Carbohydrates (and pretty much anything else addictive) are "crave-inducing" because of a physiological reaction they cause. It triggers chemicals in your body and brain, not at all unlike cigarettes or other drugs. For refined carbs, it's insulin in the blood, which is followed by serotonin in the brain. The serotonin creates a relaxing effect.

It would be easy to engineer any food to have this effect by adding some sort of drug to it. Sprinkle some heroin on broccoli and you'll probably start craving that pretty quickly. Obviously though, you don't want that. What you want is to have no craving at all.

There's a good chance that your brain is not producing enough serotonin without the carbohydrates. This could be due to a number of things, lack of sleep, exercise, or even sunlight, too much stress, chronic depression. Sadly eating carbs produces bursts of serotonin followed by a deficit, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Once some other factor gets you into the cycle, the carbs themselves will keep you there.

Assuming there aren't deeper factors at play, the following may help:

1. Don't eat any refined carbs for a month. Keep unrefined ones to a minimum as well.

2. Get exercise, sleep, and spend time outside where possible.

As for #1, it's much easier to accomplish this at the grocery store than at home. A Snickers bar is a lot less difficult to ignore on a shelf at the store than on a shelf in your pantry. Never go to the store when hungry.

All of this assumes that you don't have some deeper mental health issue at play. Overeating is often a method of self-sabotage employed by people who are depressed, in which case you may need professional help. But I'd at least try cutting out carbs first because it's free and can't really hurt.

Another tip for surviving the store: shop the perimeter, stay out of the aisles. Make a weekly menu before you go to the store, keeping in mind what's in the perimeter and in the aisles. Your menu is your plan of attack.

The reason why you get cravings is because you are eating high GI carbs. High GI carbs cause a lot of sugar to be released rapidly into your blood. Your body counterbalances this by releasing insulin, which causes a crash shortly afterward. Because now you have low blood sugar, you crave some high GI carbs to get a quick sugar rush again and the cycle just repeats, causing you to overeat and eat too many calories, gaining weight.

In order to break the cycle you must eat low GI carbs. This means avoiding potatoes, white rice, all soft breads (including whole grain wheat and white breads, if it's soft it's not good for you).

Good carbs are things like brown rice, sweet potatoes, whole grains such as steel cut oats, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat (kasha), etc. These carbs are considered low GI because they have the whole grain intact and the husk of the grain takes a lot longer to digest, causing the sugar to be released slowly and steadily into your blood over a period of several hours.

If I eat a good bowl of steel-cut oats and some fruit in the morning (not instant oats, those have separated the husk from the grain), I get a steady release of energy all morning long. I don't get a quick rush and crash an hour later. It helps me focus as well.

Just follow these simple rules and you will eliminate cravings as well as eat healthier and lose weight naturally:

1. Only eat whole grains and low GI carbs. 2. Eat plenty of good fats like olive oil, avocadoes, nuts, etc. 3. Eat every few hours - don't wait from breakfast to lunch or lunch to dinner - your blood sugar gets too low. Eat a mid-morning snack - something like a small handful of nuts and a piece of fruit, and a mid-afternoon snack. 4. Don't eat late at night (after dinner and before bed).

Following those simple rules I lost 30 pounds, 10% body fat, and achieved my ideal weight without even doing much exercise (30 minutes of light cardio every other day, about 2.5 hrs a week).

Try it, the cravings will disappear soon, and you'll feel much better. You'll have constant energy all day long and you'll be able to focus on tasks like coding much better.

> husk of the grain takes a lot longer to digest

Well, most husks don't digest at all. That's "fiber", which is good for you for a whole different reason.

> your rules

Incompletely capture the conditions of your weight loss. How long have you kept it off? Married with kids? what are your work conditions? How do you commute? What climate do you live in?

> 30 minutes of light cardio every other day, about 2.5 hrs a week

2.5 / 0.5 = 5 days a week, but I get your point, it's that not hard, what's hard is doing it.

Married, no kids, commute 1 hour each way to work every day, work about 8 hours with occasional overtime. Live in the Northeast so cold winters, warm but brief summers.

I've kept it off for 1 year now and still manage to eat out once or twice a week - you don't have to follow the rules all the time. I also like to eat a lot during holidays.

Refined carbohydrates cause an unhealthy "spike" in blood insulin levels. It's the insulin drop that is felt as a "craving." The body "craves" an insulin spike.

And fats aren't bad for you. You need them to live. In general, your diet should be around 40/30/30 Carb/Fat/Protein.

There are tons of articles out there on how to eat properly but I've been paying a lot of attention to Robb Wolf lately. He has been getting some pretty impressive results with his recommendations.

Unfortunately, the cause may be difficult to determine.

Fortunately, there is a great hack that probably addresses the cause: fruit. Lots of fruit. Always raw. Preferably on an empty stomach. Not too much variety.

Fruit is loaded with just about every nutrient your body wants, many of them difficult to get any other way. Chances are that if you're not eating enough fruit, your body needs nutrition and these needs manifest themselves in your cravings.

It works for me. I've been eating lots of fruit for years, and the only time I crave junk food is when I haven't eaten enough fruit earlier in the day. For long coding sessions, I always keep plenty of the hacker's perfect snack, bananas, on hand: the almost perfect food, self-contained, needs no refrigeration or preparation.

[Written while munching on some delicious fresh sweet watermelon. No junk food could compare to this.]

Why does this matter? High glycemic foods cause a spike in your blood sugar - this causes hunger, among other things.

The best 'hack' to controlling your hunger is to manage your blood sugar level. By avoiding high glycemic value foods you will curb your hungry. By eating low GI foods you will eliminate your hungry whenever you want. low glycemic value foods have the opposite effect - this is the way to completely control your hunger as I do.

For example, I eat a handful (about 8-12) Almonds when I'm hungry (esp. at night). Almonds have a very low glycemic index, and just eating a small amount will stop your hungry/craving. But it's not just almonds - any low GI value food will have this effect.

