How to Reduce Cravings

Food cravings are both a psychological and a physical phenomenon. Sometimes we tend to crave food when we’re bored, stressed, or just because it’s “time” to eat, even when we’re not really hungry. There are many weight loss pills or diet aids that are advertised as suppressing hunger, but you can reduce cravings naturally through diet and exercise.

Table of Contents

Curb hunger

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Eat lots of fiber. Fiber is a complex carbohydrate that doesn’t digest and can create a feeling of fullness while containing very few calories. High-fiber foods like oatmeal are great foods to eat not only because they reduce cravings but also provide sustained energy by regulating insulin secretion and blood sugar levels. blood sugar. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Experts recommend eating 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories, or about 28 grams for women and 38 grams for men.
If you want to lose excess fat, you should eat more vegetables, beans, and fruits that are high in fiber.
Eat oatmeal for breakfast to create a feeling of fullness until noon without you needing to snack. Oatmeal is digested quite slowly so it will help you feel full.

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Drinking coffee. A cup of coffee in the morning can help boost metabolism and control appetite. ^{[2] X Source of Research} However, for some people, coffee has the opposite effect so you must learn your body’s response to coffee and prepare it accordingly.

Packaged coffee is often high in caffeine and antioxidants that are easily absorbed by the body. It is estimated that these two substances will begin to affect the body within an hour of drinking coffee.

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Eat dark chocolate. This is certainly good news for chocolate lovers. You can eat a dark chocolate bar that contains at least 70% cocoa because the amount of bitter substance will be just enough to reduce cravings. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

Cocoa contains stearic acid which has been shown to slow down digestion and make you feel full for a long time.
Combine bitter dark chocolate with drinking coffee to double the effects.

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Eat more protein and fat. Protein needs energy from calories to digest, which in turn promotes hunger-suppressing hormones. Protein and fat help suppress cravings the most by helping to regulate blood sugar levels. A diet rich in protein and healthy fats will help keep blood sugar levels stable and manageable. This will also affect appetite and cravings. Although it reduces the thermic effect, consuming fat in moderation is likely to make you feel fuller for longer.

You can replace about 15-30% of carbohydrates with lean protein to improve weight loss and reduce hunger.
Casein protein, commonly found in powdered protein supplements, is a slow-release protein and helps you feel fuller, which in turn reduces cravings.
Diets that are very low in fat can have the opposite effect; and may increase feelings of hunger. Fat is not completely harmful, on the contrary, if eaten or used in moderation, fat is very beneficial to health and also helps to enhance the taste of food.

Regulate hunger

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You must not skip breakfast. The reason why people say breakfast is the most important meal of the day is because the body fasts all night so it needs to replenish energy for the new day and breakfast also reduces hunger throughout the day. Many reports show that skipping breakfast can lead to eating more junk food in the afternoon. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

Nocturnal eating syndrome (NES), which is a disorder related to eating at night and people with this syndrome often wakes up at night to eat, is clinically recognized as an eating disorder. . Eating breakfast regularly every day can reduce the risk of this disorder. ^{[8] X Trusted Source PubMed Central Go to Source}
Many studies have also shown that skipping breakfast can lead to weight gain, increased blood pressure, insulin resistance, and increased fasting lipid levels.
Skipping other meals during the day has the same effect as skipping breakfast. Although many people believe that skipping meals can help them lose weight, the reality is quite the opposite, causing them to snack more and obviously lead to weight gain.

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Eat healthy snacks. It doesn’t matter if you snack in the afternoon, but make sure the snack is fruit, vegetable, or lean protein like chicken breast or fish. A healthy snack will help keep hunger at bay until dinner and can also help add a few extra nutrients: vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that are good for your body. ^{[9] X Research Source}

Stay away from sugary products and drinks, as these won’t satisfy your hunger and may even make you crave snacks throughout the day.
If you want to eat fat, then eat healthy fats to reduce your sugar consumption and avoid overeating in the late afternoon.

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Eat attentively. Mindful eating practices can help prevent you from overeating. This method focuses on eating slowly, which will help you be aware of your portion sizes and slow down the process of eating. ^{[10] X Research Source}

The purpose of mindful eating is not to interfere with other activities while eating, such as watching television or playing on the computer. Because these activities can distract your attention, make you not realize how much you are eating.
Here is another example of mindful eating, when eating a raisin or dried fruit, feel the shape and texture of the grape with your hands, see the color, smell it, and then taste it. taste of grapes. Similarly, when swallowing you try to swallow consciously that you are swallowing, feeling the movement of the grape down to your stomach. Thus, by eating grapes, you have experienced mindful eating with more senses, recording the meaning of this exercise.
Try to spend at least twenty minutes with each meal so that you can chew and swallow your food slowly and help it to be fully digested.

