Food cravings are one of the subtle, cultured forms of addiction and compulsive behavior that are very difficult to discern. It is pretty much acceptable to have an addiction when it comes to food. 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.

Whereas 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 deprive yourself?”

“One isn’t going to hurt your diet”.

Most foods that are craved have no nutritional benefit to you and can cause and contribute to a number of different health conditions like excess weight and diabetes. Why would you want to eat those 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.

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

So as stated you must admit the issue. Now, once you have admitted it and reached a decision that these cravings are not good for you and 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 desire 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.

Emotions are much stronger than reason – we tend to rationalize the irrational when we are caught up in then 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 Fat Freedom is possible but you must have self-awareness if you want to be rid of cravings for good.

Kelly Aziz is an expert in the field of diet, nutrition and addiction, having spent numerous years researching and experimenting with different dieting programs and studying addiction. For more information on the key points made in this post please visit http://www.CombatYourCravings.com

Stop Food Cravings

Overeating and cravings are common in the Western world and are often not given the proper attention they deserve. They are seen as something that individuals really should be able to control and if you can’t control them then apparently you don’t have enough willpower and are weak.Overeating can stem from two things cravings and emotional eating.

The word “craving” seems harmless and is just a nicer way, in most cases, to say addiction. Craving is almost an acceptable addiction because we don’t place much importance on its seriousness and we find it harmless. But cravings are not harmless – they are a symptom of underlying issues and can result in you overeating on foods you really wish you wouldn’t!

Most people think addiction is a strong word to use but that is in most cases what the issue is when it comes to cravings and overeating.

So in order to overcome overeating we must address the physical addictiveness of food or our cravings. Cravings are a sign of physical addiction, emotional addiction and also can be a result of not getting enough of a certain nutrient possibly.

The first step to eliminate physical cravings is to supply the body with the nutrients it requires. Most people don’t do this, don’t know what is right for adequate nutrition and just accept cravings as part and parcel of life. They don’t have to be! When you provide your body with the right nutrients you can eliminate physical cravings completely.

Second one needs to address any emotional relationship they have with food. Do you crave when you are bored, stressed or feeling? Take a day out to be completely self aware and note down when you crave and whether it’s as a result of having skipped a meal or because of an emotional need. Self-awareness in general is very helpful to you and good to continue to do as much as possible. Being in the present moment and practising being in the moment (as opposed to daydreaming or thinking about the past etc) will allow you to overcome your overeating triggers.

If your overeating is more emotionally related then the best thing can be to get support for from a friend or familiy member who can almost take the place of the food in comforting you. Who can allow tyou to feel your emotions with them if its too difficult for you to do alone. There is also a great step by step intensive program online you can follow over 12 weeks, if becoming self aware and facing your emotional demons is too difficult.

So provide your body with the right nutrition and face your emotions. This is the only way to truly overcome the overeating that is ruining your weight loss goals and life!

For more information about how to overcome overeating: Overcoming Overeating

To visit the Shrink Yourself website click here (12 week intensive program)

Previous Post: Overcoming Overeating & Emotional Eating with the Shrink Yourself  Program

Cravings can be the hardest problem to solve when you are trying to eat healthier to feel better about yourself and lose weight. They can literally make or break your weight loss goals and make you spiral out of control.

Most people do not think cravings are serious and feel that their lack of will power is to blame in preventing themselves from overcoming cravings and staying on a healthy diet.

But what most people don’t realize that is food is just as addictive as smoking and drugs. Junk foods contain opiod peptides that are highly addictive and keep you hooked, making it extremely difficult to give up.

On top of this, in the Western world food is very much entwined into our culture and becomes part and parcel of how we socialize, how we celebrate and how we mourn. There is no escaping the emotional tie that our society has created with food and emotional/comfort eating can become a big problem for us also.

So it isn’t as simple as just cravings (that word is just used too lightly!). There are physical and psychological reasons for cravings. Psychological because of our emotional tie to food, physical because of the addictive properties in some foods and also because we don’t provide our bodies with the right foods to nourish us adequately.