Some other suggestions on great low GI snacks:

Apples, Cherries, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Grapes, Peaches

Non-Fruit low GI:

Almonds (but not all nuts), Yogurt, Lean Chicken/Turkey, Tuna, Black Beans, Brown Rice (much better than White Rice),

High Glycemic Foods:

Refined sugars (aka anything baked), Watermelon, Pineapple, Jams, Bananas

Keep in mind you shouldn't try to eliminate these foods, but if you are cutting weight then it's good to avoid eating too much of a high GI item to manage your hungry. Personally I try to avoid them still (after losing/getting back into shape), because I never have a desire to binge out anymore.

Incidentally, I recently lost over 24 pounds in 6.5 weeks using these food hacks. I also started playing hockey again (one of the hardest, most thorough workouts out there it turns out), and that caused me to want to be in better shape, so now I'm working out a lot more too. I'd suggest adding in activities you love, hiking, mountain biking - whatever it is just be more active.

Anyway, I discovered this GI 'hack' from my biz partner who is a gym owner and a nationally ranked crossfit athlete, hope that helps!

Good luck!

My snacks are usually a small handful of almonds and a piece of fruit. Also, you can combine a somewhat high GI fruit like an apple with a handful of nuts, and the fat content will end up lowering the speed at which your body will absorb the sugar from the fruit, which evens out your blood sugar level. There are other fibrous foods that will do this as well.

Thanks for both of your comments. They were enlightening.

I'd say average. Bananas don't have an high GI either, it seems.

Keeping a steady, non-spiking blood sugar level will result in no hunger pangs.

The best way I've found to lose weight is to remove sugar, refined flour, processed foods, and grains from my diet. I've replaced them with fruits and veggies. When you reduce your carb intake to under 100 grams per day, your body goes into fat-burning mode (called "ketosis").

There's a lot of science that grounds this - for more check out www.primalblueprint.com or panu.com.

Also a simple hack to lower the glycemic index of anything you eat is to consume it with additional fat or fiber. So a salad\baby greens with olive oil or the higher percent fat nuts like Hazelnuts, Walnuts, Macademia & Brazil.

Anytime you can choose healthy fresh food - fruit or otherwise - you are doing your body good.

It's just important to keep in mind that even fruit can cause you to be more hungry if you aren't careful.

I think the key to what you are describing is that you were exercising at the time - taking in something like a banana during that would actually do exactly as you describe - boost your sugar level when you need it the most, aka throw some fuel on the fire.

But again, I'm just a guy that has had tremendous luck with monitoring my GI and my hunger and have a few really knowledgable friends that have helped me along the way.

So are you saying that if you eat something with a high GI then your blood sugar rises, and this makes you hungry? This seems counterintuitive as high blood sugar usually makes you not-hungry?

This link actually shows watermelon has a very low GL, suggesting that it shouldn't result in blood sugar spikes:

http://www.tshc.fsu.edu/he/nutrition/nutrition_specialneeds/...

But I also want to really stress that it is VERY important to consume enough foods that come from animals.

Why?

Vitamin B12 http://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses/dp/...

It's vital for your health and it burns up especially when stressed.

Took me a long time to find/learn about this.. at that point I was not feeling my limbs really well anymore, started running into walls, could not concentrate, find words, blurred speech, etc.

It's truly a silent crippler, hence my focus on this particular vitamin in this reply.

The cravings are a mental phenomenon. The mind seeks to be distracted and regards the mouth and tastebuds as an entertainment system. (A sort of lower level alternative to reading aggregator sites.)

Being too full is actually uncomfortable to the body, although one may not notice it initially due to the eating high.

Any reason why a smoothie with various fruit and maybe some yogurt wouldn't serve the same purpose? I really enjoy these but haven't been making them for some time. Posts like this give me a little motivation but what's the reason for the lack of variety?

I like to make my body work for its calories, which is mostly a response to hypoglycemia. Anything I can do to make calories (specifically carbohydrates) harder to digest, the better. Brown rice, whole grains, and whole fruits are far better than their alternatives.

Even your typical smoothie (bananas, yogurt, and strawberries) contains numerous nutritional benefits; add some of your favorite brown rice, some kale, celery, and honey (you won't taste the difference). You have a healthful and delicious smoothie full of antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, vegetable AND dairy protein, and complex carbs.

Breaking fruits down into juice definitely changes the GI index of the carb. Check out the difference between eating a whole apple and drinking apple juice. Apple juice is almost like pure sugar, where the fiber in the whole apple causes your body to digest it much slower.

The peaks in blood glucose are what's really bad for you, and especially bad for me. Therefore, I look out for them and stay the hell away.

Within a couple weeks your body will be very acclimated to this schedule, and you will not want to eat except at meals. Once the cravings have stopped, focus on improving the quality of what you're eating. When you're cooking for yourself (and you should) play with how little oil and salt you can use and still enjoy your meal. Reduce portion sizes.

If the cravings return, maybe you eat a little more at your next meal. Maybe they're small enough (and you used enough to your new schedule) that you just don't. Habit is a very powerful thing. Right now, you're habitually snacking. Turn that on its head.

Oh, and it helps if you're eating with other people, especially if they eat quickly, because you will feel social pressure to wrap it up.

If "nutritional replacements aren't hitting the spot" it might just be that you're ingesting fewer calories and are hence hungry. Junk food tends to be very energy dense so you have to eat a larger volume to maintain the same amount of energy coming in.

One way to blunt sugar cravings is to exercise. Particularly if you're a lard arse your insulin response can go out of wack. Exercising depletes muscle glycogen which can help bring things back to normal. You can find out a whole lot more here: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/training-the-obese...

Another way to blunt sugar cravings is to fast. You'll find various people promoting "intermittent fasting". Basically, don't eat for about 12 hours. Fairly simple to say; may not be simple to do.

Also, make sure you're eating plenty of protein and fat. Don't just replace one pile of carbohydrates with another (e.g. nachos with bread). If you do this you'll stay on the sugar treadmill.

I hope that is useful.

Thus, the general strategy is to form mindless habits that are healthy. Supplements are made for this kind of habitual consumption. They are simple to prepare, come in bulk, and are so boring that after a while, you don't even think of them as food; but you do crave them every day due to the healthy feedback loop.

