This article has been taken from http://www.eating-naturally.com and was written by Kelly Aziz author of Combat Your Cravings.

This article gives a good overview of where your food issues came from:

Food cravings are one of the subtle, cultured forms of addiction and compulsive behavior that are very difficult to discern.  It is acceptable to have an addiction when it comes to food, or so it seems.  We all have them and we all treat people with this particular addiction (addiction to food) entirely different to someone who is addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

Where as someone who craves alcohol would be encouraged to seek help, those of us who crave sugary snacks are often – if not all the time – encouraged to indulge in our addictions.  And if we don’t indulge we will often hear the retort:

“Why are you depriving yourself?”

“A little isn’t going to hurt!”

Can you honestly say that the foods you crave are not addictions?

Most foods that are craved have no nutritional benefit to you and can cause and contribute to a number of different health conditions including excess fat, diabetes, heart disease etc.

Why would you want to eat these foods other than for comfort and pleasure?  You wouldn’t.  It is your addiction to them that makes you eat them.

Food has the power to control you in this way.  Sugar, salt and foods laced with fat are emotionally and physically addictive.  In order to rid yourself of these substances from your life, the first step is to admit there is a problem.  This is one of the hardest things to do, especially when you think you are eating that sandwich out of hunger.

But cravings are a bent form of hunger and it is quite possible that you may have never felt what true hunger feels like.  You are probably used to the unger that gets your stomach growling, that makes you feel agitated and that resultings in your needing food right then and there.

This is not hunger – it is addiction.

Addiction is anything that has become stronger than your willpower to change.

Bread, sweets, coffee, meat and salt among a million other foods, provide you with false needs and behavior patterns that are destructive to your well being and can have a greater authority in behavior than the natural desire to eat and drinnk.  The salt, fat and crunch of junk food offer emotionsl of fulfillment that are lacking because of a spritiual vacuum – a feeling deep down inside that something is missing.

Emotional emptiness is the source of addiction in most cases – dependency on pleasure to temporarily numb our feelings of hopelessness is usually the root issue.

The sensations of hunger and thirst are homeostatic mechanisms which help the body maintain optimum levels of energy, nutrients and water.  When addictive foods are eaten repeatedly, the body adjusts homeostasis to be balanced with the food in the system.  Over time the body will become dependent on that substance for homeostatic balance and its removal will cause withdrawal.  The body cries out for the missing substance as just intense hunger cries for food.

Control has been established on the inside of you.  Even if there is an intense desire to lose weight there is often failure and discouragement.

But how did it all come about?

The potential and most likely start of food addiction is from the moment you were born.  Living in a society that deems food as a social function and emotional poise it can be hard not to associate food with emotion/feelings (whether they are good or bad).

This would seem to suggest that we are all addicted to food and I would say we are to some extent. However, not everyone has a problem with food.

Some people overuse this method of consuming food at an emotional/social event, pushing it into every aspect of their lives. It may have started with an upset in childhood, where your mother gave you some cookies or cake to make you feel better, and as you grew you began to use this comfort as a way of easing your pain whenever pain arose. You went through your teens with the usual social awkwardness and pubescent pains and food was your way to make it easier. You then went onto college and a stressful job and the only comfort you had was food. Your days revolved around you coming home from work and comforting yourself with a takeaway or something else. It was your little treat.

Unfortunately this is an all too common scenario for people and a lot of people do not recognize they have an issue and if they do have some awareness, they do not take it seriously because the world doesn’t take it seriously. The world does not recognize it as an addiction.

Overeating is a powerful way to change the state of your mind. Eating is a way to silence the mind.

The compulsion to eat sets up a very painful process. It makes one feel weak and out of control. It prevents many from successfully losing weight and eating a healthy diet, because the endless slip ups and indulgences into junk food for comfort can leave one in a very low insecure place.

Emotional eaters have a dependency on food to get through life – to survive challenges. Many of us are emotional eaters. We avoid emotion, we avoid allowing emotion to flow through us and instead we void it by numbing it. This doesn’t work though, because that pain is still there, we have just put it off.

