How to deal with your cravings

What to do when cravings strike?

• Get busy! Do something to take your mind off it. For the most part 20 minutes distraction is all it'll take.
• Go for a jog or a run
• Get in the shower
• Wash your hair
• Paint your nails - you try eating with wet nail varnish!
• Clean the oven!
• Get out into the fresh air for a walk
• Garden!
• Brush the dog/cat
• Phone a friend!
• Talk to the kids
• Do some housework!
• Have a cup of tea

Think about why you are craving certain foods. Have you restricted yourself from having them? Does your dite prohibit you eating certain foods.

If your diet makes it hard to stick to the diet then it is probably not the right one for you.

What to do if your cravings win?

If you find yourself stuffing your face then you have a couple of options. You can stop immediately you realise what you're doing and minimise the damage caused, or you can carry on eating until you've fully satisfied your craving, causing yourself to feel very guilty about having broken your diet.
The best option - but almost certainly the hardest one is to stop eating as soon as you realise what you've done! Accept you've been got at by a craving and resist! Accept that getting straight back on your diet is the best way of dealing with this.

Get support from people around you. One small slip won't ruin your diet completely. Learn from it though. Work out what triggered it, why you gave in and what you will do NEXT time it happens to make sure you don't slip again. This might mean altering your diet to include the forbidden food as a treat.

Adjust your diet to suit you. Making a diet which is really more about life changes which are permanent than a temporary dietary change is the way to go for long term weight loss and keeping that weight off.

Including foods you can't live without is essential. You just have to work out how to include them in an efficient way.