5 Proven Ways to Overpower Your Cravings/ THIS IS TOUGH
I am posting this because my #1 issue with clients is breaking bad nutritional habits. I have many times broken through by getting very early physical results and therefor motivating them to stay focused. Of course, this is not always the case so an article like this one can be beneficial. These are actually some exercises we can practice to prevent, or use in the moment, to stop us from that ever so uncontrollable crave.
1. Learn to pause. By learning how to be mindful of what we are hungry for, we can train the mind to notice but not automatically react, based on habitual patterns. In other words, we can notice we want the cookie but not eat it without thinking first.
2. Get enough sleep. Research reveals that we aren’t able to make the best choices about food when we are sleep deprived. I would also include that we are more irritable and have less ability to concentrate and focus, and our overall capacity to deal with life is diminished, when we have less sleep.
3. Learn to label your feelings. Research has shown that labeling what we experience in the moment lessens our emotional reactivity to the stressor. All of our feelings have needs, so by tuning into your feeling, you can tune into what you need.
4. Surf the urge. We have many different desires all day long, but if we acted on each one, we would be 2 year olds, not well-meaning, mature adults. If you really want something (sex, those new shoes, food, etc.), notice the desire and then ask, “Can I be with this desire for 20 minutes?” Yes, of course you can. Practice waiting, and if you still want it 20 minutes later, then go for it. What normally happens is the original desire isn’t so captivating anymore, and it passes (then we want something else).
5. Practice patience. Much of our reaching for the pleasant is due to our impatience with the unpleasant. We can learn to build our patience muscle by slowing down and accepting what is. I personally find impatience with traffic, so I have a little Post-it in my car that says, “Practice patience.” This gentle reminder helps a lot when I do encounter traffic. We all know the saying, “Good things come to those who wait.”
These are practices of mindfulness. I have mentioned this in a few posts in the past. This practice is specially successful at helping with stress and cortisol which is what is released by the body in a highly stressful state. Depending on the person and the situation the amount of cortisol released varies. The anxiety to get bills paid can be healthy by causing you to get it done in a timely fashion. If a dog starts chasing you, you will run faster than you ever thought you could. These are both stressful situations that cortisol take affect on the body. There are a lot of technical terminologies to this and we can go on and on with this. For the sake of this post, stress is the most common reason most reach for that sugary food. It is the way some brains/bodies react to this chemical reaction. Use these 5 steps Carley wrote about, see if it helps you stay in control.