Emotional eating is instant gratification and short lived, but it is a very hard thing to break free from. However, to be able to control our eating, to lose weight and to live a fulfilling satisfying life, it is crucial that emotional eating is addressed.

Emotions aren’t something one should fear, we should embrace every one that we feel and experience and that’s just it: we should allow ourselves to feel and experience them. The more we do so, the better we are able to manage them and more able e are to cope in stressful situations in the world. The world will also be a much more interesting place and wonderful place.

We need to make peace with our food and we need to allow ourselves to be happy. You can beat your addictions, you can break your reliance on food and the first step to do so is to be aware of your reliance.

Some questions to think about concerning your own emotional eating:

(Being aware of the following questions throughout the course of a day can help you better answer them)

1. Emotional eating is one aspect of food addiction. What other aspects of food addiction are present in your life? For example, being overweight is a sign of food addiction just like emotional eating. Can you pinpoint any others?
2. Have you been on diets before and if so what has made you break them? How did you feel before and after breaking your diet? Did breaking your diet give you relief? Was it stressful to be on a diet that prevented you from using food as a comfort?

For more help with emotional eating please visit: www.ShrinkYourself.com which has some helpful and free tools.

Physical and emotional cravings to food can lead one on the path of desctruction.  Both can also hurt your weight loss efforts and most people who experience physical and emotional cravings are overweight anyway.  It can be like an neverending battle.  The first step to losing weight should be to tackle these issues.  Cravings will hurt your weight loss efforts more than anything else.  Why?  Because most of the time they are like a silent killer of dreams.  We don’t recognize cravings as something serious – we don’t recognize food addiction as anything for anyone to worry about.  It is just brushed off like it is something so so natural in the Western world.  However, for many cravings and/or emotional eating will stop you losing weight because instant gratification is more important at the time of craving.  Just like a heroin addict finds it difficult to give up heroin, so do some people find it difficult to give up certain foods or to stop intense cravings.  This is for two reasons.

1. Food is physically addictive.  Some foods, like chocolate trigger the same part of your brain as heroin does.

2. Emotional eating without paying much attention to it.  Some of us eat out of boredom without realizing – we snack, we indulge in lots of food to help us overcome a bad feeling, stress or even to celebrate!

To overcome the physical cravings with little effort, all one has to do is eat the right foods.  Eat healthy – eat plenty of fruit, eat nutritious WHOLE RAW foods regularly.  Also make sure you eat breakfast as this can have a condierable affect on your eating habits – it can either cause you to snack more, or decrease your snacking desires.

To overcome emotional eating you need to write down what triggers you to eat.  Observe yourself over a day and make a note of what triggers you.  Then come up with a list of things you can do instead of eat e.g. go for a walk, talk to a friend.  For some people though emotional eating is deeper and more intense then they can imagine.  After years of emotional eating, we may need more expert help or an intensive program to help us to overcome this pattern for good.

Tackle these two things and you will lose weight without dieting. Then you can work on improving your diet for health and prosperity without sabotaging yourself along the way.

Emotional Eating Link : http://www.ShrinkYourSelf.com

Stop Cravings Link

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day.  Without breakfast or without a nutritious breakfast you are prone to overeating later in the day, more snacking and intense cravings.  Eat a good breakfast and you should be able to almost completely eliminate incessant cravings from your.  Check out this article from http://www.eating-naturally.com:

This article is just a quick overview of why it is important to eat breakfast and make a regular habit of it. WHAT you eat is just as important as eating. In Neal Barnard’s book “Breaking the Food Seduction” he mentions a study done where for 1 week volunteers had instant oatmeal and for another week they had regular oatmeal. Volunteer’s cravings and snacking reduced by 35%. The difference in these bowls was the amount of fiber. More refined foods have less fiber so make sure you have a fiber rich breakfast to sustain you until lunch.

A Breakfast To End All Cravings!