In your case, you probably want some kind of meal replacement shake that gives your body whatever it is craving with maximal collateral healthiness. I don't know what that is though, so you'll have to turn to science.

IMHO exercising more is always going to be easier than eating less, and the trick to that is the same: form monotonous habits. Repetition, obsession, and ultimately sweet oblivion.

- Switch out junk food for healthier snacks (dark chocolate, nuts, (dried) fruit). Over time your tolerance for junk food will go down and you will want less of it;

- If you really want a hit of junk food, just have it. There is no point dwelling on it. I will have one piece of sugary food with my coffee at around 10:00, which keeps me satisfied. Sometimes I binge out after not having a lot for so long (months), but when your tolerance for processed food goes down you will stop much sooner (through a mixture of guilt and physiological repulsion);

- If you want sugar, eat 'good' sugar, i.e. fruit;

- Have a bowl of healthy nibbles lying around to munch on when walking past. I always have grapes and nuts in the kitchen that I pick at;

- Always eat breakfast. I have mine as soon as wake-up;

- Cook your own meals and don't eat processed food;

- Drink water rather than carbonated drinks;

- Eat smaller meals more often. I try to eat something every three hours;

- Follow the Japanese (I think) philosophy of eating until only 80% full, not bursting at the seams. For me the ideal amount of food is a cereal bowl worth of food;

- Have a drink about 30 - 60 mins after you have eaten, not during a meal. This helps to top-up the fullness feeling and also allows food to be digested more efficiently before the digestive enzymes get diluted by a drink;

- Don't try and justify eating rubbish by doing exercise. You are what you eat.

The end result is that people always tell me I am too skinny even though I eat a lot. I don't need to do that much exercise because my diet is good. When I do go out for dinner and/or drinks I can indulge without guilt.

I hear this claim a lot and it always sounds simplistic. The most reliable refutation a quick google turned up was:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/digestion/AN01776/

from a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic. I quote:

"There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, drinking water during or after a meal can actually improve digestion. Water and other liquids help break down the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track."

Food stays in your stomach as long as 5 hours. Water must get absorbed/passed on much more quickly. (I couldn't find numbers.) I imagine your stomach is pretty smart about maintaining a proper environment for digestion.

But surely a large, sudden, water intake will dilute the stomach (not intestine where most of the nutrients are absorbed) juices and pH?

There seem to be two issues here: how full you feel (which I don't have an opinion on one way or another) and whether drinking water impedes digestion by diluting stomach acid and digestive enzymes.

Yes, it would seem plausible that a large intake of water would dilute the stomach juices. However, it also seems equally plausible that the stomach regulates pH equally quickly by passing along the excess water to the small intestine (where, I believe, water is typically absorbed), just delaying digestion temporarily.

I imagine different foods (whole grains vs. pasta vs. steak) must need different amounts of time to break down in the stomach. Is the stomach sensitive to when foods are ready to be passed along to the small intestine?

Are you military or ex-military, by any chance? They're the only other people I've ever heard use "skosh" (from the Japanese skoshi, a small space or time). (I'm an Air Force brat and Navy vet.) EDIT: Looks like you might be a Navy doc?

Umm... Doesn't being too skinny mean you're not eating well? (I'm asking because I'm in the same situation).

I think I eat very well. I believe in getting the best, freshest food I can, having a well balanced diet (which includes fats) and in the traceability of food. I do have a gluten and cow's milk intolerance, so I guess I don't eat that much, if any, refined carbs; however, I do eat other flours and other sources of dairy. If you're eating well, feeling good and are 'skinny', I think you should be okay. If you're worried then you should probably go and see a doctor or nutritionist.

Also don't eat anything at least 3-4 hours before you sleep. This creates a period of extended fasting while you sleep, which helps with weight loss.

To do this I:

1. Eliminated all artificial sweeteners. This meant quitting Diet Coke and using delicious local honey instead of Splenda in my tea.

2. After 2 or 3 weeks of no artificial sweeteners I stopped eating sugary foods. No more candy, doughnuts, cakes, or other sweet baked goods. I still allow myself honey in tea and whole fruit, but no fruit juices.

Four months later—and without further dietary changes or the addition of exercise—I've lost more than 30 pounds. I still eat bread, pasta, cheeseburgers, fried chicken, etc. But I eat less because I have less appetite, and I never have a craving for sweet things. A month after quitting sugar I took a bite of crème brûlée to see if my tastes had changed. This dessert, which I had always loved, now seemed so cloying I could barely swallow it. Interestingly, whole fruit now tastes so much better than it ever has, with just the right amount of natural sweetness.

More importantly, this relatively slow rate of weight loss feels sustainable. The dietary changes also feel permanent. I'm not on a weight-loss diet, I've made my diet more healthy.

My untested hypothesis is that I had been so used to the overwhelming sweetness of artificial sweeteners that my tastes were altered such that I always craved sweet. By eliminating the hyper-sweet stuff, my tastes changed enough that I could more easily take the further step of eliminating refined sugar. I imagine this has resulted in more stable blood sugar levels and a corresponding decrease in cravings and overall appetite.

I'd love to hear about others' experiences.

Not likely, though backing off on the sweets probably did improve your ability to appreciate the broader range of normal sweet. The reduction of cravings is probably more related to stable blood sugar.

I've had great success cutting back on junk by following Reinhard Engels' "No S" diet. http://nosdiet.com/

  No Snacks
  No Sweets
  No Seconds
  Except, sometimes, on "S" days

--

If that doesn't work for you, here are some other hacks I or people I know have used with success.

- remove all junk food from your home

- don't buy any when you go grocery shopping

- stop hanging out places where there are a lot of snacks

- Set up a Seinfeld chain http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se... (Personally I use http://joesgoals.com and keep a chart widget on my igoogle page)

- if you simply must snack... then figure out what snacks are compatible with your diet and put them on the top shelf of your fridge and in the deli drawer... the first place you look for a snack when you open the door.

- tell all your friends that if they catch you eating junk food then you will give them $1,000 (or some other painfully large amount). (Just remember Inspector Clouseau and make sure you have a halting condition)

- if your friends try to sabotage you then drop those jerks. It's not funny, it's not "a joke"... it's getting backstabbed by someone you thought you could trust. Life's too short to put up with that shit

I like the idea of a chart widget.

