Eating clean is all about giving your body the nourishment it needs to thrive and shed excess weight. And in order for your body to work optimally, you have to listen closely to what it’s telling you. That’s where mindfulness comes in. By tuning in to your hunger, your emotional state, and even your cravings, you can learn how to make clean choices that are right for you. And that can play an important role in helping you get the maximum enjoyment from your food, feel great about what you eat, lose weight, and keep that weight off—for life. Ready to learn how to give it a try? C’mon, let’s go.
Mindfulness is a bit of a buzzword these days, so this might not be the first time you’ve heard it. But what exactly does it mean? In short, being mindful means paying attention. You can walk mindfully by focusing on your surroundings—like the birds chirping or the people around you—instead of staring at your phone. You can have a mindful conversation by listening closely to what the other person is saying instead of only thinking about what you’ll say next. You can even fold the laundry mindfully by homing in on the fresh scent and soft feel of your freshly dried towels. (Which is actually pretty relaxing. Try it!)
In short, you can perform practically any activity with mindfulness—including eating. When you eat mindfully, you pay closer attention to your food. How does it look on your plate? How does it taste and smell? How does it feel in your mouth? More importantly, you zero in on how your food makes you feel. Are you physically hungry, or do you just feel like eating because you’re bored or stressed? Are you eating until you feel satisfied, or are you polishing off everything on your plate just because it’s there? Do you feel content and energized after you eat, or do you feel sluggish or guilty?
Mindful eating is the part of losing weight—and keeping it off—that takes you into account. At this point, you’re likely convinced that following the principles of clean eating is the best way to lose weight. But mindfulness is the awareness that helps you figure out how to make those things work for you. Do you stay fuller after eating a breakfast of cornflakes and fruit or after a vegetable omelet? Do you really need a handful of almonds to satisfy your hunger in the afternoon, or do you just reach for them out of habit? Does splurging on two cookies leave you feeling crabby and stuffed, and if so, can you enjoy that same treat more fully by only having one cookie? When you’re mindful of the way you eat, you uncover the answers to these questions. In turn, you get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of your food—and you learn how to approach it in a more balanced way. That can add up to more pounds lost—and kept off for the long term.
What is it about mindfulness that seems to help the pounds melt off? Let us count the ways!
1.It helps you take in fewer calories. When you start paying closer attention to your hunger and fullness signals, you’ll probably start to eat less. Plus, when you begin noticing how different foods make you feel, you’ll start to naturally gravitate toward cleaner, leaner options rather than their processed counterparts.
2.It improves your relationship with food. By becoming aware of the non-hunger feelings that trigger you to eat, you can take steps to change how you respond to those situations. And that can make eating a less emotionally charged event.
3.It makes you feel good about your food choices. When you eat according to your true hunger and stop when you’re full, you’ll probably feel less deprived and learn how to enjoy the foods you love without feeling bad about it. By taking the guilt and anxiety out of eating, you’ll be able to satisfy your hunger, enjoy your meal, and move on.
People who don’t practice mindful eating behaviors are this much more likely to be obese compared to those who are more conscious of what they’re eating, according to a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.1
Taking time to continually check in with yourself might sound like a lot of work—especially when you want to lose weight quickly. After all, isn’t it easier to just follow a bunch of rules that tell you exactly what to do and what to avoid? In the short term, yes. And following an expert plan like the one in this book will absolutely jump-start your weight loss, as well as give you the tools you need to eat cleaner and work toward achieving your goals in a mindful way.
But most other weight-loss plans aren’t designed to be followed forever. And even if they were, the truth is, you’d have a tough time sticking with them for the long haul. Eventually, you’d get bored of eating the same dinners and lunches over and over again. Or after saying no to your favorite dessert for 2 months straight, your worn-out self-control muscles would finally give up. Or your circumstances would change, and following a detailed plan just wouldn’t work for your lifestyle anymore. Mindfulness tunes you in to what your body truly needs and how to feed it accordingly. And staying in touch with yourself as you stick with the clean-eating lifestyle you’re learning here—instead of trying to keep up with a rigid set of prescribed diet rules—is how you stay lean for life.
