This easy baked cod meal is full of Mediterranean flavor. And is quick and easy to cook.
Ingredients:
• 1 28-oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
• 1 cup Castelvetrano olives, pitted and torn
• 1 small yellow onion, sliced
• ½ cup red wine
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons capers
• ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt, divided
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 6 6-oz. cod fillets
• Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, for serving
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 425°F (220°C).
In a 3-quart baking dish, combine the tomatoes, olives, onion, wine, oil, capers, crushed red pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper; stir to mix.
Roast the mixture until the tomatoes have softened and the sauce has thickened slightly, about 35 to 40 minutes. You can prepare this part of the recipe up to a day ahead.
When ready to serve, reheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).
Season the cod fillets with the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt and more black pepper.
Nestle the fish in the tomato mixture and bake until the cod is just cooked through, which should take about 10 to 15 minutes.
Garnish with chopped parsley before serving.
Enjoy your meal with a side of fluffy couscous or steamed white rice for a complete dining experience. This dish is sure to impress with its bold flavors and Mediterranean flair! Bon appétit! ️
With its tart, juicy flesh and stellar nutrient profile brimming with vitamins and antioxidants, grapefruit seems like it would be a fantastic choice for diabetes diets.
But is this colorful citrus really as healthy as it seems for people struggling with high blood sugar?
Let’s dive into the pros and cons of enjoying grapefruit so you can make the best decision for your blood sugar and health:
The Pros
Low Glycemic Index – With a GI of only 25, grapefruit has less impact on blood sugar than other fruit. The fiber and acidity slow digestion of the natural sugars.
Hydrating Vitamin C – A refreshing grapefruit packs over 100% of your daily vitamin C, which acts as a powerful antioxidant. Staying hydrated is key for balanced blood sugar.
Fills Fruit Cravings – If your sweet tooth is calling, grapefruit makes a more nutritious choice to fill your fruit quota than high sugar options like grapes or bananas.
The Cons
May Interact with Medications – Grapefruit can negatively interact with several diabetes medications by increasing absorption of the drugs to potentially dangerous levels.
Acidity Aggravates Digestion – Grapefruit’s tartness comes from citric acid, which can irritate the stomach lining or trigger reflux in sensitive people. Any GI distress hampers diabetes management.
May Spike Blood Sugar Still – While grapefruit has a lower GI than other fruit, it can still raise blood sugar significantly depending on portion size and individual response.
The Verdict?
Enjoy grapefruit in moderation being mindful of medication interactions and potential digestive irritation.
Small servings may benefit blood sugar control. But a safer option may be lower glycemic fruits like blackberries, cherries, apples, and pears.
When managing diabetes or insulin resistance, cutting back on carbohydrates is a smart move. But while sweets and sugary treats seem like obvious culprits, there’s another category of carbs that can rapidly spike blood sugar – starchy carbs.
Found in many staple foods we consider healthy, these refined grains, cereals and starches digest quickly into glucose without any balancing fiber. Steer clear of these 4 blood sugar-boosting picks:
White Rice
A bowl of fluffy white rice may seem harmless, but those polished grains are pure carbohydrates. With the fiber-rich bran removed, white rice acts like sugar in the body, causing a rapid spike and crash.
Try cauliflower rice instead – simply pulse riced cauliflower florets in the food processor for a low carb, nutrient-dense substitute.
Instant Oatmeal Packets
While steel cut oats can be diabetes-friendly, the instant and flavored varieties are another story. Packed with added sugars and refined grains that digest too quickly, these morning go-tos will spike blood sugar fast.
Swap for plain rolled oats with berries and nuts added – the fiber will blunt glucose response and the fats help slow digestion.
Crackers & Pretzels
They seem like innocent snacks, but refined flour crackers and pretzels made from white flour break down into straight glucose. Plus, it’s easy to overdo portions with crunchy carbs.
Grab veggie slices and hummus instead – the protein and fiber prevent blood sugar spikes.
Potato Chips
It’s no wonder greasy potato chips lead to carb binges. Those thin slices are basically all starch, almost as dangerous as drinking liquid sugar for blood glucose control.
Baked veggie chips offer crunch without the carbs – try kale or beet versions sprinkled with just a little salt.
