Food “addiction” involves craving foods that are usually bad for your health.These types of unhealthy foods usually include items with excess sugar, salt, and bad fats. Often these foods include high carbohydrate intake that adds more empty calories.
Here are 5 simple strategies to stop triggering your junk food cravings.
The foods available to us that fall into the aptly named “junk food” category is appropriately called junk because essentially, in terms of the nutritional value that they provide, they are garbage for purposes of healthy eating.
Our attraction to junk food is derived from a combination of cruel tricks that our bodies play on us and the science that preys upon our sensory weaknesses in relation to what we crave to eat.
However, for those who find themselves to be victims of these nutritionally defunct temptations, there has fortunately been an equal amount of science devoted to counteracting these wicked cravings that are the downfall of many a “diet.”
The following are 5 ways that often trigger people to reach for the types of food that they think they want (for comfort), but that most assuredly they do not need.
- IDENTIFY YOUR EMOTIONS
There is overwhelming evidence that the primary trigger for poor eating habits is centered around emotions (most often associated with negative emotions such as loneliness, heartache, stress, frustration, etc., however there are “happy” emotions that can drive us to make poor choices as well) and recognizing and addressing any feeling that often precedes bad food choices is an essential element to avoiding junk food triggers.
- DISTRACT YOURSELF
When you feel like you are going to be vulnerable to bad eating habits, find something, anything, that will give you the same satisfaction as eating without ingesting the calories that cause you to gain weight.
Practice SELF CONTROL and realize just how liberating that can be when it comes to the food that you choose to consume. Mastering your own power and inner will shouldn’t be a stifling experience, on the contrary. Self- control sets you free!
- REMOVE THE THINGS THAT YOU ARE WEAK AROUND
If you don’t have the foods that you find yourself to be a victim to in your house or at your work space, then you are far less likely to go out of your way to eat them. Don’t buy the stuff or keep the stuff around that you know is bad for you! Ignore the junk food aisle in the grocery store entirely, try to forget it even exists.
- CHANGE YOUR SNACKING HABITS
Studies have shown and proven that there are significant pitfalls that are easily fallen into in terms of snacking and one of the most notorious pitfalls is snacking during a favorite television show.
Trying to make sure that you have eaten a well-balanced meal for dinner prior to “vegging” out in front of the television will inevitably lead to not snacking on the foods that contain the “empty” calories that are far too often the reason that we gain unwanted weight.
- IDENTIFY WHAT YOUR PERSONAL TRIGGER FOODS ARE AND MASTER HOW TO AVOID THEM
Figure out what foods exactly are the ones that essentially, are your enemy. For some it may be bacon, for others it may be Cheetos, but regardless of what your “trigger” foods are, they can be both identified and avoided successfully if you figure out what your personal weaknesses are and then you take control and avoid these foods and remove them from your life.
This isn’t to say that you can’t ever indulge or ever eat the things that truly bring you so called “guilty pleasure.”
But, in order to be the master of your own food intake, you need to figure out what junk food or foods make you weak and figure out how to incorporate them – or a healthier version of them – into your life in a way that allows you to both enjoy them and not have them be detrimental to your weight…or health.
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