As you work to make more conscious food choices, it can be helpful to know where you’re starting from. To find out, read each one of these statements and check off how many of them apply to you. (Sure, it might feel a bit hard, since it calls for some brutal honesty and self-reflection. But knowledge is power, right?) After completing the Eat Clean, Stay Lean plan, you can revisit this list to see just how much progress you’ve made.
□When I’m stressed-out or overwhelmed, I basically eat whatever I want.
□Once I start eating junk, I keep eating because I’ve “already blown it.”
□I tend to give up on healthy eating goals when I’m busy or have a lot going on in my life, waiting until sometime I think will feel right to start.
□Sometimes I have a plan in place to eat well, but other times, I have no strategy at all.
□What people might think or say about me sways my food choices.
□I keep myself busy with food when I’m bored.
□Sometimes I eat when I’m putting off doing something else.
□Eating helps distract me from how I’m feeling. It calms me and comforts me when I’m stressed, sad, or anxious.
□When I celebrate something, I usually eat larger amounts and more indulgently.
□I make better food choices in the morning and worse choices at night.
□I spend a decent amount of time worrying about my weight, appearance, and eating habits.
□I often eat when I’m checking e-mail, watching TV, or doing work.
□I typically finish everything on my plate.
□I often have intense cravings for unhealthy foods, to the point where I think about those foods continuously.
□I often eat most of my food for the day in one sitting or over the course of a few hours.
□I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast 2 days ago.
□I regularly binge eat, or consume too much food in one sitting, to the point where I feel uncomfortable or ill.
BEFORE
George had always been a self-described food addict who loved sugary treats and letting loose at happy hour on Friday night. But as he got older, he realized that his free-for-all eating style could be putting his health at risk. (Not to mention that many of his clothes no longer fit.) Having lived with type 1 diabetes for 40 years, the 58-year-old knew that he needed to start building better habits if he wanted to be around for his children as they began starting families of their own. “I’m in pretty good shape. But as I get older, I have to work harder and harder to stay there,” he acknowledges.
Transitioning to cleaner meals and snacks wasn’t always easy. A business owner, George had a tendency to get lost in his work and skip meals. When he finally remembered it was time to eat, he’d usually just order something from the deli for lunch or dinner. So he started packing clean lunches, dinners, and snacks to take to work, and he made an effort to eat every couple of hours to avoid getting too hungry. “I told myself, you have to focus on good meals. So I’m stopping [my old habits] and this is what I’m doing,” he resolves.
Eating smaller portions came with a learning curve, too. George had long been used to eating or drinking what—and as much as—he wanted, whenever he wanted. But soon after starting on the plan, he realized that he didn’t need as much food as he had thought. George also confessed that sometimes he’d eat out of habit, not because he was actually hungry. “I realized I actually don’t need to eat as much as my 24-year-old son,” he says. “I’d be watching golf on TV and think that I should be having chips. Then I’d think, no, I don’t really need that. I’m good.”
Dr. Wendy Observes: Sometimes it’s hard to break out of certain eating habits when you’re successful and productive in other areas of your life, such as work. But George realized that something had to change. And once he gave clean eating with smaller portions and regular timing a real try, he discovered that he could have success in work and weight loss, too.
TOTAL POUNDS LOST
11.5lbs
TOTAL INCHES LOST
4
MOST NOTABLE IMPROVEMENTS
George’s cholesterol fell by 15 points and went from too high to healthy. His high triglycerides dropped to a healthy level, too.
Many of us tend to think of food in black-and-white terms. If you eat a salad or a bowl of oatmeal, you’re being good. If you eat a slice of pepperoni pizza or a cinnamon roll, you’re being bad. And though you might think that that kind of mind-set would help you make better choices, it can often do the exact opposite. When you eat something that you think is “bad,” you likely end up feeling shameful and guilty. As a result, you throw in the towel and start making rationalizations. Since you already blew your diet, you figure that you might as well keep on pigging out for the rest of the day. Or, just as unproductive, that you need to make up for it tomorrow by being extra good—which is often code for eating the foods that are lowest in calories, not necessarily the ones that are the most nutritious. It’s this cycle of guilt that tends to be the downfall of most diets.
