Resist Naughty Food Cravings

Many foods could be viewed as "naughty" when consuming them results in unusual behavior (disguising it, lying, etc.), or leaves you with feelings of guilt, remorse, and dissatisfaction. For example, it might be the chocolate, cookies, cakes, and fast food that you crave even though you're trying hard to keep healthy or to a certain weight but you're justifying "just one or two" here and there every day. Make good new habits to prevent yourself from giving into those cravings.

Steps

Keeping “Naughty Foods” Away

1. Don't buy forbidden foods. Make it hard for you to give in. Don't have them sitting around the house tempting you and drawing you in. Resist the temptation to buy naughty foods just because they're on special. Cutting these foods out of your weekly grocery bill will help you save money and keep you from indulging your cravings at weak moments.
   • Ask family members or other members of the household to hide their stashes of naughty foods from you.
   • If you’re worried about giving in at the grocery store, ask someone else to do your shopping for you.
2. Don’t carry cash. If you are tempted by the vending machine that you walk by every day at work or school, make it impossible for yourself to buy anything. Even if your vending machines take cards, using a card will give you an extra bit of time to think about what you’re doing and keep yourself from actually buying that food.
3. Distract yourself. If it’s 2 am and you’re craving that naughty food, get online and find something else to do -- a funny video, a new album, a personality quiz -- anything to keep you from thinking and obsessing over food. Get involved in a TV show and reward yourself with a new episode every time you don’t give into a craving.

Identifying Your Cravings

1. Determine your naughty foods. Identify the foods you don't want to or should not be eating for nutritional, diet, health, religious, or other reasons but you're indulging in anyway. Think about why they are appealing to you – is there some taste or attribute that you get from those foods that you don’t have in your diet? Some examples that commonly apply include:
   • Fast food on a regular basis, such as fries, burgers, hot dogs, fried anything, etc.
   • Pastries, cakes, cookies, doughnuts, and other baked goods.
   • Sugary breakfast cereals.
   • Fat-laden dishes.
   • Chocolate and candies.
   • Foods that bring on a headache or migraine, hives, rashes, or a general feeling of unwellness (this does not refer to foods that result in severe, life-threatening allergic reactions – you'll be more than aware you can't indulge in those).
   • Foods that seem to impact your complexion or your energy levels poorly.
   • Foods that are not supposed be eaten because of your faith-based or other beliefs, such as meat, beef, ham, pork, unfiltered drinking water, etc.
   • Foods that leave you feeling guilty or remorseful for eating.
2. Find your physical triggers. Keep a food journal to see how your life, how you feel, and food are linked. Note what you eat, how you feel, and when you feel cravings. It's important to focus on what causes you to indulge in naughty foods so that you can seek appropriate treatment or remedies. Cravings for food have a number of possible causes, and in some cases it's probably a good idea to discuss the problem with your doctor. In general, the following reasons can trigger food cravings:
   • Blood sugar levels and Give Insulin Shots levels are not being maintained evenly throughout the day. After spiking, a drop in blood sugar levels can bring on cravings.
   • Convenience – some foods, like highly salted, fatty snacks, or sugary ones, are really easy to find in packages and gobble down without any preparation needed. The saltiness or sweetness makes them even more crave-worthy.
   • Sleep deprivation – whether caused by emotional stress, a medical condition, or some other reason, a lack of sleep can cause you to crave food as a solution to your tiredness.
   • Pregnancy – cravings during pregnancy can involve foods or non-foods such as clay (known as "pica" when the craving is not for food).
   • Menopause – women's tastebuds undergo significant changes for post-menopausal women, causing them to crave sweet foods because, ironically, they are less able to taste sweetness.
   • Habit – you may simply be so used to a food that you cannot stop indulging in it even though it's not good for you. This is generally a thoughtless form of consuming the food, in that you simply resort to doing it because you've always done it, without questioning its value to your health or well-being.
3. Think about emotional causes that trigger your cravings. Again, a food journal can help you identify these. Eating due to stress is well-known and is a major trigger for eating naughty foods. Often termed "comfort food eating", there is a tendency to eat naughty foods when feeling down to get emotional comfort. A lowered level of serotonin (common in depression) can bring about food cravings as well. Finally, loneliness and alienation can often lead people to eat.

