6 Rules to Curb Junk Food Cravings

Cravings - well get them. Here are some tips on how to stop them.

1. Watch who you eat with.
You can tend to eat more when you're out with a friend, or a group. Mindless emotional munching is common when you're having fun and not thinking about food. Also, depending on who it is you're with, you may eat more or less. If you're with friends who love to pig out, and never care about what they're eating, it's likely that you'll do the same. Follow in the footsteps of the friends who have some control. It'll pay off.

2. Buy smaller portions.
If you're going to be doing something that keeps you occupied on whats happening in front of you, as opposed to what you're putting in your mouth, buy a smaller portion to start out with. For example, when you go to the movies, you might usually buy a tub of popcorn. Most people will finish that tub whether they feel full or not. So, if you're going to finish something, it might as well be the smaller size.

3. Eat breakfast.
People who get up and eat breakfast in the morning are less likely to get hungry when they go out, whether it's to work or for fun. When you go out, the foods around you most likely will not be as healthy as a nice bowl of cereal or some whole wheat toast which you could have had at home. Chances are higher that if you skip breakfast, you'll be snacking on something worse for you later on. Therefore, skipping your breakfast really has no gain - and mostly, it'll just be a sabotage on your diet!

4. Don't compensate.
Sometimes if people go for a long workout and feel proud of all the calories they've burned, they'll reward themselves with food. And worse, the food they eat after is usually higher in calories than what they actually worked off. It's easy to get the mindset that you just worked hard, so having a snack won't hurt you. This can be true, if you choose wisely and don't fill up after a workout on something that will erase the hard work you've just done.

5. Portion your food.
You can control how much you eat if you're aware of the amount you started with, and how much is left. If you have a big bag of chips at home, divide it into 8 or 10 sandwich baggies and take one for a snack. This will keep you from overeating and not knowing it. A study has shown that people who eat from the bag eat almost twice as much as people who ate from divided portions.

6. Don't treat reduced calorie/fat foods as freebies.
Just because they're not bad for you doesn't mean they won't make you gain weight if you eat the whole package. Treat these health foods the same way you'd treat a food that you don't think of as a "safe food", and you'll do alot better. A low-cal/fat food will end up being the same as eating something fatty if you eat three times as much of it, because you think it won't hurt your diet.

Source:
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/