Natural weight loss at home with diet, nutrition, fitness, and training tips from theory to practice

How to stop food cravings during weight loss

Learn how you can stop food cravings by adopting and applying a strategy to your diet that will allow you to enjoy the foods you love while still losing weight.

"I’m on a diet, but I’m not dying"

Whenever I tell people that I’m on a diet, they immediately think that I’m starving myself. Nothing could be further from the truth!

You see, I treat dieting as an eating strategy: I never go hungry, I eat whenever I want to eat, and I eat whatever I want to eat.

During the years, I’ve taught my body to expect small amounts of food during the entire day, so yes, I do follow an often taught strategy of eating 5-6 smaller meals a day.

What I don’t do however, is restrict my calories to such a low level that I don’t have energy to do anything or that I’m constantly thinking about food. And another thing I don’t do is keep my diet 100% "clean". I cheat on my diet!

Food cravings and how they come about

People tend to crave the foods they love during weight loss, because "bad" hormones are being produced.

Without getting too technical or medical: Your body produces "good" and "bad" hormones on a daily basis. You can see the "good" hormones as those helping you to lose weight and the "bad" hormones as those preventing you from losing weight.

Whenever you restrict calories, as you do when you’re trying to lose weight, your body may produce more "bad" than "good" hormones, which will make you think about food and crave the foods you love more often.

I have food cravings just like anyone else. I have favorite foods just like anyone else. And I eat junk food every single week. Yes, that’s right! Every Saturday I head down to McDonald’s to get myself a Quarter Pounder with cheese, a large fries, and a large drink. That’s more than 1000 calories in one meal!

The only difference is that I know when to eat what and how much of it to eat, which is why I don’t struggle with my weight and can lose weight almost on demand.

Learn to listen to your body

If you restrict your calories to a level that’s too low, so effectively starve your body, your body will kick into what’s called starvation mode and try to hang onto all of the fat you currently have stored in and on your body.

As soon as you start to eat normal again, your body will retaliate by sucking up all of the calories you give it and store them as body fat, because it knows that in the future you might starve it again. Our bodies are intelligent machines; their goal is to ensure our survival.

For weight loss to be a success, that is, for you to lose body fat instead of muscle tissue, you need to trick your body into thinking that you’re not dieting. And there is where strategic dieting comes in.

If you have a craving for one of your favorite foods, give it to your body. Drinking a glass of water is not going to take away hunger, because water contains almost zero calories. Eating celery or carrot sticks is not going to help, because these are not calorie-dense foods. If your stomach is growling, it is telling you that it’s preparing to receive food; foods that contain calories, that is. Don’t ignore the message!

Conclusion

The science of weight loss is more than just cutting calories. There are processes going on in our bodies on a continuous basis, and you cannot ignore these. You have to learn to work with your body, instead of against it, otherwise you’ll never shed those pounds you want to shed.

Cheating on your diet is a good – and sometimes necessary – thing; just know when and how to do it!