When you practice mindfulness, though, you learn how to enjoy your food without feeling guilty, so you’re less susceptible to the cravings and binges that can throw you off the clean-eating wagon. Foods are no longer good or bad, and they aren’t grounds for reward or punishment. Instead, all foods sit on a spectrum of more nutritious to less nutritious, and more clean to less clean to highly processed—and there’s no judgment over what’s on your plate. Sure, you can still have a slice of pie for dessert sometimes. But since it’s on the less healthful side of the spectrum, it’s better to have something more nutritious, like fruit, most of the time. And when you do have your pie, you take the time to really enjoy the way it tastes and smells, and even how it feels in your mouth. And you walk away from the table feeling content instead of guilty, and satisfied instead of stuffed.
Three o’clock cookie fix? After-work glass of wine? Pizza for dinner because, well, that’s what you always have on busy nights? We eat for many reasons—and one of those reasons is habit. Habits can be tricky to change, especially when they’re easy, comforting, and delicious. Still, even though it sometimes seems like the cookie jar is in charge, that’s just not so. Using mindfulness-based strategies, you have the power to override those old habits while still acknowledging your feelings and forming healthier new practices.
Make a sometimes, not always, plan. Decide that you’ll have your habitual food twice a week instead of every day. (And pick the days and amounts in advance, to minimize on-a-whim eating.) Twice a week is far from deprivation, but it’s not often enough for your brain to actually form a habit. Especially if you . . .
Change up the timing. This takes practice, but it’s a surefire way to unwire old associations, like wine when you get home from work or a candy bar during your afternoon break. If 3:00 p.m. is when you always treat yourself, try doing it at a completely different time, instead.
Try a new behavior in a new place. If you’re used to snacking on sweets while sitting at your desk at a certain time of day, enjoy a clean snack while sitting in the break room, instead. Always walk in the door and head straight to the kitchen after work? Put on your sneakers and take a 15-minute walk, or take 15 minutes to lie on your bed and flip through a magazine.
Be positive and open-minded. Eating clean matters, and you matter. You can do this!
When you decide to eat mindfully, you’re making choices about what and how to eat based on what your body wants. At first, this might make mindfulness just sound like a woo-woo name for chowing down on chips and ice cream whenever the mood strikes. But eating what you want and eating whatever you want, whenever you want it, are not the same thing. And as you start to make mindfulness the name of your clean-eating game, you’ll learn to tell the two apart.
Practicing mindfulness is about learning to tune in to your feelings—both physical and emotional—to figure out what it is that you really need and how to meet that need in a way that will help you feel your best. Sometimes, that might mean treating yourself. But most of the time, it means eating the clean, wholesome foods that help fuel you. And when you pay attention, you’ll come to find that knowing the difference between the two is easier than you think.
When brain fog sets in at 3:00 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon and you get a hankering for a candy bar, being mindful means that before you hit the vending machine you pause to ask yourself, Am I actually hungry for chocolate and caramel right now, or am I really just running low on energy? Chances are, the real answer is that you’re just in the middle of an afternoon slump—and that you can get the boost you need from drinking some water or taking a quick stretch break. Or maybe you just found out that you’re getting a promotion, and you want to treat yourself to a cupcake. Being mindful might mean remembering that you’re still full from lunch or that you actually packed a wonderful snack that you’re looking forward to eating in a couple of hours. This mindful, momentary pause might also help you realize that maybe it’s better to celebrate by getting a manicure or pedicure after work than by serving up a short-lived infusion of sugar. See? It’s pretty simple.
How can you tell whether you’re truly hungry or just in the mood to eat for a completely different reason? How can you enjoy your food fully so you finish eating feeling satisfied instead of wanting more? And how the heck can you feel good about splurging on a treat instead of feeling completely guilty? Eating mindfully might sound sort of difficult at first. But the longer you do it, the easier it gets.