Breakfast is considered by many to be the most important meal of the day. Although I don’t necessarily agree with the “breakfast” part I do agree that the first meal you eat of the day is going to have the biggest impact on cravings and energy levels. I know that if my first meal is small and not very nutritious I will tend to crave like my by the time lunch has come around or very soon after. This feeling will often spill into the afternoon as well. If I have a nutritious breakfast then I tend to feel sustained throughout the day. So from my own experience the first meal I eat is usually a fairly hefty size

As stated above having a breakfast full of fiber is important as it keeps you from snacking. I also feel it is important to keep it simple, make it easy on your digestion and also quick for you to obtain the nutrients you need from it. This is why I start my day with a large banana smoothie (5-6 bananas or more! with some added water to blend). My smoothie will give me about 500-600 calories maybe more depending on how greedy I am. I tend to have this after being up out of bed for an hour as I don’t get hungry straight away.

Fruit to me is the best starter of the day – full of fiber, easy on digestion and quickly digested. The key is to eat plenty of it to feel satiated.

Stop Cravings for Good

To overcome cravings, some times it takes more then eating enough and having a clean healthy diet. Sometimes our cravings have become such a pattern or habit to us, sometimes our thinking has been changed so rigidly, that we have to do more then eat properly – we have to change our thinking.

Once you have admitted that you have a problem with food, that you have intense cravings or addiction and that you DEFINITELY want to give them up for good, you need to COMPLETELY REFUSE to consider them for even a second longer from that moment on.

Once you know what you must avoid (sugar, chocolate, coffee whatever it is) and what you must do to improve your health, you should start observing and be attentive to the thoughts that pass through your mind. Just as soon as you become aware that you desire some chocolate or any other food which you have chosen not to eat anymore, as that very moment dismiss it. Completely refuse to give it another second’s thought.

You must be alert here though because quickly the thought can arouse emotion in you and this can result in you becoming weak or inattentive to your decisions. You will find you start trying to rationalize having that desired food and get caught up in your feelings.

Don’t play with this desire! But don’t struggle with it. If you try to use willpower to force it out of the mind it will just accentuate it and make it stronger. You become frustrated and risk caving or you do cave. Just simply drop the thought from your attention – get on with a chore, distract yourself essentially. Give this other subject/activity your FULL attention and stay fully immersed in it until you have calmed down.

I also found simply saying to myself “I don’t really fancy that/desire that food right now” really helped to calm the craving. I know normally I am saying “I really want that” and keep obsessing over it, so to convince myself I actually don’t want it reverses the obsession. You must say it like you mean it in your head though, otherwise it doesn’t work.

Emotions are much stronger than reason – we tend to rationalize the irrational when we are caught up in them and can talk ourselves into anything. This is dangerous, so don’t play with them just divert your attention.

This is one of the first and most crucial steps to being free – Your freedom from cravings is possible but you must have self-awareness if you want to be rid of cravings for good.

Stop Cravings

“Please take me seriously when I say I am addicted to chocolate because I AM. No matter what I do I just can’t go a day without it. Even though I don’t buy it I still end up making a special trip out just to get my hands on some. I know that it isn’t doing me any favors because I end up feeling really grumpy and irritable especially when I don’t get it. Not to mention it isn’t exactly doing wonders for my wasitline~! What can I do to overcome this in the easiest way possible?”

Sound familiar? Many people really feel addicted to chocolate and it isn’t surprising when chocolate stimulates opiate receptors in the brain (not to degree of heroin but enough to keep you coming back for more and more).

So what can you do to overcome this chocolate addiction as painlessly as possible? First to overcome the physical cravings you experience for chocolate you have to eat right. Your diet plays a key role. If you want to overcome the cravings without having to really fight against them, then give yourself the right foods. One key food that most people do not eat enough of is fruit. Eat as much fruit as you desire before every meal and if you crave eat 4-5 pieces of one type of fruit. When we crave we crave for two reasons. The first reason being that we have not eaten enough, so we crave nutritionally. We go for the chocolate because this is the habit we have gotten ourselves into (even though it isn’t nutritious our body will search for the first and best familiar food item). If you eat 4-5 pieces of fruit and continue to so with physical cravings, you will find this will be the new habit you pick up. You will also feel satiated and quickly as fruit is easily absorbed and contains nearly all the nutrients the human body needs.

If physical cravings are the only thing you have to worry about then this should be enough to overcome them very easily. Make sure you do not even have a little piece of chocolate as a “treat” because after the first bite it is much harder to resist.

