Conquer Your Cravings: 5 Dietitian Approved Tips
by Sally Ho, RD
Everyone experiences cravings. It’s part of our everyday lives when we are triggered by food ads, stress, emotions, and people around us. Sometimes, cravings are habits we have developed over time. Cravings become problematic when you feel you’re losing or you have lost control. Take control back with some of the strategies Registered Dietitian Sally Ho of Motivate Nutrition shares with her patients regularly. (P.S. She uses these strategies for herself and her family too.)
Tip #1 Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate!
Our bodies are very smart at telling us what we need. We sometimes just get the messages mixed up and confuse our thirst with “hunger” or cravings. So, when a craving hits, drink a glass of water and then wait 15 minutes. You might notice your craving is not as strong anymore, or it may have completely disappeared.
For long-term craving management, make sure you’re hydrated. Try drinking ~ 8-10 cups of fluids per day – preferably mostly water, but some tea and a couple of cups of coffee are alright too. Soup and milk/milk alternatives also count as part of your fluid intake in a day.
Sidebar on Dehydration: You can tell you’re dehydrated by looking at your urine. Are you only peeing 1-2 times per day? What’s the colour of it? Is it dark yellow like apple juice? (Fun fact: if it’s radioactive yellow, it could be because you are taking a multivitamin with riboflavin aka Vitamin B2. It tends to make urine scary yellow so urine color may not be a useful indicator in this case.)
Tip #2 Maintain Balance
Do you ever get the mid-afternoon slumps in energy? Or crave a coffee or fantasize about that chocolate bar you’ve been denying yourself? I see this in a lot of my patients, especially ones who are trying to lose weight. And a common reason I have noticed this is because their lunches are imbalanced. They might have the veg and proteins (such as roasted chicken breast on a bed of lettuce) but they don’t have carbs at that meal (which by the way, carbs are part of a healthy balanced diet, and something I encourage in my weight loss patients).
The imbalanced meal sabotages us and can lead to cravings because our brain uses carbs as its main source of fuel. So, when you rob your body of carbs at your meal, then your brain screams for fuel in the form of a craving. Moral of the story: eat a small portion of carbohydrates at your meals (such as a small dinner roll with your lunch salad or add some fruit or beans/lentils/chickpeas to your lunch salad) and your afternoon cravings will oftentimes disappear.
Tip #3: Subliminal Messaging in Our Environment
We eat with our eyes. So, when our environment is constantly cueing us to eat, it’s easy to give in to those cued cravings. Food commercials, snacks and treats at the office breakroom, candy bowl at the receptionist’s counter, billboards/signs advertising deals on fast-food, or even the cookies left on our kitchen counter are all cues and messages in our environment encouraging us to eat. Some easy, low-risk ways of lessening these environmental cues include:
- Skip the commercials/ads when they are playing by walking away for a water or bathroom break,
- Clear the kitchen island/coffee-table of snack foods and put them away in an out of sight place. Out of sight; out of mind. (This one trick has been especially helpful at my home where we’ve had cookies go stale because we forgot about them.)
On the other hand, you can bring healthy food more at eye level. Have you ever had some limp celery or browning lettuce give its last breath in the vegetable graveyard aka the vegetable crisper? Bring your vegetables and fruits to within sight-range. Put the fruits on the counter where the cookies used to be, and bring the vegetables out of the crisper and higher in the fridge so you remember to eat them (and try to eat them soon so they don’t lose their moisture to the rest of the fridge – which is what the vegetable crisper is supposed to do).
Tip #4: Change of Scenery or Activity
Have you ever found yourself munching on snacks while standing around the kitchen island while chatting or scrolling? Or do you have a particular time in the day when your craving is the strongest? This tip would be helpful to you: change your scenery (get out of that space, such as don’t hang out in the kitchen), or change your activity (plan an activity that occupies your thoughts and body or hands, such as going for a walk, or working on a crocheting project).
Tip #5: Manage the 3 S’s – Stress, Sleep, Self-care
Stress eating sabotages our physical and emotional health. Often we eat to cope with our stress. And the effectiveness of eating as a strategy to cope with stress is the same as using a screwdriver to hammer a nail into a wall. It somewhat works temporarily, but you’re going to get a lot of unintended damage. So, treat your stress with better strategies of filling the emotional bucket rather than the nutrition bucket. Do things that give you joy or help you decompress. Take note of what you’re feeling, and use the appropriate tools rather than default to eating. For example, if you’re bored, you can try to play a game or work on a hobby. If you’re stressed, you can try some exercise or meditation or deep breathing. Here are some helpful resources
- 10 New Strategies for Stress Management
- Breathing Techniques: 7 Steps to Breathing for Relaxation
- I’m So Stressed Out! Fact Sheet
- Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
If sleep is robbing you of energy, that could also be leading to increased cravings. Do a check-up on your sleep hygiene to see if you’re sabotaging your sleep.
Final note, self-care is not selfish. Taking care of yourself is as important a part of our health as our nutritional health. Here is a link on ways to help you get started.
About the Author, Sally Ho:
Sally is a Registered Dietitian and Founder of Motivate Nutrition. She and her colleagues at Motivate Nutrition enjoy motivating their patients to take control of their health through one-on-one nutrition counseling, and in-person and online workshops/seminars. Set up a free 10 min chat with them at www.motivatenutrition.ca.
About a major contributor to the article, Thera Kusch:
Thera Kusch is a third-year Dietetic student at the University of Saskatchewan. She is looking forward to a future career in nutrition.
Images: From Unsplash and Pexels
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