7 Natural Ways to Control
Your Cravings
You can lose weight by overcoming your
cravings now. Here are the latest tricks of the trade from
researchers and experts:
Avoid your Triggers
“You crave what you eat,so if you
switch what your’re eating, you can weaken your old cravings
and strengthen new ones.” Says Marcia Pelchat, PHD, of the
Monell Center. This can happen pretty fast. For five days,
her study volunteers drank bland dietary7-supplement
beverages. During that time, they craved fewer of their
trigger foods. By the end of the study, the volunteers
actually wanted the suppements instead The first few days
are always the hardest, and you probably can’t completely
eliminate your old cravings. But the longer you avoid your
trigger foods, the less likely you may be to want them. In
fact, You’ll probably begin to crave the foods you eat, a
real bonus if you’ve switched to fresh fruit.
Destroy Temptation
If you’ve succumbed to a craving and
bought a box of cookies or some other trigger food and start
to feel bad while eating it, destroy it. “Don’t just throw
it away, run water over it, ruin it. You’ll feel a
sense of accomplishment that you’ve licked your binge,” says
Caroline Apovian, MD, director, Nutrition and Weight
Management Center at Boston Medical Center. Don’t think
about the money you’re wasting. If the cookies don’t go into
the garbage, they’re going straight to your hips or gut.
Go Nuts
Drink two glasses of water and eat an
ounce of nuts (6 walnuts, 12 almonds, or 20 peanuts). Within
20 minutes, this can extinguish your craving and dampen your
appetite by changing your body chemistry, says RD’s “Health
IQ” columnist Michael F. Roizen, MD.
Quench your Appetite
Instead of reaching for a candy bar try
a diet soda. Sure, carbonation may not be the best thing for
you; however, the calories you save by quenching your
appetite can make a lot of difference.
Let it Go
Since stress is a huge trigger
for cravings, learning to deal with it could potentially
save you hundreds of calories a day. This will take some
practice. You can try deep breathing or visualizing a
serence scene on your own, or you can speed things up by
buying one of the many CDs that teach progressive muscle
relaxation. A good one is Relaxation/Affirmation Techniques
by nancy Hopps (available at rd.com/relax).
Take a Power Nap
Cravings sneak up when we’re tired.
Focus on the fatigue. Shut the door, close your eyes,
re-energize.
Get Minty Fresh
Brush your teeth; gargle with
mouthwash. “When you have a fresh, clean mouth, you don’t
want to mess it up,” says Molly Gee, RD, of Baylor College
of Medicine in Houston.
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