My addiction to food messed up my relationships. Sometimes I was so hung over from bingeing I couldn’t get out of bed to be in time for meeting friends and couldn’t return calls. I was desperate to feel complete that I took more from friends than I gave. I was in a miserable state of affairs. I often pretended to be interested in others companies but really I had a deep empty hole inside of me and felt self absorbed and selfish.

I had no energy, my self esteem was missing. I just craved all day and night. The thing is it never occurred to me that I had an issue with food. I just thought I had an issue with life. Whenever I went anywhere or did anything the food was my main attraction and even at parties I would eat and eat but try to do it secretly by moving around the room and hiding junky foods under the healthy looking foods. By moving about and talking to lots of people I avoided anyone seeing exactly how much I was eating.

It was only when I came across an article about emotional eating that I realized I had an issue with food and not with life. I learnt about how food is physically addictive and thus can affect your mood that way but also through emotional addiction too. I was trapped and I would never have realized this without being lucky enough to stumble across the info.

I followed the advice on an online book called Combat Your Cravings. I ate properly and found my physical cravings diminished considerably. I felt I was able to function properly and didn’t eat a refined sugar fix as soon as I wok in the morning.

But my biggest properly was my emotional eating. Everyday after work I still found it impossible not to binge and overeat. It was only until I read Shrink Yourself and then enrolled in the online program that I was able to successfully become in charge of my life.

Both the books I mentioned have been my life savers without their information I don’t think I would have overcome my overeating.

If you overeat I highly recommend you read these articles and start working through your issues today!

Stop Overeating

Overcoming cravings can be as simple as erasing the physical causes (poor nutrition) of the cravings.  But usually there is an emotional craving attached also.  Emotional cravings are when an emotion triggers you to crave a food or feel hungry (Roger Gould calls this phantom hunger).

When we experience emotional cravings that are out of control, we need to start observing ourselves and seeing exactly what emotions are causing the triggers.  Maybe we eat out of boredom.  Maybe we eat because we are dissatisfied about our relationship.  Cravings – emotional cravings – are telling you something.  Instead of eating you need to listen.

A good start pointing when tackling this issue is to tackle our mindset first.  Negativity is something many people habitually part take in.  Our inner critic tells us we are not good enough and we constantly play the worse case scenario in any situation instead of weighing up all the facts.

Your weight loss outcomes can depend on many things but at the core of it all you need to believe in 3 things in order to successfully lose the battle with the bulge.

You need to believe:

1. POSSIBILITY: It is possible for you to overcome cravings.
2. ACHIEVEMENT: You are able to stop craving.
3. WORTHINESS: You deserve to stop craving and lose weight.

Possibility

Possibility is almost always mistaken for competence. We think that something isn’t possible, that we aren’t able to give up our favorite junk foods or stop craving when really we don’t know how to do it – we don’t have the knowledge or resources to be able to stop craving.

It is possible though, regardless of your situation. You can’t prove that it isn’t possible – you can only say that you haven’t achieved it yet.

Beliefs are not fact.

Beliefs are just our best guess at something and we often sell ourselves short. Do you think you have put a mental ceiling on your achievements? Do you think you have hindered your ability to stop craving through your beliefs about yourself?

Ability

Most of us tend to make others aware of our short comings, when we can’t do something. If you take a day out and observe people and what they say, you should notice how often people say they can’t do this or they can’t do that. We all think this is being modest, when in fact its not. Modesty is not boasting about what we can do, it isn’t boasting about what we can’t!

Once you become aware of yourself voicing your inability to give up chocolate/junk/sugar, you can stop yourself voicing it. If you continue to voice your inability to give it up, it will hold you back from achieving your lifestyle/weight loss goals. If you find it difficult to stop voicing your inability, a good alternative is to add the word “yet” to the end of your statements.

“I haven’t been able to give up chocolate…yet”

“I can’t stop craving…yet”.

It is also important not to make excuses for your craving failures. If you do not have the knowledge to prevent cravings, go out and get it.  Set tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your slimmer figure.

A general belief that you should try to hold is:

You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of.

Keeping this in mind will help you to achieve your craving and weight loss goals.

Worthiness

Do you deserve to give up junk food/lose weight? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to say you deserve to? If it does, this should help you figure out any obstacles that are in your way to achieving your goal. List them and work out how you can overcome them.

e.g. I don’t have the correct knowledge to stop my sugar addiction – to overcome this I am going to do some research and find a suitable diet program or expert to help me.

Allow yourself to believe these 3 things and you will be on the right path to a positive mindset to help yourself overcome cravings.

Overcome Overeating

Click here for help with emotional eating

Previous Post: Binge Eating Disorder – What is Binge Eating Disorder?

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