May

5 Simple Tips To Stop Food Cravings

Food cravings can be very intense and can rule our lives. They can also cause us to overeating and emotionally numb ourselves. They seem impossible to overcome, but with the tips in this article, they can be easier to overcome than you think.

1. Eat A Good Diet - Many people find that they experience food cravings in the afternoon and will tend to snack and binge on high fat, high calorie foods like chips, cookies and chocolate. These intense hunger pangs/yearnings then will spill over into the evening and the high fat, high calorie food binge doesn’t seem to end. Usually many people have these in the afternoon because they skip breakfast or just haven’t had time to eat properly earlier on in the day. The best thing to do is make an effort to eat a large calorie dense breakfast. This will help prevent those afternoon craves and will set you up for eating properly. If you don’t eat regularly you will experience the desire for high density foods, so make things easier on yourself by eating regularly to avoid them.

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. Drink Water - It’s very simple but many of us to forget to keep topped up on water during the day. We are so distracted by life that we can often confuse thirst for hunger and this can result in cravings. Try drinking plenty of water before considering to eat any food.

5. Just Wait - Cravings only last about 15 minutes at the most. This can feel like a long time if you just sit and wait for it to pass. Instead wait by doing something else. Go for a walk, get some housework done or exercise. Distract yourself for 15 minutes and you will be surprised how quickly it would have passed.

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.