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Supplement nutrients suitable for your physiological function. The number of meals your day should depend on your fitness goals, lifestyle, and fitness level. Eating a few meals a day or maybe up to 8 meals a day has its own benefits. It is important that you find the nutritional system that is most beneficial to your health. ^{[11] X Research Source}

Eating more often, six to eight meals a day, has little effect on your metabolism or weight loss. For example, if in a day you eat 3 meals with 1,000 kcal / each meal or 6 meals / day and each meal has 500 kcal, these two ways make no difference because you both consume 3,000 kcal / day. Overall, energy levels remain the same, so eating multiple meals a day is not helpful in controlling cravings.
Eat more often when you are trying to build muscle and strength, especially diabetics need to eat often. If you’re focused on losing weight or have a rather hectic lifestyle, you should eat less often.
The best method is to eat when hungry and stop when satisfied.

Control hunger with physical activity

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Exercise regularly. Exercise is helpful for appetite control and weight loss. Engage in moderate and high intensity exercise, then your body will control its own cravings, because the body uses stored fat as an energy source during intense exercise low, such as walking, swimming, jogging, will increase the feeling of hunger.

Many studies have shown that neural responses to food are significantly reduced during moderate to high intensity exercise.
Exercise also reduces incentive motivation in the brain responsible for the anticipation of food. This effect reduces hunger and keeps you healthy and reduces stress.

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Get enough sleep. There are many studies that have studied the effects and effects of enough sleep and lack of sleep on the human body. In general, lack of sleep has a negative effect on the body and increases hunger hormones that make us crave snacks throughout the day. ^{[12] X Research Source}

Research shows that sleep-deprived bodies tend to crave more carbohydrates throughout the day. Scientists believe this is due to the natural carbohydrate craving reflex to replenish the body’s energy.
Sleep is closely related to eating. Long-term sleep deprivation increases food consumption greatly.
Leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells that suppresses appetite, is highly dependent on the length of sleep. Therefore, lack of sleep has a huge impact on hunger.

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Yoga. Yoga can reduce your cravings. The practice of yoga makes you more aware of your body, so you can be more sensitive about how you feel when you feel satisfied and less likely to snack. ^{[13] X Research Source}

Practice yoga for at least 1 hour a week to help reduce cravings. Because yoga helps reduce stress, it controls a hormone called cortisp, which often increases cravings.
Mindful eating, which is slowly savoring each bite, is also part of the practice of yoga. This process helps you stop eating when you feel full.

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Control your emotional hunger. Eating while bored is a habit, but for many people, distinguishing between true hunger and emotional hunger is quite difficult. ^{[14] X Research Source}

If the feeling of hunger is real, it will come quite slowly, and can easily be satisfied with most foods. You will naturally stop eating when you are full and you will not feel guilty. On the contrary, it’s psychologically a craving for a particular food when you’re depressed, and this feeling comes on very quickly, and causes you to overeat but after you’ve finished eating you may feel guilty.
Write down the foods you eat throughout the day in a food diary. Track your emotions before and after eating. If you feel guilty after eating unhealthy foods between meals or late at night, you can do a different activity during this period like walking, reading, or playing with your friends. pet.
If you feel the urge to eat is too strong, you can eat some healthy snacks like fruits, vegetables, or nuts.

Advice

Drink something when you start to feel hungry; The body often cannot distinguish between thirst and hunger.
Just put less food on your plate, the less you see, the less you eat.
Try to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, meats, and whole grains. These healthy food groups will help balance cravings.
Place food on a small plate; because the small plate will trick the brain into thinking that there is a lot of food on the plate.
Listen to music, sing, dance, exercise, or similar activity to help distract attention from hunger.
Digestion of some foods, such as unprocessed celery, takes a lot of calories, even more calories than there are in this food.

Warning

You can find ways to reduce your cravings but you can’t stop eating, you still need to eat. Your body needs three regular meals or up to eight small meals a day to keep your metabolism up. If calories burned are higher than calories taken in, you will lose weight. Eat healthy and regular meals, but only when you’re hungry. No eating is allowed, this is called psychosis and is very dangerous.

Steps

Curb hunger

Regulate hunger

Control hunger with physical activity

Advice

Warning

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