The second reason we crave is due to emotional triggers. In a society that uses food for comfort, celebration and mourning, many of us from an early age have adapted to use food as a way to comfort us and to repress emotions. This can be ok if it is on the odd occasion, but for some we do it more often than we should. Those emotions need to come out at some point so better now then never.

The best way to tackle the emotional addiction to chocolate is to know what triggers the cravings for chocolate. Once you know the triggers you can then start to make a plan of action to stop yourself giving in to the craving and also to replace the craving with something much more healthy when resolving emotions. There are some great articles available at Eating Naturally for emotional eating and there are also some great tools at ShrinkYourself.com.

Sugar is in pretty much everything we eat and the sugar we find in most foods is nutritionally scarce and refined. Refined sugar = empty calories. It may therefore seem as though craving for sugar has no nutritional basis but it does, we just choose to go for the wrong type of sugar and within this is an emotional or addictive property – not a nutritional one.

Having a sweet tooth is natural. Satiating that sweet tooth should be with fruits as these are full of natural sugars that provide energy as well as nutrition. Fruits contain nearly all the nutrients the human body needs. With fruits you also will not got a sugar crash like you do with refined sugar. If you have a diet high in fat, then this can cause fruit to be a problem for you – but for health reasons cut out the fat not the fruit!

Fruit is a great way to overcome sweet cravings. For breakfast eat 5-6 pieces of fruit or have a large banana smoothie. You will find this sustains you for quite a large period of the day. For lunch and dinner, eat as much fruit as you desire at the beginning of the meal.

By doing these few simple things, you should see a dramatic decrease in cravings and feel much better within yourself.

However, sometimes eating plenty of fruits isn’t enough on its own to help us overcome sugar cravings. Many of us crave sugar because an emotion has triggered it and we get phantom hunger. Phantom hunger is when we FEEL hungry but we aren’t. It is our emotions that are trying to surface and phantom hunger comes about because we have learnt to deal with emotions by suppressing them through eating lots of sugary fat foods (for some of us it may be other things).

To overcome our emotional cravings for sugar we must first address what emotions trigger our sugar cravings and what types of situations. A lot of people experience phantom hunger most after work when they are home, bored and restless in front of the TV. Once you know your trigger points for sugar cravings, sit down and write a list of things you can do instead of eat to soothe or overcome that emotion. Sometimes, simply feeling the emotion is enough. This, however, can be difficult in itself so having support from someone you trust is important. You may find a nice walk is enough, you may want something more stimulating. Most of us do not indulge ourselves in our creative sides enough so doing something like drawing and coloring (yes!) can work wonders. I know I found my joy in art when my son started coloring for the first time. Maybe you prefer to listen to music, create music or do other things. Whatever you like to do write a big list.

This is a good starting point for tackling your emotions. Emotions can be very hard on us and overwhelming, so take it one day at a time and remember a little progress is good. Don’t rush it because it may lead you back to sugar cravings and bingeing.

Beat Sugar Cravings

A quick article on the importance of eating breakfast and overcoming food cravings.  Taken from http://www.eating-naturally.com

I was talking to a friend just now about her craving issues and how she struggles a lot with keeping them under control. She revealed that she rarely ever gets breakfast in and ends up drinking coffee all morning, which doesn’t really help with her hunger.

I think that it is absolutely crucial to have breakfast. It is important to have a nutritious, filling breakfast in order to keep cravings at bay (including later in the day) and also to give you the energy required to get to lunch. Without a nutritious breakfast, you are making it much more difficult for yourself to be able to get over cravings especially intense ones.

If you want to lose weight and avoid intense cravings then you MUST make breakfast an important part of your day. I know that when I skip breakfast I am setting myself up for a very difficult day especially with cravings. By the time I get to lunch I find it very difficult to make the right food choices and it becomes a battle that is almost impossible to win. So I always make sure I have my breakfast. Currently I have a large fruit smoothie (4-5 bananas with some berries blended with some water). This keeps me going until lunch, keeps my energy and mood level and minimizes any cravings I have the potential of getting in the afternoon.

If you want to lose weight and avoid cravings, make breakfast an important part of your day. For me, it was the easiest part to get right about my diet and the most crucial part to get right for my weight loss and well being.

