eating what you crave, turn around, move away from them, and go look for a glass of water. Our bodies are satisfied when we give them water and that helps our cravings to stay away.
Is there a connection between weight loss and cravings? Don’t you think that if your cravings didn’t flare up you could more easily stay on your choice of healthy foods? If you didn’t crave anything, then you wouldn’t be putting the extra calories in your body. To say nothing of the sugar, sodium, and fat! Also, you wouldn’t be losing control and lowering your self-esteem. Dealing with your cravings should make your weight loss easier to attain.
Cravings can also be controlled with one of these methods:
1. Hypnotherapy can help your subconscious mind find the reason for your cravings. Once your subconscious has figured it out, your conscious mind can then control this emotional connection to eating a food you crave.
2. Another method is Emotional Freedom Technique. This is also called Tapping. Tapping helps the negative energy in your body change to positive energy. At this point, your cravings dissipate and your reaction to this food you crave is neutralized.
This is a very difficult issue for people to deal with. At the moment of the craving, they lose control and forget to think. Don’t do that. If nothing else, get started being in charge of your cravings by grabbing a big glass of water. Force yourself to drink that before you give in to your cravings. You’ll be glad you did and that will be your start of being in control.
Once you’ve downed the water, you might want to look in to one of the alternative solutions. They are systems that really do work!