Dieting & Food Cravings

Food Cravings & Keeping Your Diet Commitment

Managing cravings for that special food, be it sweets like chocolate or ice cream, or potato chips or or some other totally yummy food only gets worse when dieting.  Most craving foods are sweet, crunchy, salty or sometimes greasy, which is why potato chips, ice cream and chocolate are common foods that people crave. Most diets are those of deprivation, and living on carrot sticks, celery and water only magnify the urge for our favorite food; and in a battle of wills, between celery and chocolate cake... well its only a matter of time before the food cravings win. 

To make it worse, food cravings can be especially difficult to manage during the holidays. Fudge, pies and cakes, oh my!  A plate of Christmas cookies can be especially appealing, not to mention Thanksgiving stuffing, potatoes and gravy!  If you are trying to implement a post-holiday diet (and who isn't), there are a number of things that you can do to help manage food cravings while trying to maintain a health diet.

• Keep the "bad" foods out of house.  Make it difficult to give into you food cravings.

• Stock up on things that you can substitute for your food craving.  You can't replace chocolate ice cream with soda crackers, but you can substitute fresh fruit, yogurt, or even diet sherbet.

• Exercise. It will not only burn calories, but reduce cravings.  Want a candy bar?  Go for a walk, but not to the corner store.

• Eat well, but in moderation.  Don't try to live on celery, lettuce and water.  A good, well balanced meal of moderate portion will help you lose weight and manage those cravings for bad foods.  In moderation. you can even slice a snickers bar up into six pieces and have 1 for desert (just make sure to count the calories and fat).

• Understand why you've failed before and how to keep your diet commitment.

The "trick" to a successful healthy diet is portion control.  You can eat just about anything you want as long as the total calories and/or fat that you eat is low enough to cause weight loss.  Many diet companies are making millions off of consumers just by packaging portion controled meals.  Cruise the frozen food isle in your grocery store and you will see a multitude of frozen diet meal offerings.  Most, if not all, of these frozen diet meal offerings have two things in common:

1. They never taste as good as the package would lead you to believe, and

2. They are expensive, considering how little food is really in the package.

If you are looking for a frugal and effective way to diet, consider creating your own frozen diet meals.  To learn how easy and cost effective it can be, we recommend the  Easy-Does-It Diet Plan and Cookbook. You can create meals of the foods you love, in combinations and portions that are good for you.

While dieting, you will want to manage the cravings for sugars and fats that have ruined your diet before. To do that, you need to understand how  you can stop caving in to the cravings, so you can start eating the way you know you should. On the web site howtothinkthin.com you will hear the author's story about overcoming food cravings and can purchase her book, Weight Loss: How to Keep Your Commitment.

Best wishes for your diet and managing your food cravings!

FrugalMom