When it comes to keeping blood sugar stable, not all carbs are equal.
Be extra cautious with starchy refined grains that can send glucose soaring. And opt for healthier food swaps instead.
Growing up, I was always told to eat my veggies and drink my milk.
There was nothing about how to stay healthy during cold season…or virus-outbreak-that-could-cause-Armageddon season.
So I started doing my own reading up about what nutrients the body needs to gain a rock solid wall of immunity… and provide a natural source of energy in case food gets scare.
It soon became obvious that I’d have to spend $100s of dollars a month on supplements…
hours chopping and preparing vegatables…
or find some willing victim to give you a blood transfusion (which I hear is all the rage among aging tech billionaires) to fulfil my daily nutrient requirements.
Luckily, I found a better solution.
And I didn’t have to battle my way through protestors or run the gauntlet of going to the supermarket to get it.
Earnings disclaimer – If you buy NeutraGreens via this article we will earn a small commission. However, we think it’s a great way of hittting your daily nutrition goals, and it’s offered with a 60 day money back guarantee, so there’s no risk in giving it a try.
We’re always told to eat lots of oranges when we’re sick.
And this makes sense, because vitamin C plays a vital role in healthy immune function, bone density and iron absorption.
In fact, in Wuhan (the epicenter of the COVID outbreak) doctors gave patients MASSIVE doses of vitamin C. And in New York hospitals, doctors did the same.
But they’re not doing it by force feeding people oranges.
Instead they’re feeding patients vitamin C through an intravenous drip, so it goes straight into the bloodstream.
Because you see, while the jury is still out on whether eating lots of oranges can PREVENT you getting the flu, studies show it can accelerate how fast you recover.
A 2013 review of studies involving 11,000 people found taking 200 mg of vitamin C can reduce a cold’s duration by about one day.
So if you want to boost your vitamin C levels, what’s the best way?
Well, it’s not from a supplement.
According to Dr. Bistrian from Harvard Health, “It’s better to get vitamin C from food, because you also get other important nutrients.”
And which foods are best?
You may be surprised to know there are 3 fruits that contain MORE vitamin C than oranges (53.2 mg / 100 grams).
They are:
1. Papaya 58 mg / 100 g
2. Kiwi 92.7 mg / 100 g
3. Guava 228.3 mg / 100 g
So there you go.
Create a fruit salad from these 3 fruits and you can give yourself a motherload of flu fighting vitamin C in no time.
After comparing their levels of visceral fat and composition of microbes, they concluded that it’s the TYPE of microbes people have in their gut that influences how much visceral fat they carry.
Not how MUCH they eat.
“We confirmed that gut microbiota composition and diet are both associated with VFM accumulation and that these two factors are closely linked,” the scientists concluded.
So how can you improve the composition of microbes in your gut, and reduce how much fat is accumulated as a result?
Eating a nutrient, fiber rich diet.
This was the second discovery by the team of scientists. That diet has a direct impact on the TYPE of microbes in people’s guts.
What they discovered is eating junk foods high in processed sugars and carbs causes the gut to be infested with fat spreading microbes.
Whereas…
Eating nutrient dense foods rich in vegetable fiber causes an increase in the lean type of microbes.
Even better, these lean microbes were found to improve insulin sensitivity and the pace of fat burning metabolism.
So, as I’ve often said, the gut is the CORE of all health in the body. And the foods you eat directly impact how healthy that core is.
The good news is you don’t need expensive probiotics to feed your gut with health enriching bacteria.
My free eBook ‘Eat Your Way to a Healthy Gut’ is packed with nutrient dense, get enriching recipes. You also get 2 meal plans for making the transtion to healthy eating a success.
After a long day, I love to indulge my taste buds with a few of Lindt’s dark squares.
But when experts said dark chocolate is healthy, I don’t think they meant to eat the whole bar!
Sadly, I’m not alone in struggling with overpowering cravings for foods that give me comfort amidst the daily grind.
According to the American Psychological Association, 38% of US adults admit to bingeing on unhealthy foods to relieve stress.(1)
Of those, over half say the joy of biting into a juicy burger or sweet release of a slice of cake leaves them feeling ashamedafterwards. While 1 in 3 say filling up on unhealthy foods leaves them feeling sluggish and drained.
