Cravings defeat your best intentions to control your weight. They are so powerful, you can't ignore them.
Cravings are distinct from your hunger. Your cravings are telling you You are missing something in your diet. They are your cells telling you in the only way they know how that you need to pay attention to your diet's specific nutritional deficiencies.
Trouble is, you (all of us actually) are not very good at understanding the specific language your cravings speak. So, when your cells are yelling, "Give me more protein, stupid," you think a cup of hot chocolate just might quiet and do the trick.
While strong hunger will make you overeat, cravings will make you eat between your meals. It will make you eat the wrong foods. And it will make you eat precisely the foods that will trigger more hunger when you eat again.
So how do you kill your cravings? Abundant nutrition.
Feed your cravings by feeding your cells what they are looking for. And do it three times a day.
While your hunger is concentrating on you consuming a lot of different kinds of calories, your cravings are asking you to scavenge for specific nutrients. The difference can be confusing.
How do you know which nutrients to feed your body? You don't. At least not easily. Because what your body needs is a lot more than you can get in a vitamin bottle or a fortified cereal. Your body – nature – is far too complex for such simple formulas.
Consider the apple. It is composed of about 10,000 different chemicals. Science knows what less than 90 of them do. Does that mean you don't need the other 9,910? Of course not. Your body knows what parts of the apple it needs. Perhaps it is craving for all of them. But, just because you don't know which ones your body really needs, and science hasn't a clue, doesn't mean the rest of the apple is worthless.
What should you do? Eat the whole apple. Your body will figure out what it needs. And, I'll bet that one apple will quiet your cravings for a while. Not so sure? Eat two.
You are just going to have to eat a lot of high-nutrient foods (all from natural whole food sources, of course) for a few weeks (this approach takes while to work fully). But, in a short time you will notice your cravings subsiding. Then one day, they will be gone – and you will be delightfully surprised.
Control you hunger. Feed your cravings BEFORE they start yelling – because once they make their insistent presence known, you will eat, you will eat quickly, and you will eat precisely the wrong food – guaranteed.
If you want to control your weight, start by killing your cravings. Then, your hunger will be easier to ignore. With that, you are on your way to losing weight. And knowing how to keep it off permanently.
VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com
Curb Your Appetite – Stop Your Cravings
©2010 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.