Remember, this isn’t about being perfect. In fact, when you choose to eat mindfully, you’re pretty much throwing the idea of perfection out the window. Diets that fail you have excessive rules, so if you follow them 100 percent, you’ll be successful for a while. But there are no hard-and-fast rules to mindfulness other than listening—and responding appropriately—to what your body needs.
Okay, but how exactly are you supposed to figure that out, and how can you tell the difference between what you really need and when you just want that muffin because it’s sitting in front of you on the conference room table? Learning to read your hunger and cravings sounds complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it really will start to feel like second nature. Ready to give it a try?
Is it genuine hunger—or something else? Ask yourself if fruit or veggies would be satisfying. If the answer is yes, have some. If your mind says no and insists that it’s a cookie or bust, you’re probably not actually hungry.
Do you sometimes find yourself eating out of stress, boredom, or loneliness? Or, on the flip side, because you’re happy or downright giddy? Don’t worry, you’re definitely not the only one. At some point, most people have been driven to eat for emotional reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with how empty—or full—their stomachs were. But learning to listen to your appetite—and in particular learning (or relearning) your true hunger cues—is the cornerstone of eating mindfully. And it can go a long way toward helping you lose weight.
Hunger is your body’s way of saying that you’re running low on energy and need to start thinking about fueling up. Unlike the other feelings that can drive you to eat, hunger comes with some distinct physical sensations that make it pretty tough to miss. When you’re hungry, your stomach feels empty and hollow. The hungrier you get, the stronger that feeling becomes. And when you get really hungry, you might also start to feel light-headed or shaky, or you might have trouble concentrating.
Your goal is to eat when you’re hungry, not starving. Not only does getting too hungry feel terrible, but it also increases the risk that you’ll scarf down whatever’s around instead of taking the time to pick something healthy and balanced. So when’s the right time to eat? The next time you think about wanting to have a certain food, ask yourself if you’d also be up for eating fruit or veggies, such as an apple or some celery sticks. If the answer is yes, you’re genuinely hungry, and you should eat. If the answer is no, you probably aren’t physically hungry, and you should hold off on eating. Instead, reach for a cup of hot tea, which can quell your urge to nibble on something.
Notes from a Clean Eater
“As we age, our bodies don’t need all the food we’ve been programmed to eat. When I get the urge to eat [for reasons other than hunger], I remind myself that it’s not necessary. This program is rewiring my thoughts about food.” —George S.
You know how food always seems to taste more delicious when you’re hungry? Well, it’s true: Eating after you’ve worked up an appetite will go a long way toward helping you get the maximum amount of pleasure out of your food—whether it’s your regular lunchtime Israeli Couscous Salad with Salmon or a decadent slice of devil’s food cake. But paying more attention to what you’re eating also goes a long way toward helping you feel more satisfied, so it takes less food to fill you up and you’re less tempted to scrounge around for more after getting up from the table.
That’s the percentage of study participants who ate for reasons other than hunger when they were offered an unexpected treat immediately after eating as much as they wanted of another chocolate snack, according to findings published in the journal Eating Behaviors.2
Of course, paying attention to your food doesn’t mean doing something crazy like talking to your chicken breast. It just means making your meal or snack the main focus—and taking the time to really enjoy it. Here are three simple ways to do just that.
• Eat sitting down. You might tell yourself that the calories in that bite of pasta or handful of crackers don’t count if you’re standing up, but they do. Plopping yourself at the kitchen table, the counter of your local sandwich shop, or even on a bench in the park can help you acknowledge that you’re eating an actual meal or snack. And that in and of itself can make you less inclined to start noshing again in an hour or two.
To maximize your satisfaction with your meal, devote at least 20 minutes to eating.
• Ditch the distractions. TVs, phones, computers, and books (even this one!) all count as distractions. Make eating the main event instead of eating while you do something else—and home in on the flavor, texture, aroma, and appearance of your food. Chances are, you’ll feel satisfied sooner than if you ate with your eyes glued to a screen or a page.
Mindful eating can seem sort of wishy-washy until you experience it for yourself. So give it a try with this simple experiment that engages all of your senses. All you need is a ripe strawberry (or another piece of fruit) and a few spare minutes.