So cravings don’t just ruin clean eating attempts and stretch people’s waistlines. They harm people’s self confidence too.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is a team of scientists from Louisiana State University (LSU) has found cravings for unhealthy foods can be reduced or even stopped altogether.(2) Even better, the method they discovered doesn’t involve willpower, overpriced supplements, or diet pills.
As John Apolzan, director of Pennington Biomedical Clinical Nutrition, who led the research, says cravings are “a conditioned response that you can unlearn.“
Changing Habits is Key To Reduce Emotional Eating
After examining 28 peer-reviewed studies, the team from LSU concluded that cravings for unhealthy foods often don’t occur due to hunger. Instead, cravings occur due to deeply entrenched behavioral triggers.
Surprisingly, these are habits and behaviors many people think are healthy yet studies now show may make cravings worse.
The goods news is the team at LSU also discovered that changing these behaviorsis all it can take to reduce cravings for junk food and make it easier to stick to clean eating habits.
As Candice Myers, PhD, who was also involved in the research, said “Cravings influences what people eat and their body weight, but there are some components of our behavior and diet that we do have control over.”
So what are these craving inducing behaviors and how can you reduce emotional eating habits? Read on to find out:
Eating junk foods in moderation can help make clean eating habits easier to stick to the long run
1. Restricting Favorite Foods
Whether it’s eliminating sugar, carbs, or lectins, restrictive diets are promoted as a magic bullet for slimming down.
Sure, going cold turkey on pasta, soda, and white bread can work wonders for your waistline for a while.
But living without the comfort of favorite food can quickly make people feel deprived. Then all it takes is a stressful day at work to trigger an eating binge of epic proportions.
So what’s the solution to reduce emotional eating habits?
Simple: Reduce the intake of unhealthy foods GRADUALLY.
Making dietary changes gradually gives the taste buds and brain time to adjust. The result is clean eating feels less like punishment and easier to sustain for the long haul.
“Bingeing is triggered by deprivation, which leads to a vicious cycle,” says best selling health author and popular health blogger Jessica Sepel. “Instead of depriving your body of food, it’s time to start nourishing yourself and healing your relationship with nutrition.” (15)
Restricting calories can trigger the body’s survival mechanism, making cravings for unhealthy foods worse
2. Calorie Counting
Whether it’s keto, paleo, or the carnivore diet, most diets involve calorie counting of some sort.
While cutting calories can result in rapid weight loss, it typically only works for a short while. Because it doesn’t take long before the body’s hormones can trigger rebound weight with a vengeance.
The reason this happens is because when calories are cut too fast the body sees this as a threat and goes into survival mode. It then releases hormones to force the body to take in more calories.(3)
Chief among the hormones released is the ‘hunger hormone’ ghrelin.(4)
Whereas the hormone leptin decreases appetite, ghrelin INCREASES it. And the fewer calories people eat the more ghrelin the body produces. The result is people feel hungrier the less they try to eat.
In fact, research by Fitchburg State University found that ghrelin levels nearly double within six months of going on a calorie restrictive diet.(5)
So how can you reduce calorie intake without triggering the hunger hormone?
As before, the key is to reduce emotional eating is to lower calorie intake gradual. This makes the transition smoother and reduces the risk of putting the body into survival mode.
Making exercise fun and manageable is the key to sticking with it long-term
3. Exercising Too Much
For decades we’ve been told that sweating buckets on the treadmill, bootcamp workouts, and pushing our bodies to the max is great for our bodies and minds.
Sure, exercise is a key component of a healthy life. But some experts say doing it too much can make cravings WORSE.
This includes endurance trainer Matt Fitzgerald, author of Diet Cults and Racing Weight. He says cravings can increase after exercise due to the “reward psychology at play.”(6)
Fitzgerald says it’s a common problem for “beginners who aren’t intrinsically motivated to exercise; they simply don’t love it.”
In other words, if a workout is too gruelling people then want to reward themselves. And for many people this means bingeing on the sugary foods that made them overweight in the first place.
So, yet again, the key to reduce emotional eating is to adopt a new exercise regimen is to do it gradually. Start with exercise that feels manageable then build the intensity over time.
