What Can I Do Or Eat To Prevent Cravings During My ‘healthy Eating’ Diet?
One thing that is key for me is to make sure I break my meals up and eat evenly throughout the day. My danger time is the 30 minutes or so when I get home from work and before I go to work out. If it has been too long since I last ate, then I am very prone to use the entire time to snack and then have my normal dinner after my workout. I also try not to keep easily snackable junk food in the hosue for this reason.
I guess one thing is that, if you know you are prone to snacking make adjustments with your meals to account for your snacking calories.
If you crave eating sweets try snaking on fruit, or take some grapes put them in a zip lock bag freeze them for a couple hours then snack on them. Its a great way to satisfy your sweet tooth.
In my experience, cravings are usually a mixed signal – your body legitimately needs something, but the brain confuses that signal with a craving for something you enjoy such as sweets.
There are three steps I’ve found help my clients minimize cravings and stick with the program.
Step 1: Take a quality multivtamin. This ensures you are receiving adequate nutrients
Step 2: Focus on several servings of vegetables and fruit every day. This will provide lots of fiber and bulk.
Step 3: Take quality, healthy fats – either flaxseed oil, fish oil capsules, cold water fish, etc.
Step 3 is by far the most important step in my opinion. Many of my clients were consuming far too few fats and as the result were craving foods. Even though calories went up a little, the most common feedback I received after integrating healthy fats into their nutrition was that their cravings were reduced, they had more energy, and were able to enjoy the healthy foods more.
Jeremy