I get very excited when someone offers me a piece of bona-fide advice which has been endorsed by people with letters after their name, especially when it claims to eradicate some of those bumps in the road which could make the wheels come off my diet. I was totally ready to be impressed yesterday when I saw an article on cravings, and how you might stop them in their tracks. Granted the article was in the Daily Mail rather than the New England Journal of Medicine, but hey it could’ve been scribbled on the back of a fag packet for all I cared, so long as it worked.
In my haste to get to this holiest of holy grails I was even prepared to pretend I hadn’t zoned in on the typo on line four which referred to the ‘sweet draw’ rather than the sweet drawer – yes I know, I’m a freak, but stuff like that really twangs my strings. Anyway, there was a team of nutritionists – a whole team mind you – who were standing behind this research, so I ignored the typo and pushed on.
And it started well…I was nodding along by line eight. Yes, I completely bought into the fact that your body finds ways to tell you when you’re deficient in something. I remember drinking about 2 litres of fresh orange juice every day when I was expecting my son, even before I knew I had a baby on board. Totally random fact which might have nothing to do with anything, but I was relating, you know..? There was definitely an air of expectation…like this was it, I was going to learn how to get rid of all those cravings once and for all. A defining moment. I’ll run through the advice shall I..? Distill it for you and give you just the good bits, you know, the highlights…?
“If you crave something sweet, eat broccoli instead.” Yeah because that’s going to cut it. The Asshole will totally go for that.
“If you crave chocolate, have some.” Right then. Way to go to combat the craving. Did the Asshole actually write this one? He uses that line all the time.
“If you’re craving a salty snack have some anchovies.” Are you fucking kidding me?
“If you’re craving some dirty carbs, eat some turkey instead.” And again…wtf?
I stopped reading there, having written off said team of nutritionists as skinny dimwits who had obviously never experienced a fat girl craving in their lives. I mean come on. A craving will turn your head inside out. I’ve been known to drive the 15 miles to Ikea in my slippers at warp speed, screeching into the car park at 9.55pm a whisker before they close so I can buy a Daim cake, simply because I cannot contemplate getting through the night without one. I’ve eaten dog chocolate when there was nothing else sweet in the house. If you’d offered me a broccoli floret when I was in the grip of that craving I’m here to tell you that you’d have been invited to leave with the suggestion of shoving it sideways where the sun doesn’t shine ringing in your ears.
For advice on how to combat cravings, don’t ask the experts – ask a fat girl. We might not always be able to follow our own advice, but we know better than most what might work, sometimes. I’ll give you a clue…it’s not broccoli or anchovies. For me, right now it’s toothpaste. If I’m desperate to eat something and I’ve spent my food budget for the day, going and brushing my teeth with an overloaded toothbrush takes the edge off. It’s not much, but it’s something.
No holy grail today then…ah well. We’ll all just keep plugging away shall we? 🙂
When you are tempted to eat something you shouldn’t, (in my case chocolate/desserts) a good trick is to gargle with a big mouthful of Listerine. Nothing tastes good after that!
Yes I can imagine that’s true…toothpaste works too, been there and tried that one! Great idea 🙂
Hi y’all, Billy No Mates here lol.
I’m beginning to feel like I’m standing alone on one side of the room and everyone else here is on the other side commiserating with each other and nodding enthusiastically when someone says, “and you know when xxxx” because it’s familiar, they recognise it, it’s happened to them. I don’t get cravings, I don’t get hungry and I can pretty much resist temptation. If I eat cake, buns, biscuits, sweets, carbs etc. it’s generally because I think, well, why not? When I don’t eat them I don’t tend to lose weight anyway.
I don’t fit into the stereotypical fatty, that’s not to say I don’t get hit with the mantra well all you have to do is eat less and move more. I’m generally not believed when I say I don’t eat that much, two meals a day, breakfast and dinner. I can lose weight, but it means eating practically nothing. It works, I drop a pound or even two. As soon as I eat “normally” again, it arrives back.
Theories welcome but please don’t tell me I’m fooling myself or that I should keep a food diary because it’s all those little extras that add up. I know what I eat, I know when I’ve sinned and tbh, my weight doesn’t really fluctuate whether I eat a bit more or a bit less.
