Your Healthy Body In Less Time, Effort and Sacrifice Look 20 Years Younger Without Dieting, Hunger, Counting Calories, Working Out Longer

Top Tips to Stop Food Cravings by Mel Thompson

When you are feeling tired or stressed, do you notice that your mind begins conjuring up images of your favorite foods?

Do chocolates, donuts, or a slice of warm bread and butter tempt and taunt you when you are trying to keep your weight down?

If so, then you are one of many millions of people battling cravings on an almost daily basis.

According to Dr. Omar Manejwala, author of fascinating book, Craving: Why We Can’t Seem to Get Enough…

Human beings are hard-wired to crave food; he states there are powerful evolutionary, biological and social factors that create a ‘craving culture’ that overtakes our body and mind.

The good news, it is relatively easy to fight  cravings, if you take a few important steps…

 

Simply follow these tips and you will find that losing and maintaining weight…

Or simply following a healthier, sounder nutritional regime, is far easier than you ever imagined:

• Do something else when you’re feeling tired or stressed: Focus on positive steps you can take to stop your cravings.

Instead of asking yourself, “What do I need to stop doing?”

Ask, “What do I need to start doing?”

Often, stress occurs when we have too much pent-up energy, or when we are not getting enough exercise.

Regular physical activity (and specific exercises and activities like yoga and mindful meditation) significantly lower levels of stress hormone cortisol.

When our stress levels are down, it is much easier to battle the urge to binge or indulge in unhealthy foods.

• Keep a journal: When you see a nutritionist, one of the first things they ask you to do is to keep a journal; jot down absolutely everything you eat, and at what time.

You may be surprised to find that you tend to indulge cravings at specific times of the day.

This makes it much easier to avoid low sugar levels that often make you crave unhealthy foods, by bringing healthier snacks to work, school or college, so you can keep  glucose levels stable throughout the day.

• Take the time to shop: When you have cravings, you tend to desperately reach for the first food available.

It therefore helps to have a kitchen and pantry full of healthy snacks, and devoid of chips, cookies, sweets and other processed, refined foods.

Always prepare a wide range of salad ingredients and keep them in the fridge; chop and wash them beforehand, so whipping up a healthy salad takes just a few seconds.

• Avoid tempting scenarios: If you know you can’t resist buying a cupcake from your favorite pastry shop, don’t walk past it.

Make it easier on yourself so that following a healthy eating plan doesn’t seem like torture.

• Create a sense of belonging: Sometimes, human beings indulge in dangerous habits and addictions (to alcohol, substances and food alike) because we have unmet needs in our lives.

It is important to build a healthy social network, to eliminate the sense of emptiness that often leads us to binge.

Thank you Mel Thompson for sharing your valued tips and insights.

Food Cravings

Have you been struggling with your weight this year?

You’re doing a lot of exercises yet you still haven’t been losing weight?

Maybe you’ve added belly fat, some extra  pounds/kgs!

Well, at least you’ve come to understand its all about consciously making decisions in your life…

Choices that revolve around making healthy decisions.

This week your healthy diet challenge is focused around developing strategies to cope with emotional eating.

Maybe it’s a forbidden topic? Do you feel this problem is an issue that you’ve dealt with at one time or another?

Well, I know I’ve had my fair share of struggling with emotional eating. Why?

Because life is full of surprises mixed in with boredom, stress and anxiety.

Allow me to explain…

I’d like to take this opportunity to share strategies and more importantly to ask you how you’re able to handle these issues or problems?

Are your eating habits holding you back and making you feel angry?

After a while it becomes second nature to sabotage your appetite in an unhealthy fashion.

Let’s talk about how to answer these questions with basic guidelines/rules that have helped in the past:

• Eat when you start to feel a little bit hungry…
• Don’t wait until you are starving because when you’re famished you run the risk of overeating and eating too quickly.
• Take your time eating, eat slow, thoroughly chew and enjoy your food
• Eat small portions…

Your biggest challenge will most likely be about portion size and control…

What if you’re unsure about what “food portion size” means for you?

Don’t worry, we’ll be spending time on this and going over it in more detail.

The strategy is simple…you want to finish eating feeling light and satisfied.

If you feel heavy, too full or tired you have most likely eaten too much.

If you give your body too much food, it will start to store it as extra weight.

First and formeost, learn to listen to your body.

So called diet experts tell you this and that…their diet book has the answer, but what helps you is getting back in tune with what your body is telling you.

Are you listening?

Are you paying attention to the signals?

Are you aware of the little call from your brain every 2-3 hours that you need to eat something because you’re a little bit hungry?

Really, that’s how simple it really is to get back in control…

If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it, so it’s important to develop this basic body awareness.

Truly, I believe your body is more than capable of telling you when and how much you want to be eating, the trick is learning to listen.

As you begin to pick-up on your body signals, you get more intune with those distractions…

Yes, in other ways that avoid you feeling like dealing with your feelings by turning to food.

Now, you may have tried all sorts of diets in the past…

Some of the most common distractions include watching t.v, reading your favourite glossy magazine or even going out shopping.

All of these distractions work of course, and I’ve done them a million times to distract myself from emotional eating.

We all go through daily ups and downs, we have our own personal stories full of life’s various hurts and disappointments.

Unfortunately some of which still may continue to haunt you.

Remember those profoundly negative experiences and dramatic changes?

Overall, all these experiences cahnge your attitude and direction in life.

The question is how you deal with or handle it all for positive and enriching life, instead of moving from one empty distraction to another…

What if you focused on building, creating and learning.

The greatest joy of learning is having an open mind to what areas you feel passionate about in your own life.

Once your focus is on developing yourself, you can make much better decisions in every area of your life…including your diet.

This leads to the importance of treating yourself with respect.

What if your best friend was upset that they were having a tough time dealing with emotional eating?

Honestly would you beat them up even more with harsh words and a judgmental attitude?

You’d be caring, supportive and kind, yet how many times have you stood in front of the mirror berating yourself angrily for slipping on your diet?

You want to learn to treat yourself as if you were your own best friends!

That means caring and nurturing your soul with loving kindness.

Nothing is gained when you add your own insults and self criticisms…often playing like a broken record in your head.

This is a difficult habit to break…perhaps the most important lesson of all.

Please will you treat yourself well and affirm the positives? If you slip, then get back on track and resolve to be stronger the next time.

Refocus on your goals and continue to move forward.

You may repeat this process a hundred times and each time you get back up on your feet you’ll be a little bit stronger.

Eventually new healthier habits will form and you’ll reach a breakthrough ready for new diet and exercise challenges 🙂

Talk with you soon…Jody