1.Look and touch. Place the strawberry on a small dish, and place the dish on the table in front of you. Pick up the strawberry to feel its weight, and gently squeeze it to feel its ripeness. Now take a look at the berry: Is it bright red all over, or are some parts white or pink? Are the berry’s seeds evenly distributed, or are they mostly concentrated in one area? Is the berry’s texture smooth, or is it bumpy?
2.Smell. Bring the strawberry to your nose and inhale. Does it smell sweet? Tart? Can you smell the grassiness of the leafy green top? Slice the berry in half, and smell it again. Is the aroma stronger? Can you almost taste it? Do you sense the saliva building up in your mouth?
3.Taste and listen. Take a small bite of the strawberry and let it sit in your mouth. Close your eyes and count to five. Don’t chew yet. What do you notice? Does the strawberry get sweeter? Do your salivary glands kick in? Does your body keep telling you to chew? Now chew three times and wait 5 more seconds. Does the flavor get more intense, or does it start to become muted? While you are chewing, listen closely. The sound may be subtle, but you should be able to hear the slight movement of your teeth as they break down the berry.
4.Swallow the bite. Stay present and feel your throat tighten momentarily as your tongue pushes the strawberry toward the back of your mouth and down your throat. Close your eyes for a few seconds, and see if you can feel the bite travel down toward your stomach. Visualize it happening even if you can’t actually feel it.
5.Repeat. Perform steps 1 through 4 with the second half of the strawberry. There! You did it—a moment of mindful eating. Now think about how you might apply this to your meals and snacks.
• Slow down. This isn’t a race! Eating at a more relaxed pace gives your body time to pump out fullness-signaling hormones that tell you when you’ve had enough, and those hormones are key to weight loss. Research shows that when people at a healthy weight eat their meals slowly, they take in fewer calories and feel fuller for longer, compared to when they eat their meals quickly.3 Sure, it’s tough to always make eating a leisurely event—but try to devote at least 20 minutes to meals as often as you can.
Keeping a food journal is one of the most effective ways to become more aware of your triggers. If you’re consistent, journaling can help you pinpoint the emotions that trigger you to eat and the specific foods that you like to reach for. That can help you figure out what tends to prompt you to eat mindlessly—and to avoid those triggers in the future.
Every night or after every meal, write down what you ate along with at least three adjectives to describe how you felt at the time. Try to be as descriptive as possible. For instance, instead of just writing angry, maybe you write frustrated, sad, or overwhelmed. Digging deeper helps you learn more about how you’re feeling—and expose the triggers that cause you to overeat so you can start figuring out other ways of dealing with them.
Of course, remember to write about the good stuff, too! Jotting down the small victories or what you’re doing well can encourage you to keep doing it.
A lot of us have foods that we can’t stop eating once we start. For most of us, these foods tend to be high in sugar, fat, or salt—or, very often, a combination of all three. Throughout most of human history, these kinds of calorie-dense foods were tough to come by, and we evolved to binge on them when we found them in order to avoid starvation. Unfortunately, our brains haven’t caught up with the fact that we now live in an environment where binge-worthy fare is available 24/7. So it’s no surprise that once you start munching on chips or cookies, it can be really hard to stop.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re completely powerless against the lure of sugary, fatty, high-calorie treats. Often, the compulsion to eat junky stuff is triggered by something completely unrelated to food, such as stress at work, a fight with your spouse, the loneliness of
Have you heard people joke that they’re on the see-food diet? You know, where they see food—and then they eat it? Turns out, there’s some truth behind this funny play on words. Findings show that when food is in our visual path, we actually are more likely to eat it. Of course, that can spell bad news when you’re trying to lose weight. (If the first thing you see when you open your pantry is a box of cookies, you’ll be pretty tempted to eat it.)
The good news? The whole see-food thing can work to your advantage to help you make cleaner choices, too. All it takes is know-how in the kitchen. Here are five simple steps that can have a significant impact on what you do—and don’t!—decide to eat.
