New way to stop food cravings....

Today's Post: Monday, 6-13-2011

1. There are a lot of ways to stop food cravings that work.

Here are five of the highlights:

a) Stop drinking soft drinks, eating commercial desserts and snacks, all refined grain foods, white rice, potatoes, and cut WAY back on sugar. Instead eat no glycemic or low glycemic foods that are high in health OK protein and oils and nonstarchy vegetables, beans and lentils, and low glycemic whole fruit.

Foods in the list to stop -- fatten by making your insulin surge and then give you rebound hunger within a short time after you ingest them. The companies that make them also add addictive compounds to many of them to make sure you buy more! That gives you hard to control cravings.

But eating foods in the second group makes you less hungry without the cravings until you actually need to eat again.

b) When you see a tasty but fattening food, focus on what ingredients it has and the results of ingesting them.

This is proven to work. It’s a bit like meditation, it does take practice if you are new at it.

Plus, the more you know about how things like sugar, starch, refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, omega 6 oils, and trans fats act as disease fertilizer for multiple diseases and make you fat, the easier it gets.

c) Always eat breakfast and eat enough to last you well until lunchtime and have a health OK snack as a fallback.

If you can, work for a company that does NOT provide free pastries and soft drinks or have many people bring in home-made desserts several days each week.

People who don’t eat breakfast, routinely get near uncontrollable hunger surges at work during the day – or at dinner.

Also, it’s easier to avoid junky treats if they aren’t there and you don’t see others consuming them.

d) Lower perceived stress by getting better at acting to solve your problems.
Make more prudent choices to avoid severe stress. (Always wearing your seat belt and never texting while driving and the like can save you a LOT of grief.) You need not have stress driven cravings if you avoid stuff that causes severe stress!

Get regular exercise and do tai chi if you are able. That lowers physical stress even when you ARE getting hammered.

e) Avoid cutting back too much on calories or volume of food. If you eat half or less of what your body needs day after day long enough, you’ll trigger your famine response. Your body then triggers massive waves of food cravings.

Why go there?

Cut back less. Cut back some every other day instead of every day. Exercise more to cut net calories but eat a bit less instead of eating a lot less. Eat more health OK protein foods and do NOT eat less protein foods. Eat more nonstarchy vegetables. Each of these helps cut some calories without triggering your famine response.

2. Today, I found yet another way to lower food cravings. The food cravings it causes can be strong and even happen to people who do all the previous things right!

In addition, it can make doing some of these five things harder to do.

And, lots of us today have it!

Today this story was on the HealthDay online news.:

“Sleep-Deprived People May Crave High-Calorie Foods

By Denise Mann HealthDay Reporter MONDAY, June 13, 2011 (HealthDay News)”

The article notes that sleep deprivation makes the intelligent focus on the results of eating foods less by cutting back on the energy that part of your brain has to do it.

More important, sleep deprivation has the same effect on your hunger hormones as not eating enough.

The article quoted a woman researcher, “Dr. Shelby Freedman Harris, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.”

She said that previous studies found that sleep deprivation increases “…. the hormone ghrelin, which tells you when to eat, and decreases in the hormone leptin, which tells you to stop eating.”

She made clear that combining this with the partial shutdown of your reasoning centers in your brain from sleep shortages found in this new research makes it close to impossible to control the cravings that you get.

"Get more sleep," she advised.”

Three ways to do that are:

1. Sleep better from NOT watching most after dinner TV.

Watch less TV in general & stick to shows that are high priority for you. Tape shows late in the day to watch later on most days if they come on too late. Get your up to date news & weather from radio in the morning on your way to work or online earlier in the evening or in a few minutes the next morning.

2. Always get up at exactly the same time each weekday morning. And, begin setting up for bed by 7 hours before that so you usually get well over 6 to 6 and a half hours of sleep.

3. Do the things that cause good sleep and avoid those that tend to disrupt it.

People who exercise on most days sleep far better than those who do not.

People who drink too much coffee or too much alcohol or take certain statin drugs have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep.

After two or maybe 3 cups of coffee a day, switch to tea.

Stick to one or two drinks or less most days and stop by an hour or two before you go to bed. More alcohol than that tends to trigger less restful sleep and wake you too early when your body overdoes getting rid of the alcohol later that night.

Use lifestyle upgrades and niacin and sterols and avoid statins to prevent heart disease. It’s safer and more effective for most people and does NOT cause insomnia.

IF you can make your bedroom cool and quiet, do it. (Not everyone can. But if you can, it helps a lot!)

Put up blackout curtains and leave off inside lights. Most people can do that. And, those who do sleep better and may also be less likely to get some cancers. Doing this causes your body to release the right amount of melatonin and helps your body set up to help you sleep at the same time most nights.