I would avoid most bread, including flat breads and crackers. The occasional tortilla for a wrap is ok. I would definitely avoid rice, pasta, and potatoes. If you eat sushi, consider sashimi.

Don't ask your spouse to provide the negative feedback, ambivalent co-workers might be best.

Ever live in a Chinese household? If rice is so bad why do so many of the hundreds of millions of people who eat it 2 or even 3 times a day remain skinny and trim (Rice. Not the things that can go with it, not the ways it can be prepared or abused... just rice)? This is such a non-starter I don't even know where to... start.

If I look at an American plate, half-covered with two giant scoops of fried rice, and an entree of Kung Pao chicken, and was told I could remove only one ingredient, I would remove the rice. If only I could remove the rice and give them the sauteed vegetables, they would be full faster and and experience a substantially smaller, slower, glucose spike.

One of my best friends in high school was Chinese. I used to study at his house because his mom's cooking was awesome. Her idea of a serving of rice, and the average American-chinese restaurant's serving of rice are two different things.

Also, you need to take into account that the typical Chinese peasant family is out farming or working hard all day. They need a lot of carbs to work that hard. Now that they have a significant population living in large cities and eating "American" fast food, working in office jobs, they are beginning to have a lot of the same health problems (obesity) that we do.

Not the Amero-Chinese style half-plate of rice with a heaping of fatty meat cut, slathered in some sauce composed of half-salt half-cooking oil, with a few veggies thrown in for "color."

It isn't the rice that's bad, it's the stuff people eat with it yet I repeatedly see people say "don't eat rice" and frankly, I think that's a load of bull. Don't blame rice for bad American eating habits.

More here:

http://crossfitoptimumperformance.com/index.php?view=article...

How exactly are they evil? What is so dangerous about carbs? Aren't snacks to blame? In a typical Russian home one of which I grew up it's a loaf a day or more. Italians and French eat even more bread. And as the OO mentioned, Asian nations consume unimaginable amounts of rice.

Yet America remains one of the most overweight nations. It just seems to me like it's a mosquito bite and you're asking to chop off the arm.

2) the unbelievable number of calories you can get before triggering a satiety signal

3) the social norm of scientifically huge portions. My wife and I have gotten the point of ordering a single entree and splitting it, sometimes we can get away with a single appetizer.

4) Two billion people in Asia do eat a lot of rice. They also do more physical work and probably don't eat as much rice per serving as Americans.

5) I should also add corn to the list.

Obviously, rice can be consumed in moderation, especially in combination with other foods that lower the rate of metabolism.

[1] Cos I work out tons, don't overeat, and have a naturally fast metabolism.

Carbs are rapidly burned, or rapidly converted to fat. Fat in the blood stream can still be metabolized, what's especially hard is liberating fat from adipocytes once it's in them.

Among carbs, fructose is a particularly nasty problem. Fructose entirely bypasses the insulin pathway, which is the only major inhibitory signals for monosaccharides, but is is easily converted to fat, and there's some evidence it induces some inflammatory markers along the way. Observational studies of my two kids suggest they could eat oranges or candy all day without pause.

Here's a little experiment: pick a day where you're not going to be exposed to huge external stimuli to eat (eg, it's not the company picnic day). Weigh out 3 oz of unsalted nuts and 3 oz of cooked rice. Eat the rice for breakfast. Time yourself until you're hungry for those nuts. Eat the nuts. All of them. Time yourself until you're hungry again. I'll bet you make it past lunch. Eat 3 more ounces of nuts. You'll probably make it until dinner.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice

Wouldn't it be more fair to compare equal calories rather than equal weights? I'd have to guess that eating 15 oz of rice might have a significant appetite suppressing effect as well.

Or maybe I'm not understanding the point of the experiment. Are you simply suggesting that by eating a strangely distributed 1200 calories you can 'make it until dinner'? :)

1 g carb ~ 3.4 kcal

1 g fat ~ 9 kcal

3 oz fat ~ 405 kcal

3 oz carb ~ 153 kcal

405 / 153 ~ 2.65

That's assuming the nuts are pure fat. They're actually about 1:1:1 fat:protein:carb => 246 kcal, or a ratio of about 1.6

Ah, wait, yes, fair enough, the cooked rice would be much less calorically dense. Do let me withhold the water. Please cook 3 oz of rice.

My basic point remains: fats satisfy, calorie for calorie, faster than carbs.

  My basic point remains: fats satisfy, calorie for calorie,
  faster than carbs.

ps. Your numbers above are quite a bit off, as 1 oz is actually closer to 28 g, but you are forgiven as I'm guessing you are European and don't use ounces that often.

While I was looking around, I noticed that Reinhard Engels has his own information tool for keeping track of things like the NoS diet:

http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/

I also find his alcohol "glass ceiling" interesting, and it looks to me like habitcal is better suited for tracking things like that than Joe's Goals, though Joe's Goals has a nicer UI and seems better to me for tracking things like the NoS diet.

Next up is hydration. If you are dehydrated, evenly slightly, it is easy to think you are hungry.

I also echo the views of those saying that sugar is worse than fat. Very refined carbs, such as white bread, are terrible due to the speed at which you metabolise it. Look into the GI of various foods and you may be surprised.

When you do have a meal, consider timing. The old saying "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and have a paupers dinner" is apt.

Also eat plenty of low carb, bulky foods such as onions, carrots, mushrooms etc. This will fill you up for longer, as well as giving numerous health benefits

Perhaps what you need is a lifestyle change and a new way of thinking about those cravings. I firmly believe in the saying "healthy body, healthy mind", and that shy's me away from anything unhealthy.

Of course I'm no saint so I choose 1 cheat day a week and I eat as much junk food as possible, after the day's over I don't want to look or eat any junk food until the next cheat day.

--

I should also mention that at around 16 I became very interested in fitness and nutrition so I spent most hours reading up on it. It made me more aware that our bodies are just really REALLY beautiful machines, in order for it to run at full throttle you want to feed it the proper nutrients or else it will just chug a long.