4. Too Much Cortisol
Whether it’s hitting a deadline at work or the kids causing havoc at home, stress is part of daily life. It’s also one of the most common causes of emotional eating.
When we feel stressed it causes the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol to rocket.
Cortisol then sends blood and nutrients rushing to the brain and muscles. It alsoincreases the body’s desire to take on board fuel. And the fuel our bodies crave the most is GLUCOSE.
Glucose is metabolised in the body from carbs and sugars. Which is why people crave soda and carb loaded pizza when stressed.(7) It’s the body telling them to take on board fuel.
“When we’re stressed, our bodies are flooded in cortisol,” said author and clinical psychologist Susan Albers. “That makes us crave sugary, fatty, salty foods.”(11)
So how can the chain reaction of stress leading to cravings for junk food be avoided?
The key to reduce emotional eating due to stress is to find healthy ways of relieving stress, rather than raiding the fridge.
Finding hobbies that offer fulfilment and reward can fill the void people otherwise fill with food
5. Lack of Fulfilment
People often struggle to reduce emotional eating due to boredom or due to a void in their lives.
As Sarah Allen, a psychologist specializing in mood and eating disorders, notes, “eating gives us something to do. It fills our time, gives us a way to procrastinate.”(11)
The reason we eat when bored is because it releases the ‘reward hormone’ dopamine in the brain.
Karen R. Koenig, a licensed clinical social worker and eating psychology expert, says that due to the release of dopamine “the meaning of eating is, ‘I’m going to be happy. I’m not going to be in emotional discomfort. I’ll have this wonderful experience.”(11)
Sadly, the foods that trigger the biggest dopamine dump are those loaded with SUGAR.(11)
So if sugary foods make us feel so great due to dopamine, how can we stop eating them?
The solution is to pursue new interests and hobbies that provide a sense of fulfilment and reward.
A good place to start is to write a bucket list of things to try. Pursuing those things can then fill the void otherwise filled with food.
6. Too Much Processed ‘Frankenfoods‘
A key reason why 2 in 3 Americans are now classed overweight or obese is because of the low nutrition in processed ‘frankenfoods’.(12)
The human body craves nutrients. And it won’t stop feeling hungry until it gets enough.
This is why people can eat pasta, potato chips, and cookies until the cows come home without feeling full. It’s because these foods are criminally low in nutrition.(13)
Luckily, the solution is simple: Eat nutrient dense foods instead.
Nutrient dense foods include eggs, avocado, nuts, green leafy vegetables, and oily fish.(14)
Eating these foods helps fill up the body quicker and keep it feeling full for longer, reducing the risk of snacking mid-afternoon.
Escaping Emotional Eating Offers a Path to Physical Health, Fulfilment and a Happier Mind
Reducing emotional eating habits involves skills that can improve life in many other ways
As these six behaviors demonstrate, there’s no magic bullet or wonder pill that can reduce emotional eating and cravings for good.
Instead, it involves changing our relationship with food...
Finding other ways of relieving stress than biting into a juicy burger…
Pursuing fulfilling activities that release feelings of joy…
and to gradually adopt clean eating and exercise habits in harmony with the body’s hormones.
Making these changes involves self reflection, personal growth, and persistence. It also requires skills in mindfulness, body confidence, positive thinking, and goal setting.
The good news is that these skills aren’t just beneficial for reducing emotional eating habits. They can transform life in many other areas too.
For anyone interested in developing these skills so they can reduce emotional eating habits and gain inner peace, physical health, and a happier mindset, we’ve developed a 7 step program that can help.
Disclaimer – Statements made in this article have not been approved or verified by the FDA. This information is not intended to be a substitute or replacement for any medical treatment. Please seek the advice of a healthcare professional for your specific health concerns. Individual results may vary.
Food companies use all sorts of tricks to convince us their foods are healthy
Are breakfast cereals “super foods”?
You’d think so based on the number of health claims on the box. Such as being a great source of energy and iron, when the truth is that a lot of cereals contain more sugar than soda.
I often wondered why food companies are able to get away with such misleading labelling.
And I was shocked when I discovered the reason.
Because you see, these labels aren’t a legal requirement at all.
They’re enforced by the food companies!