If you want to lose weight and avoid cravings – make breakfast an important part of your day. For me it was the easiest part to get right about my diet and also the most crucial part to get right for my weight loss and well being.

(article from http://www.eating-naturally.com)

Stop Food Cravings

Sweet cravings are something the majority of us suffer from but some people have cravings to an intensity they can’t control. Sweet cravings can also get in the way of our weight loss attempts and can be an annoying everyday issue that we obsess over.

To learn how to stop sweet cravings we must acknowledge that the dreaded sweet tooth is something natural. Mother’s milk is sweet to keep baby wanting more (nutritionally) and to soothe/calm baby when in distress. In this way we can see from birth we are naturally inclined to want something sweet. I know my son never turns down any fruit I give him, but other things like veggies he isn’t so fond of!

Because favoring sweet things is natural, it should be something we aren’t afraid of. It should be something that we give in to but of course with the right sweet foods, otherwise it can lead to excess weight and sugar crashes!

The best way to stop sweet cravings is to nourish your body with the right foods. In terms of allowing your sweet tooth to be catered for make sure you eat plenty of fruit. Eat as much fruit as you desire before every meal. This is much easier on your digestion and will leave you feeling satisfied after a meal. Think of it as having your dessert first. Dessert usually caters for our sweet tooth and is the extra something we need to feel content after eating. Fruit is delicious and can satisfy you in a better way if enough is eaten. Don’t be afraid to eat 4,5 or 6 pieces of your favorite fruit before a meal.

Unlike desserts, refined sugar, honey and other processed sugars, fruit will not lead to a sugar crash. Fruit sugar will keep you sustained and will pass quickly in the bloodstream to your cells giving you instant energy. The only time that fruit sugar can cause an issue is when there is too much fat in your diet. If you are consuming over 10% fat in your diet, it is highly likely it will interfere with your ability to eat fruit. For more information on this you can read this article about what causes yeast infections. Cutting your fat intake and increasing your fruit intake will lead to excess weight falling off but be careful. Many of us search out fattening foods to repress feelings, so if you change your diet to a low fat one make sure you don’t comfort eat.

Comfort eating is something that can trigger sweet cravings too (and not just our biological needs). If you find that when you feel bored, stressed or another emotion, you suddenly crave sweet foods then you are an emotional eater. To make sure that your emotions do trigger cravings, observe and monitor your food intake and cravings during the course of a day. This will allow you to get a better understanding of why you choose to eat and why you crave, so you can overcome sweet cravings for good.

The few points mentioned above are good starting points for anyone wanting to over their sweet cravings, For more information: stop sweet cravings

Binge eating is something many of us face – yes MANY of us. Whether we binge out of intense physical or emotional cravings depends on the individual, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we had all binged once in our life.

For some though binge eating is something that takes over their lives. Binge eating can be a regular, daily occurrence. The number one issue causing binge eating is usually emotional repression. In a society that encourages us to repress, avoid and take our mind off our feelings, it can be hard to allow ourselves to actually feel due to guilt and shame. When you keep avoiding or distracting yourself from feelings it can be even harder to move from this to a life of feeling. Binge eating is just one way people use to repress feelings.

Overcoming binge eating is a task that can seem quite daunting but taking a few steps in the right direction can really help prevent binges for good. I think it is important that before we address the emotional side of bingeing we must make sure that our body is getting all it needs nutritionally and physically. There are many aspects to overcoming binge eating but I feel the first crucial step is to stop dieting.

Although having a healthy diet is a good thing, the word diet has been used to describe deprivation eating. When you think of the word diet I am sure the first thing that comes into your mind is that you have to “give up” foods you like. This mentality around the term dieting is exactly why most diets fail and most people are unsuccessful at losing weight and preventing themselves from bingeing. One needs to reframe their mind around the word diet in order to be successful in eating better and overcoming cravings.

Thinking of a diet as deprivation will also push you into a panic mode, which can lead you into a binge. I know when I tried diets (or specifically the mainstream diets) I would do ok the first day but by evening I would almost go into a blind panic, as though all food was being taken away from me. This would lead me to a massive binge. This mentality is partly due to the way the word diet is used but also because of my emotional eating. I was going to “deprive” myself of my comfort foods.