1) Make it convenient to eat healthy

I keep the fridge stocked with pre-cut fruit front and center. It costs slightly more this way but makes it way more likely that I will actually eat it (and reduces waste). You can also do this with prepared baby carrots or celery if that floats your boat.

2) Don't keep junk food in the house

I don't keep soda in the house. I tried variations like keeping soda in the pantry so it would be harder to drink, but it didn't really work. What works is just not keeping it.

3) Workout right before going grocery shopping

Whenever I workout I feel fit and more like eating healthy food. If I go grocery shopping when I feel like a bum, I am more likely to grab unhealthy snacks. When I just worked out, my body starts craving fruit and healthy things so that's what I'm more likely to buy. Actually in general the more I work out, the more weight I lose and not just from the workout - I eat healthier because I don't want to waste all my hard work.

4) Find healthier options that you enjoy

Instead of eating straight bran cereal that I don't like, I found a semi-healthy cereal with dates and raisins. Not as good as the bran but not as bad as lucky charms. I got this mint chocolate chip ice cream from whole foods made out of coconut milk - it is amazing and way healthier than regular ice cream. For soda, you can try going natural or switch to something like unsweetened tea (still flavorful).

5) Meet your nutritional needs at meals

If you aren't meeting your nutritional needs at meals you will feel hungry for snacks. Try eating way more veggies and adding lots of protein (lentils, beans, spinach, tofu - I'm a vegetarian). Then at least when you start craving you'll know that it's not necessary.

6) Distract yourself

Sometimes I eat out of boredom or habit. I haven't really mastered this one, but turns out even if you're eating pretty healthy foot a lot you still gain weight, or don't lose it. I try to engross myself in my work or something with varying degrees of success.

Good luck!

I buy those large heads of lettuce. You can get three of them in a pack for 2.99 in Trader Joe's. Then I open the pack put one head on a plate and whenever I get a craving I peel off leaves one by one wash the leaves and eat them. I eat as much lettuce as I feel like, I do not try to hold my self. But I just leave the washed leaves, there's absolutely no dressing allowed.

This is great, because peeling and washing each leaf individually satisfies the nervous desire to do something. As somebody else said this cravings are usually mental, they have little to do with you being hungry, but mostly mean you are nervous about something so you need a distraction. And washing leaves one by one before you eat them provides sufficient activity to distract you and relax you a bit.

The other great thing about lettuce, is that they are good for you, and yet when you eat them without dressing they effectively provide no calories. The human stomach is not very efficient at breaking down raw greens so eating raw lettuce pretty much takes up as much calories as it gains. So you get necessary fiber and a bunch of other nutrients, but you get no extra calories.

And this means that you can eat as much as you would like without feeling any guilt. Also if you eat a lot, you will get a feeling of being full. The feeling will not last for long, but you can use this technique to last you until the time you get a regular meal and can satisfy your hunger with regular food and not junk food.

Some of the things I've started eating regularly (and craving) that aren't all that bad: - carrots and hummus. super cheap, filling, hummus makes it a little more exciting than plain carrots, but not as unhealthy as ranch. - a jar of nuts. I prefer the lower-salt dry roasted peanuts to help satisfy my salty cravings. - goldfish crackers. this is my splurge item. I usually get the whole grain ones to feel better about myself. - i've also snacked on grapes, bananas, and other fruit as well. - for "chocolate" cravings sometimes I'll have a fiber one/fiber plus bar. nutrition-wise, they're not all that good for you, but its better than a candy bar. and the repercussions of the fiber will at least make you think twice before eating it in the office...

Bottom line: Figure out what you actually _need_ and not just what you're craving. Your body is smarter than you think about knowing what you need. I can typically classify my cravings as either "protein" (hummus/nuts), "salty" (nuts/goldfish), "sweet" (fruit), or just empty (ie lunchtime and/or carrots/fruit). I don't need a whole lot of variety, so as you can see, my short list of regulars double-covers most of these which is just fine for me (and easy to keep handy at work).

She told me to fill breakfast with protein and carbs and to eat like a king at breakfast time and like a prince at lunch.

Since i started doing that, my cravings at night have dissapeared, and i haven't had to come up with some formula to avoid junk food.

Try it ;-)

1. Get some food culture. It is easier to make good decisions when they are made in a larger context than "nachos bad vs. carrots good". Learn something about: where food comes from, diet and health (particularly in America: I'm assuming you're American), traditional food cultures, basics of cooking. For me this has meant reading the likes of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan, learning to cook some French, Italian and Asian dishes, lots of cookbooks, Alice Waters, Julia Child and other chefs, reading about diet/health studies like The China Study and the Nurses' Health Study, getting myself out to the local farmer's market, but those are by no means the only options.

2. Practice what I like to call "meta-discipline". It is hard to control yourself when you're at home with some junk food. It is easy to control yourself when you're shopping at the grocery store. So don't buy junk and don't have it at home. Before you go shopping, be thoughtful about what you want to buy/eat, make a shopping list, and stick to it. (Usually I think of this in the context of work: it is easy to goof off at home. It is easy to walk to the library. It is hard not to work when you're at the library with a stack of math books.)

3. The biggest improvement to my diet has come from cooking more. Mostly, this happened because I moved from a big city with a bunch of awesome restaurants to a little town with no good ones. I wish I had enacted the change sooner.

Good luck.

Protein stimulates the production or release of a hormone in your body called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin. Which suppresses appetite.

Another food "HACK" is soup.

To that end, it appears that taking your meal and blending it with a good amount of water (thick soup is best) will trap moisture around the solids, take longer for your digestive system to work through and keep you feeling fuller for longer.

A couple of years back, there was a great show on the BBC called "10 things you need to know about losing weight", where both of those concepts were detailed with scientifical experiements. (a torrent existed last time i checked)

Oh. Another one that I just thought of is to make sure you never let yourself get hungry. When you're hungry, your body goes into a sort of "starvation mode" and sends signals to your brain that tell it to seek out foods of very high calorie density. Sugars and Fats. MRI tests have found that if you look at pictures of those foods when you're hungry they'll light up the pleasure centers of your brain. If you look when satiated, all food registers at about the same level of pleasure.