This was just one of the alarming things I heard on the Genius Life podcast, on which Max Lugrave interviewed Marion Nestle PhD., author of “How the Food Industry Corrupts Science” .
She describes how the health claims on food labeling are the diabolical creation of an industry that will use any tactic to convince us their processed ‘Frankenfoods’ are healthy.
When anyone with a basic understanding of human biology knows they’re not.
The fact is that anything that comes in a can, box, or packet is going to contained processed ingredients that wreck havoc to our digestive system, hormones, cravings, weight, and all round health.
Instead, the best foods are those without any labels at all.
The foods direct from mother nature.
Here’s another interview on YouTube, in which Marion Nestle drops more knowledge bombs on how the food companies manipulate science to push up their profits:
Fed up with calorie counting, food restrictions, and dieting misery? None of it is necessary for losing weight, finds a study published in the JAMA journal.
I’ve always said calorie counting isn’t a smart way to lose weight.
All it does is send your body into ‘fat storage’ mode and increase levels of the ‘hunger hormone’ ghrelin. So that the less you try to eat the hungrier you become.
Instead I think the focus should be on WHAT you eat rather than HOW MUCH.
This huge study, led by Dr. Chris Gardner at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, involved 600 participants and cost $8m to do.
Dr. Gardner and his team wanted to prove once and for all if calorie counting helped with weight loss or if it just primed the body to go into starvation mode and trigger rebound weight with a vengeance.
Well, based on what I said at the start of this article, you can probably guess the result…
The participants were allowed to eat as much food as they liked. All that matters was that they didn’t eat processed junk but instead only whole foods, like meat, vegetables, nuts, and fruit.
A year later all 600 participants had their health checked.
The first surprise was that ALL of them had lost weight. In fact, average weight loss was 12.35 pounds.
Yet what was more surprising was that, along with slimmer waists, they had lower blood sugar and their blood pressure had dropped.
In other words, this $8 million study PROVED that how much you eat doesn’t matter.
It’s WHAT you eat that does.
And WHAT you eat directly impacts your blood sugar, cholesterol, and all round health.
As Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian notes, this study provides “the road map to reducing the obesity epidemic in the United States. It’s time for U.S. and other national policies to stop focusing on calories and calorie counting.”
Eating Healthy is Easier Said than Done
You probably knew that you should be eating whole foods instead of processed junk already.
And you may have already tried eating clean, but found it impossible to stop the cravings for your favorite foods. Am I right?
The good news is there are strategies you can use for keeping cravings under control.
Chief among them is taking a long break between meals a couple of times a week.
Because when you do, it gives your body time to digest and burn off some of the sugars and carbs in your system before you eat more of them.
Take Bigger Breaks Between Meals a Few Times a Week
When it comes to timing your meals, there are few better people to learn from than Brad Pillon.
Brad isn’t a doctor or nutrition expert.
But that hasn’t stopped Brad becoming a bit of an internet celebrity due to the success of his ‘Eat Stop Eat’ system.
It’s a system that mirrors the eating habits of our ancestors.
A system that enables you to stay below your ‘personal calorie threshold’ so you can lose weight without relying on willpower alone.
His system has helped over 54,000 people to adopt a natural cycle of eating to gain slim, toned bodies without dieting misery.
So if you’ve struggled to make the transition to curbing your cravings and eating clean, Brad’s ‘Eat Stop Eat’ system is worth checking out:
Disclaimer: Statements made in this article have not been approved or verified by the FDA. This information is not intended to be a substitute or replacement for any medical treatment. Please seek the advice of a healthcare professional for your specific health concerns. Individual results may vary. This is an advertisement and not a blog or article.
Millions of people struggle with unhealthy overeating habits. Yet like any habit, overeating can be reduced with patience and a strategy to follow
I’m as guilty as anyone of stuffing my face at times. I find it hard to stop at a single slice of my favorite chocolate cake, or raiding the fridge for late night feasts.
Let’s face it, the pleasure and sense of comfort food gives us is hard to ignore. And it’s something we’ve been hardwired to enjoy since childhood.
As Michelle May, MD, author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat, notes, “From the moment we’re born, we’re nurtured with food, rewarded with food, and so emotional connections to food are normal.”(1)
So there’s no reason to feel guilty about eating for pleasure.