In order to help you overcome cravings, first you must nourish your body properly. Most people do not know how to supply their body with the right foods because we aren’t told how to.

Second you must acknowledge and become aware of your relationship with food and if you use it emotionally. Physical addiction can be eradicated quite easily with proper nutrition but emotional addiction takes much more work and won’t disappear just because your body is nourished properly.

Master these 2 things and cravings will no longer be a problem for you.

Learn how to stop cravings now

Previous Post: Emotional Eating: What Is Emotional Eating

It is quite simple in theory how to beat foods cravings and with Free to Eat’s Combat Your Cravings ebook you will be fuelled with the knowledge to overcome cravings for good.

Free to Eat’s Combat Your Cravings ebook includes everything you need to know on cravings and will give you a better understanding about why you crave and what you can do about it. Below are a few things that the guide includes:

• Common addictions and what they are doing to your body. This section will give you motivation to change your cravings. Knowing the affect they have on your body will help you understand more as to why you have cravings and how these foods make you feel.

• How to become aware of your food craving problems to overcome them. Although you know you crave, you may have no idea when, where, why and how you feel before and after. This book tackles these areas to help you be more in tune with you and your body so you have more chance of overcoming them.

• Hunger versus cravings – what true hunger is. Most people never experience true hunger – what they experience is either digestive distress or cravings. This section lets you know exactly what true hunger is and what isn’t.

• What to eat to combat cravings or significantly reduce them. Most people don’t eat the right foods to satisfy their body’s nutritional needs. You will discover exactly what you need to eat in order to completely eradicate or drastically reduce physical cravings.

• Guidance and activities to help you overcome emotional eating and stay focused on your goals.

So follow the the guidance in this book and you will learn exactly how to beat food cravings for good.

For more information Beat Food Cravings

Previous Post: Fight Food Cravings: Craving Salty Foods

It isn’t surprising that a lot of us crave salty foods when the majority of products you find in the store have salt in (even chocolate!). The best way to overcome craving salty foods is to make a conscious decision to eliminate salt completely form the diet. You can get the salt you need and your body needs by eating celery, cantaloupe melon and many other fresh fruits and vegetables. Your body only needs a little and this is the best way to get it – through fresh whole ripe foods, and not junk foods.

Once you have made a conscious decision to eliminate salt, you then need to make a plan and also start making your own meals. Seeing as practically everything has salt in, the only way you can avoid it completely is to cook fresh so you know exactly what is going into your meals.

When cutting out salt, you may find that food is bland. This is because salt kills your taste buds. Salt overpowers your taste buds and so the ability to taste other foods to their fullest is lost. If you want to start enjoying foods again espeically fresh fruits and vegetables, then cutting out salt is the best thing that you can do.

So make a decision to eliminate it and plan simple meals you can prepare yourself so you know what is in it and so you can avoid salt completely.

This is the best decision that you can make for your body and your health (salt has been linked to asthma, strokes and other diseases). Eliminating salt will stop cravings for good and will leave you feeling overall better within yourself.

Previous Post: Fight Food Cravings: Craving Fatty Foods

Craving fatty foods is somewhat natural in the world we live in. The majority of the Western world eats a high fat diet and it can typically be over 50% fat! Your body becomes accustomed to it! Our diets in the Western world are high in fat for many reasons but the number one reason being stress.

When we are under stress or any emotional pressure, many people turn to food for comfort. When you eat fat, because it is hard on the digestive system, it weighs you down and numbs you from what you would be feeling. We comfort eat. Feeling emotion/stress and digestion are two of the biggest and most energy consuming mechanisms of the body – your body can’t do both at once. So if you eat fatty foods you stop yourself feeling.

Comfort eating is a big part of our world and overcoming our reliance on fatty foods to numb us can be very difficult. So the best way to deal with it is to wean yourself off. When food becomes an emotional issue for us, simply cutting ourselves off of fatty foods maybe too much for us to handle emotionally. It is overwhelming because those emotions you kept buried and avoided will want to resurface. So what you need to do is wean yourself off.