When you're starving, doughnuts are like sex.

The trick is simply: don't buy junk food. Don't buy it for at least 3 months, possibly forever. Keep it out of your house. Its easier to not buy it at the store, than not eat it when its around.

Once you've lived without sugar, salt & bad fats for a while, you stop craving them and its much easier to manage. If you need to snack, eat something with no flavoring - raw almonds or carrots for instance. Drink only water.

When I first made this change I actually went totally cold turkey on a 'no flavor' diet, where I intentionally only ate rice, boiled chicken, string beans, raw nuts and dried fruit for a month and only drank tap water. No joke. It worked for sure.

(Also chewing gum works wonders as well. You may just have an oral fixation)

In my personal experience, when I go for long periods eating lots of healthy food, it is easy to fight off any cravings for crap-foods. Then if I am traveling and not eating so well, I find myself buying a occasional candy bar, etc.

The hack for your motivation and behavior is an attitude adjustment. When you get the craving, you are feeling the craving and you are really getting a signal from your body. It takes some effort, but you can try to actively look at the signal as saying "this is the pain of detoxxing, no pain, no gain." If you take the craving as a signal that you are doing something right, then it can help motivate you to continue on the right path.

You can also look into recording the foods that YOU find are healthy and induce satiety disproportionate to their caloric load. Or, for some research about people in general, you can look here: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm

My go-to satisfying things are frozen grapes and yogurt.

Edit: interesting research by Nutrition Data in estimating the "fullness factor" of foods: http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/fullness-factor

Fast burn carbs (sugary drinks with no fiber are the fastest) cause a spike in energy level followed by a crash, then you want more. If you've eaten slower burning carbs, then even if you have the sugary fast burn stuff later, you get less of a boost (because you've already got energy slowly releasing) and less of a crash (because you've still got some energy releasing). Thus it smooths out the addiction a little bit.

Also, for chocolate - if you're going to eat it, switch to dark chocolate. Again, it'll take you about a month to adapt if you're not used to it, but it's actually much more rich and textured and flavorful and delicious than milk chocolate once you've adapted. It's really, really nice. Chocolate covered peanuts also give you some protein and a tiny bit of fiber so they're more filling if you have them. When I was training heavily, I'd eat one pack of dark chocolate peanut M&M's per day as a snack. No candy is healthy, but that's probably one of the healthier candies that's mainstream available.

1. Exercise hard 5 times a week. I go to a local Crossfit gym which combines high-intensity sprinting with lifting and gymnastics (squats, pullups, etc). I've always been bored by gyms but at Crossfit you track your performance over time so you see how you're improving, and the workouts they give you are always varied. The reason Crossfit helped rid me of cravings is because I knew that if I ate crap I'd feel it during the next workout.

2. Controlled my insulin. I used to eat pancakes for breakfast and be hungry / crash two hours later. The cycle continued throughout the day, often resulting in irritability, headaches, fatigue, loss of focus, etc.

The Glycemic Index ranks foods on a scale of 1-100, where 100 is pure glucose. When you eat high-GI foods, it stimulates an insulin response in the body so that glucose is removed from the blood and stored in the body as fat. When insulin isn't present, it's a cue to your body to get energy by burning fat.

It's the insulin spikes and drops caused by eating high-GI foods that cause you to binge on crappy foods and then crave them again when your insulin level drops.

When you control it by eating good sources of protein, good fats (nuts, seeds, olive and coconut oil, butter, etc), and low-GI foods instead of sugary processed stuff (most, but not all fruits and veggies)your cravings will disappear and you will lose weight since your body will be burning fat instead of glucose.

I know it's hard to believe, but I've seen the effects myself. I have pretty much no cravings (when I do have them, I'll eat some high-quality dark chocolate) and I've leaned out big time.

What I do suggest, though, is experimenting and seeing what works for you. You can read all you want about diet hacks, but while we do have the same systems, our body chemistry often responds differently. Try experiments that resonate with you and go with what works.

Also, here's a science-based PDF about changing your diet to reduce cravings, lose weight, and be healthier.

http://crossfitoptimumperformance.com/index.php?view=article...

Good luck!

* Eat many meals with smaller portions. How I started doing this was to just eat half of whatever sandwhich, burrito I had bought and eat the rest after 3 hours. This is a good way to start getting into the habit of eating 6 small meals instead of 3 big ones.

* Start cutting down on processed food. Stick to meat, veggies and fruit. You dont need to be strict about it - just keep decreasing how much processed food is in every meal.

* Stop drinking anything other than plain soda, water, near 0 calorie drinks. The easiest way to do this is to get flavored seltzer water. 0 calories but still more "fun" to drink than water.

This will get you into a healthy state and keep you there. Losing poundage after this "state" is going to be harder but all it means is taking each of these rules to the extreme:

Ie only meat, veggies(the weird thing is you can eat as much of this as you want and you wont get fat) and fruits occasionally. Only water, seltzer. Eat every 3 hours with a bunch load of protein in each meal. This plus weight lifting will get you a six pack. Simple but not easy :).

Anything sugary is only good for 45 minutes at which point the hunger returns in strength.

Now if only I can remember to do this every time.

edit: And no, my weight doesn't increase as a result of the fat-gobbling. It's the sugary stuff that does the damage.

A lot of foods that are 'junky' are at one end of a spectrum of foods, too. Nachos, as per your examples, for instance, can be over-salted round chips with 'cheese' poured over them, or they can be orders of magnitude healthier.

If you've money, then you can easily find this out by switching the shops you eat in, but if you're not going out, then as has been suggested, buy things which have only one ingredient(which makes them -the- ingredients). Fresh or Canned, doesn't matter. Construct, rather than 'cheese'+chip nachos, real cheese(try two or three different kinds of cheese, too), a bit of meat (red meat or poultry..I would not suggest fish nachos) shredded lettuce, onions, etc, etc, etc. Those nachos are rather good for you. Still nachos, likely much more delicious, likely better for you.