It’s normal.
But it can easily get out of control…
When it results in a ‘food trance’ where the urge is to eat, and eat, and eat, even after the stomach is full, is a warning sign that eating for pleasure has mutated into something more serious.
Why People Get Cravings for Junk Food
According to Harvard Health, common triggers of cravings for junk food include:(2)
1. Stress or boredom – A stressful day at work or being stuck at home with the kids can mean seeking reward through food.
2. Restrictive dieting – Drastically cutting calories and relying on willpower can only last so long. Eventually, the body’s hormones rebel, and people end up eating more than before.
3. Food addiction – Processed foods high in fat, sugar, and salt have been found to trigger the same pleasure centers in the brain as smoking or alcohol.
Sadly, due to these triggers, overeating is alarmingly common.
In fact, 5 million women and 3 million men struggle with overeating in the US. That’s more than double the numbers battling anorexia and bulimia combined.(3)
Health Risks of Overeating
Overpowering food cravings and overeating pose more risks than being overweight.
It can affect mood, self worth, impact relationships, and harm productivity at work.
While physically, chronic overeating can result in high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, bouncing blood sugar, and other health complications.(4)
6 Ways to Reduce Cravings
Thankfully, cravings for unhealthy foods and overeating habits can be reduced or stopped altogether with the right strategy.
Here are 6 tips on how to do it.
1. Lose the ‘all-or-nothing’ attitude
Trying to go cold turkey on your favorite foods risks triggering food binges down the road
Overeating and food binges often result from restrictive dieting attempts.
The problem with ALL restrictive diets is they can result in an ‘all-or-nothing’ attitude.(5)
In other words, they make people feel they MUST stick to the diet rigidly.
So the moment someone on eats something they’re not supposed to, like grab a piece of birthday cake from the break room, they feel like their dieting attempt has failed.
They think ‘screw it’ and feverish eating binges commence.
This is why the ‘all or nothing’ mindset is just a ticking time bomb for food binges, and trying to to follow a diet to perfection is doomed to fail.
All it does is cause frustration and feelings of failure that feed more of the eating binges people are trying to avoid.
So to stop overeating, it’s wise to give up on restrictive dieting, to not reduce calories too fast, and to make the switch to clean eating gradual.
Instead of thinking ‘I MUST’ eat this salad instead of a burger, reframe it as ‘I choose’ this salad.
Having the freedom to eat favorite foods in moderation and not stressing out over whether to eat a bag of potato chips when watching Game of Thrones can make a transition to cleaner eating easier to sustain long-term.
2. Find other sources of pleasure
Doing things that bring feelings of joy is great for the mind and body
Like Harvard Health says, the weird thing about food cravings is that they’re aren’t usually due to hunger.(6)
Cravings typically arise from stress, boredom, and to fill an emotional hole.
Because many of us walk around feeling like there’s something missing in our lives. We’re unfulfilled and dissatisfied.
For this reason, finding better ways to relieve stress and doing other things that provide a sense of reward is the only way to stop overeating long-term.
Writing a bucket list of things to try is a good way to start. Then pursuing those things can fill the hole of personal fulfilment instead of food.
3. Avoid Restrictive Calorie Cutting Diets
Deprivation doesn’t work long-term. Switching to clean eating is more effective when done gradually and allowing favorite foods in moderation
A lot of diets are focused on restricting calories. And while they’re effective at triggering rapid weight loss, restricting food intake can trigger the body’s survival mechanism.(7)
People’s bodies have a weight ‘set point’ they feel comfortable at.
If someone tries reducing weight too fast beyond this point their body can play all sorts of tricks to get it back to the previous weight.
Chief among these tricks is releasing more of the hunger hormone ‘ghrelin’.
The more calories are restricted the more ghrelin is released and the more someone craves food.(8)
This is why diets nearly always end in failure.
Because eventually gnawing hunger overpowers people’s willpower, and they find themselves back to their old overeating habits along with rebound weight.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when people starve themselves of calories their body goes into ‘starvation’ mode.(9)
Their body then holds on to more of the foods they do eat. But rather than turn them into nutrients and energy, food gets locked away as fat.