The best way to do this is to allow yourself something fatty at the end of the day but not the rest of the day. Fatty foods can interfere with the digestion of others food you eat and leave you bloated and sluggish. This is because of how hard it is for your body to digest fat. So save your comfort eating for the end of the day. This is the best thing to do for your digestion but it is also the easiest thing to do. Most people find they comfort eat more in the evenings (currently there is research being conducted around the notion of night being something we fear and thus we comfort ourselves as a result).

Start your day with a healthy low fat breakfast like 5-6 pieces of fruit. Have a nice low fat lunch and then for the afternoon continue with the same pattern. Eat plenty of fruit; eat a low fat meal and stock up on this first. Providing your body with the right nutrients is the first way to stop craving fatty foods. Once you have stocked up, if you need to or want to eat something fatty then go ahead – but get your good food in first.

Once you are used to eating low fat for the majority of the day, then start working on weaning yourself off fatty foods in the evening. Make a realistic plan. Start by going a night a week without fatty foods for a couple of weeks, then two nights etc. This is the best approach for your emotional well-being. If you do too much too soon you will ultimately end up in a panic and binge

Helpful Products

Combat You Cravings Ebook

A comprehensive ebook that covers physical cravings and emotional eating. It has some great tips and guidance you can implement straight away.

Visit The Site: Stop Cravings

Emotional Eating Program

A 12 week online intensive emotional eating program to help you overcome overeating and feeding your emotions. This is also great for those wanting to lose a few pounds, as you will find by overcoming emotional eating the pounds will fall off.

Visit the Site: Click here.

Previous Post: How To Stop Craving For Sweet Things With Free to Eat’s Combat Your Cravings Ebook

Cravings for sweet things is natural but how we respond to it is unnatural. Instead of reaching for something sweet with an abundance of nutrients we instead reach for something sweet that is refined and more than likely has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is this very mere fact that we reach for nutritional deficit food that we know there must be a problem with how we perceive cravings for sweet things. Also rarely do these refined sweet things we choose to eat satisfy us. They can leave us tired, still “hungry” and just depressed. What your body wants you to do is feed it the right foods – the right sweet foods to give it the nutrients it needs to be healthy and happy.

Free to Eat’s Combat Your Cravings ebook gives you the guidance and advice on how to nourish your body properly to diminish or greatly reduce craving for sweet things. It also informs you of why you crave and gives you the necessary information to be able to confidently overcome any craving you have.

On top of this it helps you stay on track with activities to help keep your mind positive and focused on overcoming cravings. It also gives some practical advice on what do when you are experiencing a craving plus other suggestions in order to overcome them if its more attached to emotional needs.

If you want a great guide to help you stop craving for sweet things than Free to Eat’s Combat Your Cravings is a good choice. To find out more Stop Cravings for Sweet Things

Previous Post: Curb Sweet Cravings: What You Need To Do To Curb Sweet Cravings

To stop carb cravings one needs to eat carbs! Sounds simple but its true. Low carb diets work against what your body wants and your body wants carbohydrates!

If you are worried about putting on weight then you shouldn’t. A high carbohydrate diet is much better for you health wise and you can still lose weight. So if you want to stop carb cravings, start eating carbohydrates.

But what carbohydrates?

When your body is craving it is craving simple carbohydrates i.e. FRUIT. Fruit is easily digested, low in fat, high carb and great for losing weight. Most people just don’t eat enough of this carbohydrate to stop cravings.

If you want to stop carb cravings make sure you have breakfast and a good full breakfast. This could be 5 or 6 pieces of fruit (carbohydrates!). If you start to have carb cravings come on in the afternoon before going and devouring junk food carbs, get 5 or 6 ripe bananas blend with some water and drink down. You will find that this easily digested carbohydrate will satisfy you nutritionally quickly and diminish your cravings.

