How to Prevent Craving for Food?

If you are craving for food, this article is for you.

Many people out there who are either overweight or obese, are having this issue, a big time.

Food Craving.

It is the one single biggest cause that is not letting many live a "lean and lighter" life!

If you are in this category and want to seriously stop craving food, some of the ideas below can help you.

🍽️ Hydration:

When you don't hydrate enough, you misplace your signals for thirst to hungry. If you drink water, it might be enough but you end up eating more calories!

When you are hungry, drink a glass of water. Most of the time, you are fine and do not really need to eat. If you are still hungry 30 minutes after drinking that glass of water, you may be really hungry and can eat.

🍽️ Good nutrient ingredients in your food:

When you eat balanced protein, fiber, low GI carbohydrates, and healthy fats, your satiety gets much better preventing you from eating further. Take help from nutritionists/coaches to arrive at how you should eat your meals in a well-balanced way.

🍽️ Never skip meals:

It is one of the biggest dysregulations in your blood sugar levels that causes cravings. Eat timely to maintain your blood sugar levels.

🍽️ Become aware of triggers:

Identify what causes you to eat. Hunger should be the only thing that should make you eat. Eating for taste and sensory pleasures should be very rare. You are the only one who can know how often you are eating for pleasure vs. hunger.

🍽️ Prevent stress:

Stress is by far one of the major reasons why people crave food. Practice mindfulness techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and pursuing relaxing hobbies to reduce your stress levels.

When you go under stress, you release more cortisol hormone which comes in the way of two other hormones which are expected to keep you satiated/feel full(Leptin) and feel hungry(Ghrelin) at the right time.

🍽️ Physical activities:

Those who are regular in physical activities crave less in general. Their hormones work better vs. someone who is very sedentary.

Another reason is that, when one doesn't get enough physical activity, they tend to have more fat cells in the body which further increases their resting metabolism(RMR), because they have to feed more calories to just survive!

An additional insight is that you don't have to overtrain than needed. When you overtrain you cause stress to yourself which in turn makes you eat more than needed!

🍽️ Get enough sleep:

When you don't get enough sleep and restfulness, your hormones in the body go for a toss. None of the hormones would work as expected and that causes you to crave more. Get 7-8 hours of sleep per day. Never compromise. This is very foundational among all the other reasons for craving.

🍽️ Mindful eating:

Chewing food and eating slowly is very essential to send the right signals about feeling full to our brain. When you eat faster and do not chew well, you tend to overeat calories, causing you to eat more.

Here is one of my LinkedIn posts throwing more details about chewing well.

🍽️ Healthier alternatives:

Without replacing bad choices of foods with good choices, it would become difficult to cut cravings. For example, if you feel like eating chocolate (less filling, high calorie), try to eat fruit (less calorie, more filling). And you also fulfill your craving for sweet taste in a healthy way!

🍽️ Prevent HFSS food items( High Fat Sugar Salt food items):

Any food with high fat (ice creams), high sugar (donuts, high sugar soft drinks), and high salt (most frozen food items!), (or even higher spice levels), is expected to cause cravings in you. Once you stop eating foods of those types, your craving will naturally go down.

Deep inside you, your craving is not really for food. You are craving peacefulness, happiness, less-cluttered life, restfulness, better self-management, and more, but when you don't get enough of them, you tend to divert your attention toward eating!

When you discover this truth, you would automatically take up responsibility for your health, and well-being, and stop eating excessively or more often.

Many of my customers who craved coffee/tea too many times in the day, now take only one or two and are feeling much healthier, as they are losing weight better and are reversing their diabetes condition.

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I am an experienced health and wellness coach helping individuals with running, fitness, nutrition, weight management, and type-2 diabetes reversal.

Do you want to transform your health and wellness? DM me for a free consultation.

Here's my LinkedIn profile - Ganesh Kuduva