1.Declutter those counters. On your countertop, swap sugary or processed snacks for a bowl or basket of fresh fruit. Women who keep things like potato chips, cereal, or soda on their counters tend to weigh more than women who don’t, according to one study. And those who keep fruit on their counters tend to weigh less.4 Opt for fruits like apples, oranges, bananas, pears, apricots, and peaches, which ripen best at room temperature. (They’re also pretty, so they practically serve as a decoration for your kitchen.)
2.Reconfigure your fridge and pantry. Make fruits and vegetables more visible by moving them up to the shelves instead of storing them in the crisper, and store less-healthy items on the bottom shelves or toward the back of the fridge. In your pantry, put the healthy grains, dried fruits, and other clean staples front and center, and push sweets and treats toward the back. Better yet, if you have the space, store special-occasion treats in a less-visible space altogether, like another drawer or cabinet that you don’t open often. When food is out of sight, it’s more likely to be out of mind.
3.Designate a clean-eating snack drawer. Just like you have your own closet and drawer space for your clothes, it’s perfectly reasonable to designate a drawer or two for yourself in the kitchen. Having your own space means that you’ll only see your snacks when you open the drawer, not any of the more tempting stuff that might be stocked in the pantry for other members of your family.
4.Rethink your serving dishes. Consider rearranging your cupboards to put smaller dishes, bowls, and cups right up front; that way, you’ll get into the habit of reaching for them when it’s time to eat. We serve ourselves more when we use bigger cups, plates, and utensils, and research shows that we eat 92 percent of what we serve ourselves—regardless of how hungry we are.5
5.Keep the kitchen for cooking and eating. Cook and prep in your kitchen, and eat sitting down at the kitchen table. (No spoonfuls over the sink or loitering in front of the fridge. Small bites add up!) Chat, play, or work in another part of your home. If your family tends to congregate at the kitchen table even when it isn’t mealtime, consider setting up another gathering spot. A desk or a small table in your family room is a good spot to be together while going through the mail, doing homework, or flipping through magazines.
coming home to an empty house, boredom, or sheer exhaustion. Or it could just be a habit: Maybe you’re just used to eating a bowl of pretzels while you watch your favorite show. Or maybe you used to eat chocolate ice cream for dessert growing up, so you get an urge to treat yourself to a scoop whenever you visit your parents.
The point is, we each have our own triggers—and it doesn’t really matter what your specific ones are. If they happen regularly and prompt you to eat for reasons other than hunger, they can lead to mindless overeating and weight gain. But simply becoming more aware of your triggers and the effect that they have on you can actually help you deal with them in a healthier way.
Remember how foods that are high in sugar, salt, and fat activate the reward center in your brain? Negative trigger emotions cause you to seek out those highly processed foods—often without even thinking about it!—because they make you feel good. But eating a brownie won’t actually solve whatever problem you’re dealing with, and the happy feeling it gives you disappears as soon as you’ve polished off the last bite. And to make matters worse, it’s usually replaced with guilt over eating something junky.
When you become aware of your triggers and the foods that they drive you to eat, you can find ways to reward yourself without food. Think about the feeling you need to achieve to get past your trigger, then brainstorm ways to get it without eating. Say you start to notice that unexpected situations at work stress you out and drive you to eat junk. Now, if your boss has the tendency to pile on projects at the last minute, you might not be able to get him to change. But you can change how you react to it. Instead of snacking on candy the next time he throws an unexpected assignment your way, start a new habit of taking a 5-minute walk. Not only will the walk boost your levels of feel-good hormones, it will also give you time to get some air, gather your thoughts, and come up with a game plan for how you’ll get the work done. Or maybe you realize that you feel lonely when you come home to an empty house, and maybe that loneliness drives you to eat something comforting. Instead of soothing your feelings with some cheesy pasta or a pint of ice cream, you can fill your desire for companionship by calling a friend.
Of course, you can harness the power of nonfood rewards for smaller situations, too. If you’re just feeling tired, do some jumping jacks in your office to increase blood flow to your brain instead of popping a piece of chocolate. When you want a quick mood boost, watch a viral video of a kitten doing something silly. Need a temporary escape when you just can’t deal? Keep a novel in your bag and read a couple of pages.