Hello lovely…don’t feel alone. You might have a unique situation but you’re still fed up with being fat and you’re still in the game which means you’re exactly like the rest of us. Maybe you should try and have your metabolism checked Esther..? If you don’t feel hungry and your weight stays constant even if you don’t eat that much maybe there’s an underlying reason? Seems like a logical next step to me…just a thought. D x
Cravings!!! I just wrote about cravings. For me the best way to deal with cravings is to eat right all day, to keep things out of reach or out of the house so they don’t tempt me, and to occasionally “give in”, but to TRY to limit myself to one or two servings. That’s the hard part for me. If I give in, one piece or one scoop or one serving is usually not enough.
Yep…me too!
PS how well organised is your FRIDGE!! I just read your blog post and I’m in awe…I need you to come to my house and sort mine out 🙂
Not that I have mastered this by any means but I find three things work (sometimes) for me:
1. I’ve had to accept that I absolutely cannot have sugar. It’s my “trigger” food and sends me into eating overdrive. I don’t get all worked up about things that might unexpectedly contain sugar in the ingredients like Marinara sauce, although I try very hard not to eat any processed foods.
2. When a craving hits I tell myself that I can have the thing I want (Cadbury flake for example, although theyre hard to get here in the US!) if I wait 20 minutes. In those 20 minutes I try to think about how I will really feel if I fall off the wagon and if it’s really worth it. I will try to run out the clock and if I am still craving it I will tell myself I can have it but it doesn’t have to mean a binge fest.
3. Lastly, I keep all tempting foods out of the house. It’s a reality I had to embrace because even if I cave on No. 2 I still have to trot off and find the flake, which is no mean feat and gives me some more time to reconsider my choices.
Now I still struggle with binge eating and bouncing back and forth with the same 10lbs to lose but I am determined that one day soon I will win the war. Reading blogs like yours helps a lot.
Well I’m happy that it helps…writing it really helps me too, even more than I anticipated it might. We all struggle with the same things don’t we. Cravings are so bloody hard!
Hi Dee – loving your blog, found it through the Daily Mail comments. I actually did laugh out loud at my desk @ the eating dog chocolate bit! 🙂 I do always read the Daily Mail articles on anything to do with helping me with my weight loss journey so I know what you mean about getting excited by the title of the article only to find out its a load of nonsense! Thanks for the toothpaste tip as well! Happy Friday!
Hey Deidre, welcome! Yes, one of my regular readers keeps dropping little mentions of us into the comments section and a fair few people have popped in to see what we’re all about 🙂 Happy Friday to you too, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog and it’s lovely to have you! Dee x
Broccoli floret . . . yes that’s satisfying 😉
I’m finding odd comfort in salty chicken broth – the powdered kind [do you have that?] because even though I’m drinking it tastes more like food and satisfies a need for salty snacks . . . and it’s no points LOL! That’s my brilliance for the day – I do like the toothpaste thing – it does help!
I’m not sure I’ve seen powdered chicken broth. Who makes it? I’m stateside next week (whoop whoop!!) so whilst my good friends are rooting around the designer outlets in search of bargains I could always take a detour to a strip mall and go in search of points free soup! x
We had a fairly short-lived government advertising campaign in Australia a couple of years ago based on this very idea, called “Swap it, don’t stop it.” I just looked it up to see if I could find something as funny as broccoli instead of sweets, but the website was closed down. I remember looking at the ads in disbelief at the time. Swap hot chips for a salad! You’re not “stopping” your fat and starch habit, you’re just swapping for an equivalent item, you’ll barely notice… yeah, right.
Honestly Natalie, who dreams these things up?! I mean I actually love veggies of all kinds but when your head’s in that place where you’d kill your granny for a taste of something you can’t have it’s ridiculous to suggest they are any kind of sub!
It’s amazing how little some supposedly smart people can really know!
I know, right?! The posse have already forgotten more than those muppets could hope to learn!
Hi, Dee – two things: i know i comment too much. Sorry, when i reread one of your posts and NOBODY reacted as violently as i did, i speak up. Like others of your posse, i am enjoying reading back thru this whole blog.
Secondly, the thing is, you spoke to my cumpulsive soul. We can do this, but not with the advice of experts. Only with our own experience & serendipitous missteps. When a craving grabs ahold, “have a carrot stick” or “substitute with broccoli” is pure noise. Never in my life have i opened the vegetable crisper in that interminable late hour. In a ridiculously high protein phase, i had so much meat in the house that i tried to eat some of that. Frying up a pkg of bacon took the same amount of effort as running out in the car to buy sweets, & somehow it defused my physical need & was suitably demented.
There’s no such thing as commenting too much lovely lady…your company is always welcome, and your comments keep the conversation alive which is just a joy. Our collective experience is really what counts, I’m just the one with the opening gambit! D x