How to Manage Cravings
Eat more fiber. Eating foods with fiber, like green leafy vegetables will help to fill you up and control cravings. Fiber keeps your blood sugar stable and keeps you full longer therefore helping to keep cravings to a minimum. When you are consistently experiencing cravings you should look to increase fiber daily to help control those cravings.
*When you increase fiber be sure to increase your water intake too.
Don’t go too long without eating. Allowing too much time between meals can cause you to be over hungry resulting in eating anything you can get your hands on. Try not to skip meals and eat well balanced meals containing lean proteins, vegetables and complex carbs ever few hours. When you feed your body healthy nutritious foods you will be less likely to experience cravings.
Avoid fake sugars they will only cause a rebound effect. Sweet & Low, Equal, and Splenda are all artificial sweeteners. They are not found in nature and have all been made from chemicals to imitate the flavor. The use of fake sugar and only causes your body to crave more sugar. If you are craving sugar try to eat some fruit that will give you the same sweet taste you can be craving.
Practice Moderation. If you are having a craving for a particular food go and eat that food, in moderation. Instead of eating the whole bag of chips in one sitting try to just eat a handful. Moderation takes practice so go ahead and experiment with it. Can you eat just one cookie and not the whole tray of them?
Avoid Triggers. You know that donut shop that you walk by on your way to work that smells oh so good everyday and makes you crave a morning donut? Well, instead of walking that certain block to work everyday switch up your routine so it doesn’t trigger that craving. Do some introspection and figure out what triggers your cravings and try to avoid them or make an alternative instead.
Stick to a Plan. When you are on a schedule and eat your meals and snacks around the same time every day you are more likely keep cravings at bay. Also, knowing that when you experience cravings, like after dinner or when it’s a certain time of the month and having a plan on how to deal with those cravings helps. Being prepared can take the stress out of handling cravings.
Eat more protein. Lean proteins like chicken, turkey, fish, and eggs can help to keep you full longer, stabilize blood sugar and keep you from experience cravings. When you focus your meals on lean proteins, fiber and complex carbohydrates you are less likely to experience blood sugar swings that can cause cravings.
Controlling Stress can help to curb cravings because stress can raise cortisol (the stress hormone) triggering cravings. When we take part in activities to help us lower our cortisol and gives us an outlet for stress it helps our body to reduce inflammation and keep our blood sugar stable resulting in less cravings.
Sleep. When you are deprived of sleep your cravings for sugar and fats will increase. When you are sleep deprived you get less glucose to the brain and your brain needs glucose to survive. So when your brain is deprived of sleep it craves glucose to work. When you brain is deprived of glucose, your brain knows that simple sugars, like cookies, candy, cakes, will give you an immediate increase of blood sugar to the brain. Have you ever noticed that you never crave a salad at 2am! It’s usually cookies, cake or pizza! Your body knows that it needs to survive so biology will always win over willpower.
Green Tea. Green tea can help you to stop mindlessly snacking, and the catechins in green tea help to inhibit the movement of glucose into fat cells, which slows the rise of blood sugar and prevents high insulin and subsequent fat storage. And when your blood sugar is more stable so is your hunger.
Cinnamon. Next time you have oatmeal, fruit, or even coffee, sprinkle some cinnamon on it. Cinnamon, like other ground spices such as cloves and ginger, helps lower your blood sugar levels, which—you guessed it—helps to control your appetite!
Craving Cocoa. My friends at Metabolic Effect have come out with this amazing product called Craving Cocoa. It has all of the things you you need to control cravings in one product. This has been life changing for me over the last few years. It feels like I am eating chocolate and it is helping me to crush all other cravings.