The bottom line is that calorie restrictive diets are a recipe for disaster.
They send hormones haywire, increase cravings, and often end up causing people to weigh more than when they’d started.
4. Eat Nutrient Dense Meals
Nutrient dense meals fill you up quicker and feeling full for longer
A key reason why 2 in 3 Americans are now classed overweight or obese is because of the low nutrition in processed food.
The human body craves nutrients. And it won’t stop feeling hungry until it gets enough.
This is why people can eat… and eat… and eat processed foods yet still feel hungry.
It’s because processed foods are typically very low in nutrition.(10)
Luckily, the solution is simple: Eat more nutrient dense foods.
Nutrient dense foods include eggs, avocado, nuts, green leafy vegetables, and oily fish.(11)
Eating these foods will fill you up quicker and feeling full for longer, reducing your desire for overeating.
5. Relieve Stress in Healthier Ways
When the body feels hungry, going for a 20 minute stroll or run can reduce the stress hormone cortisol and cravings at the same time
A common cause of overeating is stress. Because sadly, our body’s haven’t yet adapted to handling stress in a healthy way.
For our ancestors, stress was vital for their survival. Because the feelings of stress are simply your body’s response to danger, and stress is actually just your ‘fight-or-flight’ mode in action.(12)
Sadly, modern lifestyles can cause our stress response to be triggered far more often than is healthy.
Whether it’s struggling to hit a deadline at work or misbehaving teenagers, stress causes your stress hormone ’cortisol’ to rocket. And cortisol then sends blood and nutrients rushing to the brain and muscles.
Stress also triggers the desire to eat foods high sugar and carbs. This is because these foods get turned into glucose in the body. And glucose provides the quick release of energy your body needs to escape from danger.(13)
So to avoid the chain reaction of stress leading to cravings for junk food, find healthy ways of relieving stress rather than raiding the fridge.
6. Develop Body Confidence
Every day we’re bombarded with advertising, social media posts, and celebrity photos of how our body’s should look.
To make matters worse, these images have often been airbrushed to create an impossibly perfect image for selling diet food, weight loss plans, gym memberships, designer clothes, and surgery as the path to feeling good.
Naturally, being bombarded with images of body perfection has resulted in a widespread lack of body confidence, among both women and men.
All of us are under enormous pressure to look good. Which explains why billions are spent on weight loss products every year.
Instead, the focus should be on having a HEALTHY body rather than achieving a body shape that only exists in photoshop.
Rather than think our butt is too big or arms aren’t slim enough, we should focus on good qualities.
To do this requires self acceptance and having confidence in how we look.
Now, I know this is easier said than done.
Gaining body confidence is probably the hardest of these tips to pull off.
It requires long-term investment in self development and changing how we think and feel about the world around us.
Following a System Can Provide the Path to Success
Changing overeating habits means changing our relationship with food and sources of stress relief and reward over time
As I hope these 6 tips have demonstrated, food cravings and overeating are deeply rooted in how our bodies respond to stress and how we connect food with pleasure.
Going on diets, relying on willpower, or taking diet pills to reduce cravings are all just short-term solutions. Inevitably, the body’s hormones take over and food binges soon follow.
So, the only way to cure cravings for junk food and overeating long-term is to dig deep and change the subconscious emotions driving it.
As Robin B. Kanarek, PhD, professor of psychology at Tufts University, says, “It can be hard to stop overeating…particularly if there are deep-rooted emotional problems involved.” (14)
The good news is that food cravings are something that can be overcome with patience and persistence, and by following a system with step-by-step guidance on how to do it.
With millions of people struggling with uncontrollable cravings for junk food, we decided to create a system for relieving cravings in 7 steps.
Our system was developed in collaboration with a lady called Brenda (you’ll understand why we’ve given her a pen name after you read her story). A lady who struggled with nightly cake binges before addressing the underlying issues driving her unhealthy relationship with food.
It combines hypnosis with cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, body confidence, and other self development techniques to address the root causes of cravings, comfort eating, and food binges.
So for anyone concerned about the effect cravings for unhealthy foods are having on their self esteem, emotions, and all round health, the 7 step system is worth a try:
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Glenda Thompson
Gareth Churchill
