5 Ways To Combat Your Food Cravings
It’s 9pm, you’re trying hard not to think about that ice-cream tub in the freezer. But your thoughts keep drifting back to it. You crack. You get the tub, toss the lid aside and grab a spoon. Before you know it, the entire tub is finished, you feel sick, and you’ve succumbed to another food craving.
If this is you, you’re not alone. Over 80% of people have intense food cravings, usually for high-sugar or high-fat foods. Indulging in your cravings every now and then is perfectly healthy, however, when we let our food cravings take over, they can wreak havoc with our weight and health.
Here are 5 science-backed ways to help you combat your food cravings.
1. Stop Dieting
When we put ourselves on a low-calorie diet or detox, our bodies freak out and go into feast-famine mode. This means we obsess more about food and crave the sugary or fatty foods we’re not allowed.
Dieting sets your body and mind up for intense cravings and it’s responsible for those binges!
According to a research paper in Appetite journal, dieters experience stronger cravings that were more difficult to resists than non-dieters.
It’s time to get off the diet-binge rollercoaster and start to tune into your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals and eat mindfully.
2. Eat Filling Foods
It’s important to eat enough healthy and filling foods to keep you going for longer. These include fiber-rich foods such as vegetables, fruit and oats, as well as protein-rich foods such as beans and lentils, meats, fish and dairy foods.
These foods take longer to digest, which means they stay in your stomach for longer, releasing energy slowly – keeping you fuller for longer, with less risk of food cravings.
Need a healthy snack idea? Why not try this delicious white bean dip snack here.
3. Enjoy Pleasure Foods
It’s important to include some of your favorite foods in your diet. Completely restricting any food will set you up to crave that exact food! That’s because as human beings we are wired to seek out pleasure in our food, it’s how our body motivates us to eat. So, when you deny yourself, your body rebels and makes you obsess about that forbidden food.
Make all foods available to eat, and ensure you include your favorite foods as part of your healthy eating. Aim for the 90/10 guideline, meaning 90% of your food choices are healthy, while 10% are pleasure foods. Just make sure you sit down, eat mindfully and savor it.
4. Reduce Your Sugar Intake
Sugar can become an addictive taste, releasing a feel-good chemical in your brain called dopamine. A small amount of sugar in our diet is healthy but when it becomes overloaded in our diet, it can lead to inflammation, feeling bloated and lethargic and lead to more cravings.
Take a good look at what you’re eating and drinking and see if you can make any simple sugar swaps.
Examples are opting for plain yoghurt and adding berries instead of buying fruit-flavored yoghurt, eating whole fresh fruit instead of fruit juice, opting for trail mix instead of muffins, and choosing dark chocolate over milk chocolate.
5. Sleep Well & Stress Less
Sleep is very closely linked to food cravings.
Research shows that not getting enough good quality sleep triggers the area in your brain called the amygdala to crave high calorie foods.
It’s your body’s way of trying to prop itself up during the day.
Ensure that you’re going to bed at a reasonable hour (no more Netflix binges til 3am!) and getting up at the same time every day. Your bedroom should be a comfortable temperature, dark and have no distractions that keep you awake such as a blinking TV or lively pets.
Stress is also linked to eating more junk food and intense food cravings. It’s important to pinpoint when you’re eating for stress or emotion rather than real hunger, and then find ways to cope with this stress without using food.
This can be anything from doing gentle exercise, playing with a pet, getting outside in nature, or taking up a new fun hobby. First step is recognizing when you’re eating for stress and what is triggering it.
Next time you have a food craving, don’t panic. Just take a moment to breathe, think about where it’s coming from and aim to set yourself up for healthy success with these 5 ways to combat your food cravings.