Don’t stop your body having what it wants: simple carbohydrates. Just give it the right carbohydrates. Eating lots of fruit will not make you put on weight. If you want to avoid having any problems eating lots of fruit, you must eat a low fat diet. Fat is the culprit in health conditions such as diabetes and yeast infections, not fruit.

Click Here For Help To Stop Carb Cravings

Previous Post: Curb Your Cravings Pacth: A Patch Isn’t The Solution To Curb Your Cravings

You may be thinking that to curb your cravings your only solution is to get a curb your cravings patch. However this is simply untrue and a curb your cravings patch will not help you in the long run and it is debateable whether it will help you on a short term basis.

What you need to do is learn the root cause of your cravings whether they are physical or emotional or a bit of both and work from here to get your solution. Instant gratification in the form of a patch isn’t going to help you long term and taking the time to discover why you crave will be much more rewarding and less hassle in the long run.

In order to curb your cravings you need to become aware and fully present. Spend a day observing yourself. When do you crave? What do you crave and why? Note how you feel afterwards and how your feel during. Do you get cravings when you skip breakfast?

Once you observe yourself and figure out why your cravings are occurring – whether this be an emotional issue, the fact you drink too many soda in a day or whether you aren’t eating enough to prevent cravings – you will have the knowledge you need to overcome it and it won’t take you long to be free from cravings for food.

So, take the time to observe yourself, discover why you are craving and then act upon it. Only you know why you are craving, the rest of us can only guess.  You don’t need a curb your craving patch and they won’t help you.  Take control and do the right thing for your health and sanity.

Get Help To Curb Your Cravings Click Here
Get Help To Stop Emotional Eating Click Here

Previous Post: Curb Sugar Cravings: 5 Tips On How To Curb Sugar Cravings

It is important for your health to curb sugar cravings. Processed sugars are not good for you – they have limited, if any, nutrients and are just plain and simple empty calories. While you are eating them, you are preventing yourself from getting enough good nutritious calories your body needs.

The World Health Organization recommended getting 10 of total calories from sugar, roughly 12 teaspoons a day for 2,000 calories, however this is most likely to be directed at refined sugars. If you are getting whole sugars, like those found in fruit, then you should be eating as much as possible. Fruit is a nutritious food and will provide quick easily digested energy. This is exactly what you need to fight cravings.

The only time you will find you are having problems with fruit and sugar is if your diet contains too much fat. Foor more information on the sugar and fat link please causes of yeast infections.

To help curb sugar cravings here are a few tips:

1. Keep a diary and observe yourself. Before making any drastic changes write down the sugar you eat during the day and also record how you feel, you energy levels and whether your cravings or your need for sugar is related to emotional needs.

2. Don’t go cold turkey. Gradually wean yourself off the sugar. Try to cut out sugary drinks first and the move onto others thing you eat. If you do not know what you are doing or how to nourish your body properly, going cold turkey will send you into a spiral and you will end up bingeing.

3. Read labels. Lots and lots of foods have sugar in and you might be surprised to find what is in some of the most innocent foods. Not only do you want to look our for syrups but also ingredients ending in “ose” e.g. sucrose, dextrose etc.

4. Try to substitue for healthier alternatives until you are ready to quite more of your sugar foods. Eat wholegrains as opposed to white foods.

5. Eat more fruits and greens. The more fruits and greens you eat the less likely you are to crave sugary foods as your body will be getting the nutrients it wants and needs.

These are a few things you can do to help you overcome sugar cravings.

Helpful Products

Combat You Cravings Ebook

A comprehensive ebook that covers physical cravings and emotional eating. It has some great tips and guidance you can implement straight away.

Visit The Site: Stop Cravings

Emotional Eating Program

A 12 week online intensive emotional eating program to help you overcome overeating and feeding your emotions. This is also great for those wanting to lose a few pounds, as you will find by overcoming emotional eating the pounds will fall off.

Visit the Site: Click here.