“I do yoga four times a week. I can’t speak enough about the benefits of yoga for strength, flexibility, balance—and mindfulness.” —Suzanne M.
If you’ve ever experienced the sudden, intense desire to devour a hot slice of pepperoni pizza or indulge in a fudgy brownie, you know that cravings can be pretty tough to resist. You should absolutely feel good about enjoying treats once in a while. But when you’re plagued by overpowering urges to eat those kinds of foods every day, it can get in the way of your weight loss.
Clean foods can help keep cravings in check because they’re free of the refined carbs and added sugars that send your blood sugar on a roller-coaster ride and drive you to eat more junk. Still, even the cleanest eater isn’t immune entirely. So often, we’re surrounded by delicious, easy-to-access food—everything from the doughnuts in your office break room to the free chip-and-dip samples at the grocery store to the well-meaning neighbor who thanks you for mowing her lawn by bringing over a plate of freshly baked cookies. Sooner or later, temptation is bound to happen. And when it does, mindfulness can help you keep a clear head: Reminding yourself of the fact that you’re in the throes of a craving—and aren’t actually hungry—can often be enough to snap you back to reality.
And when it’s not? Don’t worry, you still have plenty of other tools to help you curb that craving. Try some of these.
• Take a walk. A quick bout of exercise can help slash stress, reducing your urge to eat. And it doesn’t take much: Walking for just 15 minutes can curb cravings for sugary snacks, according to one Austrian study.6 Take a brief stroll in your neighborhood and see how you feel.
• Get distracted. Text your friend. Check your e-mail. Take a couple of minutes to play a game on your phone. Grab a magazine or book. Your brain can only juggle so much stuff at once before it forgets about that cupcake, so take advantage.
• Use your nose. Keep a vanilla or green apple candle around and give it a sniff when a craving strikes. Smells that are sweet but that don’t remind you of specific junky foods are thought to help curb appetite.
• Imagine yourself indulging—a lot. Thinking repeatedly about eating the thing that you’re craving might be enough to make you want it less, according to research published in the journal Science.7 Enjoy the experience through the visual exercise, and then move on.
• Just have a small taste. You might find that it’s all you really wanted, anyway. Eating less than half an ounce of chocolate or potato chips satisfied subjects’ cravings just as well as eating a portion as much as ten times bigger, according to one Cornell University study.8 (Just be careful if you know that the food in question is a trigger for you. In that case, it’s probably better to save the snack for a time that you planned ahead for, rather than eating it on impulse.)
• Have a zero-calorie beverage. Sip some water, sparkling water, or green tea. (Add a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime, for extra flavor.) Drinking can satisfy the urge to have something in your mouth, plus you might find that your hunger was really just thirst in disguise.
Notes from a Clean Eater
“When I have this urge to eat, I’ll go out and walk. It takes the urge away, and it takes me out of that space of wondering, What can I put in my mouth?”—Melissa R.
Cravings are intense desires for specific foods and usually aren’t signs that you’re actually hungry. Remember: If your stomach is truly rumbling, something simple and nutritious, such as an apple or celery sticks, will probably be appealing. But if only a double-fudge brownie or a pile of cheesy nachos will do? That’s a craving.
BEFORE
As a self-described emotional eater, Mary Pat was quite literally used to eating whenever the mood struck her. Eating clean not only helped her learn to tell the difference between her hunger and her cravings, it also helped her find a daily rhythm for her meals and snacks that kept her from ever getting overly hungry.
“I felt like I had a lot of knowledge in my head about nutrition and what’s healthy for you. But I wasn’t able to sync it up with my actions,” she says. Since she woke up to see her teenage daughter off to school, Mary Pat was used to eating breakfast early. She’d usually start to feel hungry by midmorning, but she’d try to hold off on eating. As a result, she’d be ravenous by lunchtime and would often end up overeating. “When I started following a schedule and having my morning snack, I noticed that what I ate for lunch satisfied me,” she says.
