5 Ways To Stop Cravings Dead in Their Tracks
Almost everybody who starts a Paleo diet has to deal with cravings.
Unless you never ate sugary junk in your life, you’ve had cravings.
But knowing that it’s a universal problem doesn’t make it any easier for you.
Luckily, there are a few tactics that work for almost everybody.
5 Ways to End Cravings
1. Sleep Enough. It sounds like an odd first tactic, but getting too little sleep is a sure way to make you crave junk food. It’s also a sure way to make sure that you don’t have enough willpower to resist.
When you don’t sleep enough, 2 important things happen. First of all, you overproduce cortisol, which tends to make you hungrier, particularly for sugar.
Secondly, your body sends less glucose to your prefrontal cortex (the front of your brain), which is the impulse-control center. At that point, you have less control over your actions (and your cravings).
Is sleep important?
You bet.
2. Eat Enough Healthy Fats. Often, we crave non-Paleo foods because we’re simply not eating enough, especially when first starting a Paleo diet.
Because you’re usually cutting out a lot of the junky starches and sugars, you need to replace it with something. And the healthiest and most filling way to replace it is with good fats, such as coconut oil, pastured beef fat, etc.
In addition, simply make sure that you eat enough food at every meal. Sounds like it shouldn’t be a problem, but when you’re changing what you eat, you often inadvertently under eat.
3. Avoid Snacking. It turns out that our bodies get used to the times that we eat. If you snack regularly, then you’ll be tempted to snack at those times because your body will expect it.
This is not a popular suggestion, because it’s hard to give up at first.
However, once you stop snacking (and once you start eating only nutritious foods), you’ll find that you don’t get nearly as hungry, and you won’t even have the urge to snack.
4. Drink More Water. As with not eating enough, being dehydrated can really fuel cravings. You don’t need to drink huge amounts, but definitely make sure you drink water regularly.
5. Go Cold Turkey. I mean this particularly with respect to processed sugar.
Sugar is by far the most addictive part of non-Paleo foods. It definitely isn’t easy to give up processed sugar all at once, but if you can do it, your cravings will be much easier to control.
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