Strategies To Help Control Food Cravings

I recently wrote about how eating fat can help keep you satisfied longer after a meal. What are some other strategies to help keep cravings at bay?

First, eat real food. Anyone who has tried to snack their way to good health – even if it’s with healthy snacks – is going to be frustrated. Protein bars, nuts, celery sticks, and baby carrots are all fine snacks. But some people try to eat those in lieu of a full meal. I’ve found that picking at snacks all day only increases hunger. Have a real meal at mealtime, and eat snacks as snacks.

Next, if you can use Kaufmann 1 substitutes for the foods you crave, you’ll eventually crave the substitutes. For example, Denni recently posted her cauliflower pizza crust recipe. Not only do I not miss doughy pizza crust anymore, I actually crave the cauliflower! It’s the same way with her chocolate avocado pudding. When you find recipes that have real Kaufmann 1 foods in them, and you commit to eating them exclusively for a period of time, you’ll eventually find that the junk food just feels empty and uninteresting. It loses its appeal after a while.

Begin by eating until you are full. I counseled a couple once that said they were always hungry. The man said he ate half of a chicken breast and a spoonful of steamed veggies for lunch. When I told him to go ahead and have some more veggies and don’t be afraid of the other half of the chicken breast, he looked alarmed. “What about the calories?” he asked.

Calories aren’t irrelevant, but they aren’t the most crucial feature of a great diet. Especially when you’re just starting out. When you switch from a diet of fake, processed foods to a diet of healthy, real foods, you may find that your stomach growls a little more than usual. It’s just the price of change. Initially, you may need to eat a little more volume to stay satisfied. Eventually, you can play around with calories if you like, (I do that, but only because I’m a geek), but eating a clean Kaufmann 1 Diet is by far more important than calorie counting.

Finally, don’t underestimate what fiber can do for you. Vegetables and berries both have the advantage of being loaded with nutrients AND loaded with fiber. This helps you stay full and decreases blood sugar spikes. I also like adding fiber to my smoothies to help arrest hunger.

(Speaking of blood sugar spikes, I can’t emphasize enough how blood sugar stability can help with cravings. Our friend, Guy Evans, has the blood sugar mainstay, chromium picolinate. It an inexpensive supplement that helps maintain normal blood sugar levels, which helps blunt out of control cravings.)

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