How To Resist The Food Cravings

A lot of people struggle to keep resisting the cravings for the foods/treats they love. They may eat well for a period of time but ultimately can’t keep it up and fall back into bad habits. As a result their weight yo-yo’s up and down sometimes over the entire course of their lives. If this sounds like you, you need to find some new strategies to help you. If you keep trying the same method again and again you will end up with the same results. Which not only puts your weight back to square one (or maybe worse) but it is another psychological scar as well. The more of these you get the less motivated you are about the ideal of weight loss and your ability to be able to achieve and sustain it. Today’s blog is based on simple (but incredibly effective) tips on how to resist the food cravings.

What Is Your Process?

Everyone has a slightly different process around food cravings. Working out what yours is, is part of the battle. When do you typically eat the foods you know you shouldn’t be eating? Is it when you are stressed? Sad? Angry? Is it at home? When you are out?

Most people repeat the same process over and over again. So have a think and figure out what yours is. This will allow you to be ready for it to happen rather than it just happening to you. You need to take control of the situation, not the other way round.

Once you have worked this out, you can employ all of the following tips to help you handle the situation better.

1/ Wait 10 minutes

This works really well for a lot of people. When you are in a situation when you have a craving or opportunity to eat something you want to be able to resist, just tell yourself to wait 10 minutes. Rather than telling yourself you can’t have it and having an internal battle about it, simply tell yourself to wait 10 minutes and then if you still want it, you can have it. You will be amazed how often after the 10 minutes is up (and maybe you have employed the other strategies below as well) the craving has actually passed. Not telling yourself you ‘can’t’ have it is very powerful.

2/ Drink glass of water

This can definitely be used together with point 1. We are often actually dehydrated when we think we are hungry. So when you have a craving drink a glass of water and then see if you still have the craving 5/10 minutes later. The fluid filling the stomach often does the trick and you won’t be hungry anymore.

3/ Don’t change everything (at least not all at once)

This is more of an overall point but a very important one. If you change everything that you usually do and enjoy in order to lose weight it’s going to be very hard to stick with over time. In fact the less you can change the more successful you are likely to be. Of course you have to change enough to lose weight, but try to focus on building better, healthier, sustainable habits into your life, rather than trying to simply change everything and focusing on losing weight as quickly as possible. So if you like a drink allow yourself to do that once or twice a week. If you love a particular food allow yourself that treat once a week. As long as you are good the rest of the time this won’t stop you losing weight. And it should make it feel less like a diet and more like a lifestyle change.

Conclusion – How To Resist The Food Cravings

These are 3 simple strategies but I have personally seen them make a huge difference to people’s weight loss success. So give them a go!