6 Effective Ways to Control Food Cravings in Your Daily Lifestyle

How to Control Food Cravings?

Are you looking for some ways to control food cravings? You’ve come the right way.

You see, food is a necessity of life. We can’t live without eating, drinking and sleeping. All of these factors are essential for our survival. There are different varieties of foods we should include in our diet regularly for better body functioning like transportation of nutrients, digestion, increased muscle mass, providing the body with fluids, energy and so on.

It is impossible to live without food. However, anything in excess and beyond the limit and food are bad. There is a fine line between physical hunger and food cravings. The latter can be harmful to us.

Physical hunger is the type of hunger when we need to eat to keep ourselves going which is important for our survival. Craving is an urge to eat extra food to satisfy our emotions, de-stress ourselves, and make food a source of happiness.

It is no rocket science that extra food consumption leads to weight gain. Just like creating a calorie deficit makes us lose weight, a calorie surplus through fulfilling our cravings makes us gain weight in an unhealthy way.

Also, Read: Top 5 Nutrition Startups in India

How to Identify If You’re Having a Physical Hunger or Craving for Food?

Meal timings:

Fulfilling physical hunger is like a daily routine. We have our meals decided for the day like breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, evening snack and dinner timely.

However, fulfilling cravings means eating anything at any random time of the day without a routine. If you ate a big meal 1-2 hours before, and you still feel hungry, you might be craving extra food.

Signs:

If your body feels weak, dizzy and with low energy, these are mainly the signs of physical hunger. Whereas, if you feel like eating something to satisfy your taste and feel better, those might be the signs of cravings.

Quick Read: 5 Quick and Easy to Cook High Protein Recipes

Why Fulling Your Cravings Every Time Might Be Unhealthy for You?

1. Relying on Food

We usually tend to have cravings when our main source of happiness is food alone, in most cases. Whether it’s job stress, personal bad circumstances or worrying about an exam, we often try to de-stress ourselves with food.

Depending on food every time to overcome a problem is wrong. Food should be treated like fueling our body and not overdoing it just for the sake of emotions. There could be several ways to keep ourselves positive apart from eating.

2. Unhealthy Consumption of Food

Have you ever seen someone craving a salad? Well, not in most of the cases. When we are craving food, we crave a variety of junk food that has loads of sugar and is packed with calories.

Like, pizza, burger, fries, coke etc. Consuming such foods often is not good for our health in the long term at all. It affects our blood sugar, blood pressure, heart health, digestion and overall health.

3. Obesity

Fulfilling our cravings through junk food will lead to caloric surplus, making us gain unhealthy weight in the long term and before we realize soon, it will turn into obesity. Obesity is a condition characterised by abnormal or excessive fat accumulation.

Obesity is much more than apart from just changing our appearance. It can cause lifestyle disorders in the future like cardiac diseases, diabetes, PCOS, arthritis, hypertension etc. which can be life-threatening.

This is why controlling cravings is important. Working on reducing cravings can prevent us from such diseases and keep us healthy. But if you’re still telling yourself – “I can’t control my food cravings”, We are here for you.

Here is how to control food cravings to avoid weight gain and these are some of the best and natural tips to control food cravings.

Suggested Read: 7 Ways To Build A Customized Diet Plan And Workout Routine

6 Ways to Control Your Book Cravings

1. Choose whole foods

Choosing whole foods like wheat, multi-grains, whole fruits and vegetables, nuts etc. instead of processed foods like maida/white flour, juices, packaged foods – biscuits, chips etc. is one of the best ways to control food cravings in the long term.

Whole foods contain fibre, which is not only good for our digestion but also helps us increase satiety for a long time, which is a feeling of fullness after having a meal.

2. Increase your protein intake

Similar to how whole foods help us feel fuller for a long time, so does protein. We all know that people who are fitness enthusiasts eat more protein to help them recover and increase muscle mass. But, protein also helps us enhance our satiety levels. Try centring your meals around the rich sources of protein.

3. Hydrate well

Drinking more water can help us reduce false hunger. The next time you feel like eating something at random time, try drinking some water which will keep you full. It will help you realize that it was just craving and not physical hunger.

4. Sleep on time

How to stop food cravings at night? Well, have you ever noticed when we crave food, it is mostly at night and that too, late at night? It is, when we are watching a movie, or talking to a friend late at night, we feel like eating something because we had dinner hours before. We will feel hungry when we had our last meal almost more than 3 hours ago.

However, it doesn’t mean eating late nights, when we should be sleeping. A lack of sleep makes our body release stress hormones which make us have an urge to eat. Once you start sleeping on time, you will never tend to have cravings at the time, when you’re dreaming.

5. Prefer healthy snacks

If you feel like, you need to eat something extra to help you feel better and you possibly can’t avoid eating at all, stop mindless snacking and try to have more healthy snacks. Swap your regular foods with whole fruit, nuts, greek yoghurt, a sugar-free fruit smoothie, sprouts, lotus seeds, bread with peanut butter etc.

6. Exercise regularly

Here is how to get food cravings under control – do a few exhausting sets of burpees, push-ups, body-weight squats or any other body-weight exercise. We are pretty sure the three steps above would work for you to shut down a sugar craving.

Exercising helps us suppress cravings as it releases happy hormones and makes us feel a lot more motivated towards maintaining our diet.

Also, Read: 10 Best Fitness Apps

The Bottom Line

Having cravings is normal for everyone. After all, we all are humans. Our days are different, eating routines are different. It is not always possible to stay on track but it is important to follow ways to control food cravings at the same time and stop ourselves from indulging in having extra.

Try building more discipline, and consistency and introduce a fitness routine in your life. Here’s how we can help you start your fitness journey.

Onsurity’s Healthcare Plan to Help You Stay Fit

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If you’re an Employer or HR, subscribe to our plan for your employee’s healthcare today or if you’re a team member, feel free to refer us!

Also, you can follow us on Instagram, @onsurity_ to get ideas on how to remain fit! We make some amazing workout posts there, which you can perform anywhere and anytime.

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