How To Beat Food Cravings
In the last post I wrote about diets that can help you lose weight quick. If you follow a plan like that and want to succeed, you’ll need to know how to beat food cravings.
In fact, however you lose weight, fast or slow, those pesky cravings will come up sooner or later, that’s for certain sure. Why? Because our bodies are made that way. The body figures out that there’s less of a sugar hit coming in than there used to be, and instinctively it yells at you: “GET MORE FOOD!” You may not even be hungry. And guess what? You don’t have to obey.
So here is the key to:
How to beat your food cravings
So when you have followed the fast diet plan for several days, or maybe even several hours, you will start feeling a strong desire to eat something that has some or all of the ingredients that you are avoiding. I won’t name foods because this is one thing to know, that seeing those foods in real life or pictures or even reading their names is likely to make you start fantasizing about eating them.
Stamp on the thought
And fantasizing about eating them is the number one thing NOT to do. The minute one of those foods pops up in your mind you need to stamp on that thought HARD. Avoid that aisle in the store. Walk away from the table in the office where they put the homecooked whatever. And do something else with your mind like find a crossword clue to solve or play a video game. Or if you are in the office, what the hell, you could even do some work 🙂
It’s poison to you
You can also remind yourself that most of the so-called “foods” that the manufacturers and restaurant chains are trying to sell us, are actually NOT REAL FOODS and to anyone who is overweight, they may as well be POISON.
They have been stripped of most of their vitamins and minerals. Then sometimes they add them back to make the stuff sound healthy (which it’s not). Then different chemicals are added to make the product as appealing as possible to the taste buds, and to hell with what it does to our bodies.
Cravings lie to you
The cravings monster LIES to you
Cravings will tell you lies. For example, if you didn’t stamp on the thought quick enough and you find yourself fantasizing about a food, you will likely start believing that your craving is impossible to beat. It feels like the more you resist, the stronger it will grow, until it is overwhelming and you are completely dominated by it and you have no choice but to cave. And since caving is inevitable in the end, you may as well cave now, right?
WRONG! It is a LIE that cravings will grow stronger if you ignore them. Some will feel stronger than others, but the truth is that as you ignore them more and more, they will gradually grow weaker.
If you have ever quit smoking or anything else, you will know this. If not, talk to someone who did. Or just look at them! Say they quit smoking two years ago. Do they look like they are in the grip of a tobacco craving that has grown stronger and stronger over all of those two years, so that now they cannot see a pack of cigarettes without writhing on the floor fighting an overwhelming urge to smoke? No, right?
Maybe they were like that two years ago when they first stopped. Maybe that state got worse for a few days. Maybe they will tell you the third day or the third week was harder than the first (if they even remember). But after that, IT GETS BETTER.
You do not beat food cravings by giving in to them. That’s their lie. You beat them by ignoring them.
See the truth
So when you are hit with a craving, walk away for a second (because moving your body can change what you’re thinking) and just REMEMBER what that food actually did to you. Not the taste of it, which always seems better in our imagination like the old “grass is always greener” proverb. But how you will feel a half hour or an hour after eating it.
Here’s a clue: you’ll feel like shit. You’ll feel like shit because you’ve blown another diet. You’ll feel like shit because that stuff raises your blood pressure and makes your heart pound. And because now you are right back in that addictive cycle where you feel so shit that you actually want more of the stuff to relieve that feeling, even though it’s what put you down in the first place.
Free yourself
Sometimes a diet can seem real restrictive. You may get angry at what feels like a prison. But the truth is the opposite. When we overeat all the time, we are addicted, we are slaves to those chemical non-foods. By resisting the craving, you will be FREE.
And that is how to handle cravings – have a strong determination to be free.
Posted in Weight and Fitness by Finn with no comments yet.
Can I Lose Weight Fast and Keep It Off?
Most of us when we look in the mirror wish we could lose weight fast and then keep it off. But is this even possible? A lot of weight loss websites will tell you that slow is best when it comes to getting rid of that fat on your belly or butt. But why?
If there’s a “secret” to weight loss it’s out there in plain sight: eat less and move your body more. It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, right? It’s also simple to lose weight fast – you just eat a LOT less for a while.
The problem is, that when you do that, your body has defense mechanisms that send you overwhelming messages to EAT and eat a LOT RIGHT NOW. For a while you may resist, but sooner or later very likely you will cave and start on a massive binge. If you don’t watch out, that can leave you at a higher weight than you ever were before.
So the secret to how to lose weight and then keep it off involves ignoring those overwhelming cravings. Frankly, this is easiest if you lose weight slower, so your body has a chance to adapt. Then it won’t panic and flash up EAT! EAT! EAT! in your brain.
But there is another way, and that is to learn to deal with the cravings. So in this post I will look at #1, how to lose weight quick. Then in the next post #2, how to handle the cravings that push you to throw in the towel on your diet.
1. How to lose weight fast
As I said before, the best way to lose fat long term is to take it slow. But maybe you can’t do that because you have a big event coming up like a wedding or high school reunion, and you need to get into that dress or those pants no matter what.
So then what? Well my first tip is to keep your motivation right up there in the stars. Hang that clothing you want to get into on your kitchen door so every time you walk in that kitchen, you are reminded. Photograph your event invitation and make it the screensaver on your phone. Put a sticky note on your credit card so you see it every time you take out the card to pay for food or whatever. Do all you can to make sure that event is in your face all of the time.
I probably don’t need to tell you what diet to follow because most everyone knows the basic rules. If you don’t, then buying the latest diet plan or attending weight watchers may help you figure it out, but basically this is it:
– Eat LESS sugar, flour and fat
– Eat more vegetables, fruits, fish, eggs, and lean meats.
If you’re happy to lose weight fairly slow, you can simply follow that. But if you want that fat off fast, you need to ramp it up a bit, like this:
– Eat nothing that contains sugar (includes mayonnaise) or flour (pasta, bread, sauces). This rules out all fast food.
– Add no oils or fats to anything you prepare (and you or a family member will be preparing pretty much all you eat now).
– Avoid cheese and cream, and drink only fat-free milk.
– Eat no high glycemic foods like rice, potatoes, bananas, mangos, grapes, corn, peas, winter squash.
So your diet will consist entirely of lower carb vegetables (you can find a list easily online), not-so-sweet fruits like berries and green apples, fish, and lean meats.
And before you start wailing about breakfast, I suggest eggs, mushrooms, and tomatoes. It tastes great and will fill you up way longer than the carbs you used to have.
Of course that’s not a sustainable weight loss plan for any long time (although it’s not far from what Dr Now tells his patients to follow for several months before bariatric surgery). Don’t expect to eat this way for life. And have a doctor check it’s safe for you if you have health issues or are taking medication for anything (especially diabetes). But for a few weeks until your wedding or whatever, it should be fine for most people.
In the next article I will look at how to beat your cravings, because that’s the secret to keeping the weight off. So with both of these posts together, you will know how to lose weight fast and keep it off.
Posted in Weight and Fitness by Finn with no comments yet.