Overcome Overeating: 5 Tips To Beat Cravings

When it comes to food cravings, it can seem like the only way to avoid them is to run for hills or staple our lips together so we can't eat. Food cravings can be very intense and can seem to run our lives, but they don't have to and we can make our lives easier. This article goes over 5 things you can do to lessen them and gain control.

1. Eat A Good Diet - Many people find that they experience food cravings in the afternoon and will tend to snack and binge on high fat, high calorie foods like chips, cookies and chocolate. These intense hunger pangs/yearnings then will spill over into the evening and the high fat, high calorie food binge doesn't seem to end. Usually many people have these in the afternoon because they skip breakfast or just haven't had time to eat properly earlier on in the day. The best thing to do is make an effort to eat a large calorie dense breakfast. This will help prevent those afternoon craves and will set you up for eating properly. If you don't eat regularly you will experience the desire for high density foods, so make things easier on yourself by eating regularly to avoid them.

2. Keep Occupied - A lot of the cravings we experience in the evening tend to be as a result of television watching. TV watching is actually rather dull and often we desire snacks to help us suppress the feelings of boredom. So if you want to avoid them but usually use this time to watch TV and end up vegging out, try doing something different. Find a new hobbie, get creative - paint, learn an instrument, dance, or exercise. Use your evening productively and enjoy it and snacking will be a thing of the past.

3. Help Suppress It - There are many things we can do to help suppress the cravings and stop ourselves from overeating. You can brush your teeth or use something like chewing gum or even a lollipop to take our attention away from it. Until we continuously overcome them this may be our only solution to stop ourselves from eating, but the more we do it the easier cravings will become without a crutch.

4. Drink Water - It's very simple but many of us to forget to keep topped up on water during the day. We are so distracted by life that we can often confuse thirst for hunger and this can result in cravings. Try drinking plenty of water before considering to eat any food.

5. Wait It Out - Food fancies don't really last that long so the best thing to do is wait a while to see if it passes. Of course sitting and waiting will just make you obsess over the food you are wanting and more than likely you will just cave. So prepare a list of things you can do for 15 minutes before you get into this type of situation, and go through the list of activites until it has passed. Spending 15 minutes to get on with housework or going for a walk can really help you beat cravings.

These 5 tips are a great starting point for anyone wanting to overcome overeating for good.

For more cravings advice and tips visit Stop Cravings. If you struggle with emotional eating check out our article on how to stop emotional eating.