Ten Tips to Pulverize Your Food Cravings During Weight Loss

Your doctor told you that you need to lose weight and you’re trying so hard. All the experts say “Eat fewer calories.” But that’s easy for them to say—they’re not the ones trying to lose the weight! The problem for you may come mostly at night when you sit down to watch a few TV shows. You feel that pang and hear rumbling; it’s your stomach asking you for something sweet like that dish of ice cream or crunchy like that big bowl of popcorn with extra butter.

The sad truth is that food cravings are unavoidable. Whether you make a few or many changes to your eating habits will determine the magnitude of your cravings. However, you don’t need to let your stomach rule your head. Meeting your weight loss goals will mean managing your food cravings and pushing past your urges. How is that possible, you ask? With these great tips, of course!

Eat Frequently

We were always taught that you should eat three meals each day. However, in today’s world that’s not always easy to do and if you’re trying to lose weight you may need to create a new meal plan. It’s never a good idea to go for long periods between meals. Doing so could cause you to choose unhealthy, sugary foods which will make you feel hungry and tired because your blood glucose level will rise and fall. To keep food cravings under control and maintain normal blood sugar levels, you should eat small meals every three or four hours. If you don’t, you’ll get too hungry and this could compel you to make bad food choices and eat more than you should.

However, eating more often doesn’t mean choosing processed foods. Processed foods are unhealthy and loaded with salt, sugar and fat. You need to decrease the amount of processed foods that you eat as well as frozen foods like frozen pizza, frozen appetizers and dinners; frozen fruits and vegetables are okay to eat though but in moderation. Eating more natural fruit sugars might help diminish those cravings.

Drink Lots of Water

To remain healthy, each person should be drinking six or seven 8 oz. of water each day. But did you know that sometimes you can confuse hunger for being thirsty? That’s right. Drinking a cold glass of water will motivate your metabolism to warm up that water to your body’s temperature. This will burn calories, fill you up so your time between snacks is extended and you’ll get a bonus increase in energy. So the next time you get a craving, pick up that nice, cold, 8 oz. glass of water.

Get Full with Fiber

While some foods are loaded with calories and will increase your weight as well as your appetite, there are other foods that will stamp out your powerful cravings and provoke your body to burn off fat. Yes, burn fat!

What is this mysterious food? It’s fiber. Foods that contain lots of fiber will fill up your stomach quickly because these foods add more to your meals; this is what’s known as a high-volume food. Research has shown that those who were allowed to consume as much of the high-volume, low-calorie foods as they wanted ate less during the day and at their meals.

There’s an abundance of fiber in raw vegetables and fruit but whole grains, oatmeal, beans, brown rice, nuts, bran cereal and popcorn are also great sources of fiber.

Drink Herbal Tea

Sipping on one cup of decaffeinated herbal tea during the day or evening will restrain any food craving you have—particularly sugary and sweet foods—in addition to keeping your mouth and hands occupied. There are a few herbal teas that actually encourage fat burning!

Eat Slower

Are you one of those people that wolf down your meal to satisfy that food craving? If you are, you’re not doing yourself any favors; this only adds inches to your waistline and it’s entirely nonessential.

You’d be better off taking a longer time to eat your food. The brain requires 20 minutes to receive word from the stomach that it’s had enough food. When you eat quickly, you might still feel hungry but, really, your brain just hasn’t gotten the “I’m full” message from your stomach yet. So what you need to do is chew your food slowly and thoroughly—28 times per bite—and always set your fork onto the table or dish in between bites. Try sitting down as a family and talking to each other; this will give you something more to do than just chewing and swallowing your food. When you’re almost full, put your fork down and stop eating; after about 10 minutes you can determine if you’d like to eat more. Most likely you’ll be full.

Establish a Food Curfew

At nighttime is when the most dangerous cravings occur. Your body is in “rest mode” at that time and if you gobble up those cookies or that ice cream before you go to bed, your body can’t burn off those calories—and we all know what that leads to: the dreaded weight gain.

If you haven’t gotten the required amount of sleep, your body puts out a hormone that makes you long for foods with carbohydrates and sugar. You should create a food curfew of 8:00 or 8:30 PM and stay with it. By the time you retire to bed, it’s likely that the craving might have gone away and you’ll have forgotten all about it.

Consume Green Vegetables

Fiber and nutrients are packed into green vegetables and the best part is green vegetables don’t have any calories. You won’t have to be concerned about gaining weight and you’ll actually become full when you eat green vegetables. So the next time you get a really strong craving that just won’t go away, don’t reach for that sugary donut but rather grab green veggies.

Calm Down

You need to consider the source of your food cravings because most times there’s a reason for it other than hunger. Many people eat when they get angry, stressed, depressed or bored. Does this sound like you? If so, try different activities to ease your mind and set those endorphins free. Some good activities to release endorphins are: meditating, exercising, writing in a journal or just talking to a good friend. Doing one or all of these activities might just help with your food cravings.

Treat Yourself

Never deprive yourself of your favorite kind of foods; this will just lead to a routine craving. What you need to do is come up with a way of controlling your cravings rather than thinking of some foods as off limits. Just let yourself enjoy those foods in moderation once a week or once a month. If you want that dish of ice cream, go ahead but just give yourself one or two scoops instead of the usual three.

This isn’t just true for sugary foods but fat as well. If you purchase all non-fat or low-fat foods, this could work against you instead of for you and you’ll end up having more powerful cravings which will eventually win out and destroy your weight loss plan. You can’t cut out fat altogether when you’re trying to lose weight. Why? Simply put, fat makes you feel full. There are healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids that are beneficial to your skin and health. So, again, it’s okay to indulge in two slices of pizza from your favorite pizza place once a month.

Exercise!

Exercise sets forth endorphins into your blood which manages your impulse to eat. Endorphins affect your mood in a positive way and your mood can sometimes impact your need to eat. It’s all connected! Exercising for 30 minutes per day will not only assist you with losing weight but improve your health. If you have cravings at certain times of the day, try performing your exercise program at that particular time. A good cardio workout such as aerobics or a brisk walk on the treadmill will achieve your weight loss goals.

It can be quite a challenge to rearrange your eating habits and lose weight. But it’s not an impossible challenge. Follow these reliable tips to squash those food cravings and you’ll have no problem decreasing your calorie consumption, making healthier food decisions and losing your fat forever.