How to manage cravings

Cravings seem to arise out of the blue and we are overcome with the need to eat the craved item, often sweet things for women. Well, the key thing to know is that like a screaming child, if you ignore them, they eventually stop, and if you keep ignoring them, they will stop for ever altogether.

So how to ignore cravings.

Well, one way is to identify what is triggering them. It is not hunger. It could be your routine. For example, if you have always had a snack at 3.00pm your cravings will arrive on the dot. If you always eat in the car on the way home, they will be there too. If you walk past a sweet shop and always buy chocolate or crisps with your paper, you will repeat the actions on and on. So these are environmental and habit-based triggers for cravings. Change your route, have no food in the car, stop snacking at 3.00pm. And if the trigger is boredom, develop a portable hobby so that you can distract yourself. And if I might bang on about this again, if you always munch away at chocs and crisps in front of the telly, just turning the telly on turns your belly on.

Changing behaviour in these relatively small ways is quite easy. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. One or two a week is quite enough. Then what?

When cravings come, ignore them. Distract yourself. This could be by going for a walk, phoning a friend, washing the car. Just tapping your finger onto your hand for a few minutes is also quite distracting.

Cravings disappear in only a few minutes. You can handle that!


www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Men can't think straight when they see pretty women!

An article in the Daily Telegraph got me thinking. The researchers at Radboud University in The Netherlands said 'We conclude men's cognitive functioning may temporarily decline after an interaction with an attractive woman.'

The same part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, is involved here as with willpower. Just a little bit of decision making reduces our capacity for self-control. So we can't rely on our willpower to help us control our eating any more than men seem able to think after seeing a pretty woman. Making constant demands on our willpower just makes it weaker.

So if we are wanting to lose weight, what can we do?

Making a few small changes in our daily behaviour every week, allows them to become automatic, so that we don't need to use our willpower or think about controlling our desires. For example, if you find that you eat when you are bored, then think of something that might resolve the boredom to replace the eating.

What about origami? This has the additional benefit of being a bit of a party piece as well as being very portable. Or what about knitting? Or reading a book, or learning a language? What interesting thing could you be doing that stops you from picking at food when you are bored?

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Sometimes we eat because we are bored

There are lots of reasons why we eat outside of mealtimes. It could be we are disorganised, and don't get round to shopping. This can happen if you feel depressed. It can be when you feel under pressure, and you eat comfort food as a sort of self-medication. And sometimes it is because food is hyped these days as a fun activity. For example, a girls night in might involve marshmallows and chocolate. This is eating as something to do with our friends. And another is having nothing to do. Lots of us eat to fill up boring moments - waiting for a friend, in the house alone, doing the night shift. These final two sorts of eating are displacement activities - something to do in the absence of something more worthwhile.

What can we do instead. With all-day telly and the Internet, we have rather stopped having hobbies. I think the word has connotations of naff. However, having something interesting to do with your friends or when you are bored is hugely rewarding. Whereas now we eat chocs together, in the past we would have had knitting bees and sewing groups. The wonderful I knit London runs knitting groups where people stitch and bitch and learn and share interesting new techniques.

What might you enjoy? Here are some of the things I recommend to my clients.

Origami. Knot tying. Magic tricks. Learn a language. Knitting. Crochet. Sudoku. Crosswords. Puzzle books.

All of these are portable hobbies and sufficiently difficult to get you deeply absorbed. You can pack the stuff easily into your pocket or handbag too and take it with you everywhere. Develop a hobby to help you lose weight!

http://www.carolinebrowntherapy.com/