As a result I found the best way to eat healthier and to keep cravings at bay was to slowly introduce healthier foods and to nourish my body with the right foods to diminish.

Most diets out there do not nourish your body sufficiently, are not healthy or geared towards the optimum diet for us as a species and leave you feeling deprived. They also do not address emotional and physical cravings either. So you are bound to fail by using these programs or getting wrapped in their use of the word diet.

Your Thinking

The biggest reason for failing at diets is the way we think. We think of food as good and bad and if we eat the bad stuff we feel guilty and ashamed. On top of this we see bad food as something we aren’t allowed or that we are missing out on.

What we should be doing instead is viewing those foods we consider bad as something we have CHOSEN not to eat. You have chosen not to eat that food as opposed to not being allowed to have it. You can freely choose again to have it but you are choosing not to for your health and weight loss goals.

We need to also take the food off the pedestal we have firmly placed it on because those junk foods do not love you like you love them do they? They leave you feeling ashamed, guilty, depressed, sluggish and awful.

If you stop seeing foods as good or as bad, start taking power of your choices and saying to others and to yourself that you are CHOOSING to eat this way, you are CHOOSING to not eat certain foods, then you will find you will have much more success in eating healthy and not bingeing.

They are not forbidden foods, they are just foods you are choosing to no longer eat.

Click here for more information on Overcoming Binge Eating

Many people believe that cravings are a result of nutrition deficiencies. While this may be true on some level, for the most part it isn’t. Some foods are physically addictive and most cravings can be pinpointed to emotional eating.Physical addiction to food is quite common because everyday foods that we eat are full of addictive ingredients. Most foods that are craved contain wheat, dairy, chocolate and sometimes many of us crave meat. For example let us have a quick look at chocolate and milk:

Chocolate contains caffeine, theobromine (a stimulant similar to caffeine), phenylethylamine (an amphetamine-like substance), traces of compounds similar to THC (the active ingredient in Marijuana) and targets the same part of the brain that heroin does.

In 1981, Eli Hazum et al discovered that cows milk contains morphine. Morphine is a highly addictive opiate and cows’ produce this in their bodies, to keep their young calm for bonding and nutritional purposes.

In order to overcome the physical addictiveness of foods, we can cut the food out completely or make sure that our body is getting plenty of nutrient rich foods. Most people do not get enough whole ripe foods into their bodies and this leaves them over to severe cravings as well as poor health!

So here are 2 tips to help your overcome physical cravings to food:

1. Eat a wholesome breakfast. This is key to prevent cravings later on in the day. A good breakfast can really make a difference. Make sure the breakfast is high in fiber. In one study, volunteers snacked 75% less during the day when eating a high-fibre diet compared to eating eggs and bacon. You could start your breakfast with a large fruit smoothie. I sometimes have a smoothie of 5-10 bananas and this keeps me sustained until lunch and longer. You could eat a few pieces of fruit at the start of your breakfast thought.

2. Eat fruit before every meal – as much as you desire. This is like eating your dessert first. Most of the time people search for that extra something at the end of the meal – this is your body wanting fruit (the sweetness!). So give it just that to begin with. Your meals should then leave you feeling more satisfied and less likely to crave.

Another aspect to cravings is emotional cravings. These are when an emotion triggers you to crave. It has also been called phantom hunger or emotional hunger because you aren’t really hungry but your body is using food to suppress feelings. Usually with emotional hunger you tend to overeat and want more even when you are stuffed. Below are two tips to help your recognize emotional hunger and to overcome it.

1. Observe yourself throughout a day. Observe your eating patterns and what triggers it. If an emotion does write it down. When you can see clearly what exactly is triggering your cravings, you can overcome them.

2. Write a list of things you can do instead of eat to overcome cravings. This can be as simple as sitting alone and allowing yourself to feel the feeling you would normally suppress with food, going for a walk or having a relaxing bath. Write a large list of alternatives to eating. Getting support is also important when first tackling our emotions head on.

Stop Food Cravings

Craving Fatty Foods

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