The ingredients to that can be prepared in large quantities,and used in many other things. Nachos can easily become tacos or burritos, and if you add some loaf bread and leave some meats out, sandwiches.

I can also recommend South Beach Diet for you (http://www.amazon.com/South-Beach-Diet-Delicious-Doctor-Desi...). The book explains in simple terms how cravings occur (it mainly has to do with insulin levels and the digestion speed) and how to get rid of insulin (carb) spikes by replacing bad carbs and fats with good ones and balancing your diet. And exercise is my personal recommendation, don't know the physics but for some reason it improves digestion and overall feeling.

For chips: bake chunks of potatoes in the oven with a lot of olive oil, some Tempeh and a bit of vinegar and salt.

Chocolate: get used to very dark chocolate, so dark it contains little sugar. This is actually very healthy. It is the sugar and any unhealthy oils, that makes a chocolate bar unhealthy.

Nachos: The beans in nachos are actually very healthy. Increasing your consumption of beans any way you can is good thing. Take a corn tortilla, heat it with olive oil, add lots of refried beans made with more olive oil, a small amount of real cheese, and lot of fresh salsa (fresh tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, etc). Quite healthy homemake nachos.

Sodas: I dilute fruit juice and add rose water, vanilla flavoring and vinegar or limon juice to a get soda-like taste that's not at all sweet (I think that even regular fruit juice is too sweet to be a soda substitute). Cafe Gratitude, among other health food restaurants, has some appealing sodas.

-- The oil in foods is often what can give one a feeling of satisfaction. "Junks foods" exploit this along with the "sugar" rush. But oil isn't necessarily bad at all. Rather, what's important is getting a good supply of good oil (especially olive) and avoiding really bad oil like transfat.

Jeanne Calment lived to the oldest documented age ever - "She ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to olive oil, which she said she poured on all her food and rubbed onto her skin, as well as a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilo of chocolate every week."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

I'm not sure about the port wine though.

Other things I've done which you might find useful:

- replace soda with water: I drank a lot of soda in my teens and early college, but this was one of the easier things to change

- have a sugar replacement such as fresh fruit available: if I eat something low in sugar (or maybe carbs in general?), particularly in the evening, then I get cravings for sugar. Eating fruit or toast seems to help this.

- go to the grocery store only after eating. I'm not sure if this is a myth or real, but I do it in hopes that my immediate hunger won't drive my shopping decisions.

- get enough sleep. Without enough sleep, my resolve is weakened by the afternoon, and I will want to snack rather than work.

Half Head Cabbage ! Carrot 3 Onions 2 cans diced tomatoes (any tomatoes will do) 1 red chilli 1 green chilli 3 cloves of garlic 4cm slice of ginger Some Jalapenos Cloves Rosemary Parsley Salt Peppercorns Tumeric

Blend this heavily, for best results use a cheese grater for the carrot and chilli beforehand.

Pop into a saucepan, add two (unchopped) sticks of celery (remove celery before serving) to leech while boiling.

You will need to boil until the spices and chilli overwhelm the cabbage taste. Play with spices as necessary.

Put in fridge and microwave a cup in the mornings or afternoons. The soup will be quite hot, thanks to the chillis, but the whole mix is very good for you.

I mostly follow a paleo diet ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet ) which simplifying a lot is based on having plenty of fruit / vegetables accompanied by lean meats/fish.

If you go that route, whenever you're hungry, just have some more fruit/veggies and soon there won't be any room for the type of foods you mentioned nor cravings. Not only that, but there's no need to count calories anymore.

btw, there's nothing wrong in having junk food, as long as that is the exception and not the rule.

If you have unlimited budget to spend on fruit, you will find amazing blueberries, mangoes, etc. Or vine-grown tomatoes with sea salt and italian mozzarella. These healthy foods became for me such a great source of pleasure that they effectively crowded out junk food.

Counterintuitively, even with an unlimited budget, it's really hard to spend very much on these items, because there's a limit on how much you can eat. But the feeling of being supposed to spend egregiously made a big difference for me.

An alternative, if I don't have salad materials around, is to add a bit of olive oil to the protein bar/shake. It actually improves the taste quite a bit.

A chocolate bar is roughly equivalent to, say, a 30 minute jog. If you think that what you're about to eat is as bad for you as a 30 minute jog is good (or that they basically cancel each other out), it doesn't seem quite so appealing. Then if you choose the apple instead, you've done the equivalent of a 30 minute jog better than the quantum-choice-alternative-less-disciplined-and-slightly-fatter-you.

Before you eat any junk snack, take a long look at the nutritional information and think about what it is going to do to your body.

I find that it all starts when you eat when you're not hungry. This may be the product of a need to reassert control via some of the feedback loops described below, but suffice it to say, it often starts there. However, very often it begins via the fixed 'scheduling' of eating times in our society, despite the fact that we may need a variable # of meals per day and it may vary based on workout, stress, your mind, etc.

So here's the progression:

  (a) eat when you're not hungry
  (b) leads to not eating *enough* during a meal time
  (c) leads to feeling hungry in between meals. 
  (d) leads to cravings and short-term satisfactions 
  (e) further increases not eating *enough* during a meal time
  (f) goto (a) and (c)

Also, final caveat. I'm just a programmer trying to figure things out. Probably I'm a hypodiscontinuist (i.e., I fear the discrete breaks in otherwise continuous systems).

-Make shakes. Almond milk, protein powder, berries and sugar free Jello. Buy like 5 different flavors and you can have strawberry cheesecake, dark chocolate, and butterscotch all for a snack without any of the guilt!

-Sauces will save your life. Pesto, hummus, sugar-free marinara, mustard, lemon, lime...mix and match all of these on various meats and vegetables for truly delicious meals.

-Lots of water. Water satiates you and is good for you. Always drink a ton of it to limit cravings. Green tea and mint tea are also shown to curb cravings.

I had no idea there was so much to be known about eating better, and why we eat the way we do, especially with regards to carbohydrates.

I should probably add that it's not just bad carbs I'm out to cut. I want stuff like steak/bacon/pepperoni pizza/nachos/taco bell all the time, and I know that with my genes it's only a matter of time before that sends me to the hospital.