Mary Pat reinforced the regular eating schedule by taking time to pause and fully enjoy her snacks. “I’d have a pumpkin ball or some walnuts and tart cherries with a cup of herbal tea, and it was very satisfying,” she says. Often, she’d even picture the hot water from the tea causing the nuts, seeds, or whole grains to expand in her stomach, which helped her feel fuller.
And when the urge to nosh off-schedule did strike? She’d try to respond with her head instead of her heart. “In the evening, when I’d be most likely to want to snack, I’d tell myself, You know you just ate dinner. Those growls from your stomach are just digestion, not hunger,” she observes. “It worked like a stop-pause for me.”
Dr. Wendy Observes: Learning to differentiate between hunger and cravings can seem overwhelming, especially when you’re prone to energy ups and downs that come from eating on an irregular schedule. I like to remind clients like Mary Pat to use their intellect as well as their emotions (both matter) and consider that often, we really do confuse healthy digestive sounds and rumblings for hunger. It’s important to simply pause to consider that possibility before choosing to eat. Learning about balanced timing and snacks helped Mary Pat have foods ready to go and stable energy to make smart decisions about eating.
TOTAL POUNDS LOST
9lbs
TOTAL INCHES LOST
7.5
MOST NOTABLE IMPROVEMENTS
Mary Pat lowered her fasting blood sugar by 38 points and increased her HDL (“good”) cholesterol by 5 points. Plus, her systolic blood pressure (the top number) dropped by 21 points, which took it out of the risk zone.
Got chocolate and curly fries on the brain? That could be a sign that you’re among the 90 percent of Americans missing out on at least one important vitamin or mineral. While a blood test is the only sure way to diagnose a nutrient deficiency, cravings can sometimes be a red flag. Here’s a list of six common nutrients that are tough to get enough of and some tips on how to eat to beat cravings.
CALCIUM AND MAGNESIUM
Craving: Sweet or salty
Food fix: Make it a point to get more calcium from plain Greek yogurt, low-fat milk, or leafy greens. Get more magnesium from almonds, spinach, edamame, or avocados.
B VITAMINS
Craving: Sweet or salty
Food fix: B vitamins are found in many foods, but in varying quantities and combinations. Eating the following would give you a good mix: animal protein (such as poultry, lean beef, or salmon), yogurt, green veggies, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, winter squash, sunflower seeds, avocados, and bananas.
ZINC
Craving: Sweet or salty
Food fix: Only certain proteins, such as oysters, crab, liver, and dark chicken meat, are high in this mineral. It’s found to a lesser extent in eggs, black beans, cashews, and oatmeal.
IRON
Craving: Fatty meat
Food fix: Beef, poultry, and fish have the most absorbable iron, but you can also increase your levels by eating dried fruits, cashews, pumpkin seeds, legumes (such as white beans and others), leafy greens, and iron-enriched pastas and grains. Boost the absorption of plant-based iron sources by eating them with vitamin C–rich foods such as citrus fruits, kiwifruit, berries, broccoli, or bell peppers.
OMEGA-3S
Craving: Cheese
Food fix: Focus on fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines, and canned tuna, as well as plant sources, such as walnuts, flaxseeds, and chia seeds.
Adapted from S. Eckelcamp, “Take Control of Your Eating & Never Diet Again,” Prevention, January 2016, 119-21.
Putting It All Together
1 Harness the power of mindful eating. Focusing on your food can help you make choices you feel good about and can help you eat less overall.
2 Remember that what you want doesn’t mean whatever you want. Occasional treats in reasonable portions can help you eat cleaner most of the time. Just don’t overdo it.
3 Listen to your stomach. Check in to make sure you’re hungry before you eat. And eat slowly to make sure that you stop when you’re satisfied, not stuffed.
4 Take the time to learn your triggers. Keep a food journal to learn more about the feelings and situations that drive you to eat when you aren’t hungry, and find other ways to cope.
5 Know that cravings happen—but you can fight back. Everyone gets struck with an urge to eat an ice cream cone or a bag of chips once in a while. But there are lots of tactics that can help you avoid giving in. Use them, and you’ll have success!