Changing Your Eating Habits

1. Make a plan. Figure out which foods you most want to get out of your diet. Keep a food journal to see what exactly you are eating, how much, and how you feel afterward (both mentally and physically). It might surprise you. The foods you most want to cut out might be the ones that you turn to most, or they might be the treats that are the least healthy for you. Start with just one food that you want to eliminate from your diet and work on not eating that for a week. Do not replace it with another food, or eat more of other foods you crave to make up for its loss. Try drinking a glass of water instead. It certainly won’t be the same, but it can help fill you up and get you on a path to better eating.
   • Try to note which foods cause you to hit "rock bottom". Common suspects are caffeine and sugar in sensitive individuals.
2. Go slowly. If you have a long history of giving in to food cravings, it’s going to take time to break yourself of the habit. You might need to just work on cutting out one of your naughty foods per week. Be patient as you learn what works and does not work, and most importantly, be gentle on yourself – slip ups are an inevitable part of changing what is, essentially, a bad habit.
3. Stay away from situations that might make you eat. If there are places or times where you’re more likely to eat naughty foods, steer clear of them. If you can’t see a movie in the theater without your chosen candy, don’t go. If you and a friend always eat cake when you go to a certain restaurant, change it up and go somewhere they don’t serve cake. Make it harder for you to indulge in your cravings.
4. Eat regularly and practice portion control. Aim to eat regular, small-sized meals throughout the day that are healthy and well-balanced. This will help to maintain your blood sugar at an even level and prevent craving spikes. Avoid refined carbohydrates as much as possible. As delicious as they are, they stimulate cravings by making your blood sugar spike and then drop dramatically.
5. Make it really easy to eat foods that aren't naughty. A big reason why many people cannot make food changes is that the alternatives seem "too hard". When breaking a habit, use the time to retrain this mindset by finding all of the ways to make it "too easy" and replace those naughty foods. Some ways to help yourself include:
   • Purchase pre-cut nibbling vegetables. Or prepare a large amount of vegetables for snacking on over several days and leave in the fridge for the weak moments. It's much easier doing the effort in big batches than hurdling the "I don't want to prepare it" excuse at the time you need a snack. Great veggies to keep ready to snack on include: celery, carrot, sugar snap peas, radishes, beansprouts, etc.
   • Always keep low-fat, delicious dips on hand.
   • Create separate rationed portions with the acceptable calorie/sugar/fat, etc. content per serving. Know that when this portion is consumed, that's it!
   • Read how to choose healthy snacks.

Making New Life Habits

1. Find new treats for yourself that aren’t food. After a week without your top naughty food, do something nice for yourself – go to a movie, buy yourself a new record, whatever would be meaningful to you. Get used to rewarding yourself with experiences and objects, not food.
2. Exercise. Exercise can balance blood sugar levels and ease your digestion. Do an easy walk after meals to help relieve the cravings. Even a 15-minute walk can do a lot of good. Do a sport or physical activity that you love. In addition to the exercise, doing a sport with other people can help distract you from your food cravings.
3. Find new interests. Join a new group centered on an interest – a book club, a hiking group, a political organization. You’ll meet new people and get into a new routine and away from old habits. If you’d rather do something alone, learn how to knit or fly fish, for example. Think about something you’ve wanted to try but haven’t, and consider doing it instead of giving in to cravings.
4. Smell something. Some studies have shown that smelling a non-food odor when you feel a food craving, can diminish that craving. Researchers have used jasmine scent effectively, and in the lab, neutral odors that are unfamiliar to the people smelling them. So get out there and smell some jasmine flowers to stop craving your naughty foods!
5. Face the emotional triggers. If any of your triggers are emotional ones, including stress, sadness, or loneliness, it won't be as simple as finding substitutes, halving proportions and wishing yourself free of the cravings. You'll need support to work on the underlying emotional reasons. This might be by way of counseling or, or through reading widely on overcoming your emotional issues and learning to engage your emotions more constructively. If you're suffering from stress, it's really important to learn the many ways possible to reduce stress that are far more effective than filling your unhappiness with poor quality food.
6. Try hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy is commonly used to help reduce cravings and addictions. Your hypnotherapist will likely ask you about your food cravings and the emotions invoked by food prior to hypnotizing you. Expect to be given visual cues and visualizations to help distract you from your naughty food cravings.
7. Indulge in your naughty foods very occasionally. Don't give up your naughty foods completely. The key is to eat naughty foods in moderation and to leave them for special occasions rather than to indulge in them regularly. Learn to savor the flavor. Aim to really appreciate the flavor of the food you're eating rather than aiming to get it into your stomach as fast as possible.
8. Face up to your beliefs or health needs. When your naughty indulgences breach your faith-based or other beliefs, or when eating the food leaves you sick, the issue is broader than simply concentrating on your weight or future health.
   • In the case of breaching your faith-based beliefs, speak to your faith mentor, priest, minister, rabbi and seek solutions to the situation. He or she will likely have some good advice for you, since food cravings butting up against faith-based diets are common.
   • If you're following a particularly strict diet like vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, raw food, etc., and you're eating food that doesn't align with your dietary and wider ethical beliefs, it's time for a rethink about what you're doing and whether the choice you've made is working for you.

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Sources and Citations

See also

• Stay Away from Junk Food
• Crave Water
• Quit Soda Pop
• Stop Eating at Night
• Quit Caffeine
• Stop Overeating
• Decrease Your Appetite
• Cure Sugar Cravings
• Overcome Caffeine Addiction
• Overcome an Addiction to Fast Food

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