Also, I'm quite skinny at the moment, apparently regardless of what I eat...so I'm not sure if that's a sign of a contributing factor

Again, Thank you so much for the information!

My biggest problem now is probably energy drinks, have cut back but still enjoy them regularly.

No soda. Ever. I drink unsweetened iced tea instead.

No unhealthy snacks on hand. Keep bananas, watermelon and apples instead.

Most important because I eat tons of them, roasted almonds. I keep boxes of these on hand and roast them myself (15 minutes at 350 degrees).

For dinners, try to eat more fish.

For breakfast try to eat unsweetened things (I eat unsweetened oatmeal that I make tasty by cooking in milk, not water, and adding raisins, blueberries, cinnamon and cloves).

Combined with biking more this has helped me lose 30 pounds in three months.

If you have sugar cravings just eat fruit instead, mangos kiwis or clementines are the best IMO. Any other effects junk food has besides a blood sugar spike is simply a psychological association you automatically retrain over time.

-never eat too much

-never add sugar to anything

-don't use too much salt

-eat your salad with nothing but a little olive oil

-eat as little processed food as possible

-eat as little sugary food as possible

-never drink soda

-never go to mcdonalds etc

-never go to starbucks

-enjoy what you eat! :)

"Tall coffee, please"

Tastes better than any of their espresso drinks, too (though that's not difficult.)

And their light roasts are overly acidic, but that's just the Peet's fan in me being a bit prejudiced.

Besides, then you wind up in the Espresso queue, which takes longer. But hey, whatever floats your turnip.

He says that drinking a glass of water with three spoonfuls of refined sugar or refined oil midway between meals suppresses appetite. People say it works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11FREAK.html

My best switches: - PBJ with sliced strawberries instead of jelly and on wheat bread (I actually like it better this way) - Diet Dr. Pepper (best Diet soda I've found)

Still in alpha mode, any feedback would be appreciated.

2) Take water often so that you never fill thirsty.

3) Say a big NO to eating unhealthy food whole days.

4) Get more than 25 grams of protein daily.

5) Enjoy the healthy life.

Is there often a difference between various sources of NaCl? ;)

http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/

BTW, seeing that this thread has over 100 comments just confirms that when it comes to advice, especially nutrition, a lot of us think of ourselves as quasi-experts. We're all oh, so bright, and have the key to success right here! I doubt the OP will be able to make up his mind from this.

For instance, I'm just finishing a medically supervised protein-sparing modified fast where I lost 70 pounds in 5 months by eating only prescription liquid foods and only about 800 calories a day. This has the effect of "rebooting" your cravings. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to some fresh vegetables and fruit right now, and I used to be a big junk food craver. Having said that, you'd think 5 months of not eating anything except protein pudding would be difficult, but it was incredibly easy, and I enjoyed it a lot. And it mostly unscrambled the signals to my brain that said, "Eat all the cookies you can find," that ran 24 hours a day.

If that sounds like you, and your weight or other stats like triglycerides / cholesterol / liver enzymes / blood sugar are unhealthy, you should see a doctor and ask about medical weight management right away. I can tell you from experience that it's a lot easier to lose 20 pounds than it is to lose 70, so you can't win by waiting. Also, a great book on the subject is David Kessler's "The End of Overeating." He goes into great detail on the psychological and chemical triggers that induce hypereating.

Now, on the other hand, if you're just prone to snacking on junk in fairly moderate ways, you ought to exercise a little environmental control:

- Shop at farmer's markets for veggies and corner grocers for milk and staples.

- Don't go to the supermarket. If you do go to the supermarket, only shop the aisles with wholesome foods, and never buy anything on the eye-level shelves (the worst, most processed stuff).

- Don't bring junk home. If you buy something junky, buy only one serving. If it only comes in multi-serving packs, take one serving out, then freeze the rest. Make it harder to dig into.

It's also useful to keep records of your eating. If you have an iPhone, I had a lot of success with the app LoseIt. Studies show that people keep off 50% more weight when they keep records than when they don't. If you're mindful of what you're eating and how you're eating it, you create brief openings in which you actually have a choice to eat or not rather than to just eat mindlessly. It also helps to know what macronutrients (fat, sugar, protein, fiber, salt) you're consuming and in what balance. If it's out of balance, shop in a way that balances it out.

Consider foods that induce satiety. Protein has the highest satiety value - if you have to snack, try a protein pudding or shake first, let it settle in your stomach, and see if you're still hungry. Add water on top of that, because thirst often feels like hunger.

Finally, if you seem to be resolving your hunger, but you still feel an overwhelming urge to eat in spite of not being physically hungry, see a doctor or psychiatrist who specializes in eating behaviors. Most people who compulsively eat have no idea they're doing it because A) it snuck up on them over a number of years and B) everyone around them does it too (consider how many startups we've seen full of thin young folks who turned into chunky folks while they worked together).

Good luck!

So the real trick is to spend 1 month suffering (don't eat a single bit of candy) and then make the much easier choice to limit yourself to some reasonable amount (1 per week, for instance).

BTW I'm not claiming I'm healthier now, I'm just saying it's easy to get addicted to those foods but as you say a month or so of avoiding it helps to break the cycle.

Y'know what I did last night? I hacked my eyes. That's right, these glasses right here are hacking my eye-sight. Wicked.

When did hacking start meaning rational common sense? Or just the verb of putting effort towards something? I'm not in love with the word hack, but it's annoying when I want to figure out how to hack my home router and there are articles about eating more fibre so you can hack your stool.

Eat lots of vegetables. If you don't like them, there are ways to teach your body to like them, with calorie signalling - if you persistently eat something, along with a high calorie load, your body will be conditioned to like it. (As a reward system.)

Also, seriously, try the Shangri-La diet. Despite the redonkulous name, it's based on scientific research that really strongly suggests that the body's hunger/craving systems are controlled like a thermostat, that you can reset by giving the body the right kind of "food cue" as to the environment around it/food available. Research paper:

http://www.sethroberts.net/science/

You're not craving chocolate, nachos & soda because your body needs something - you're craving them because sugar creates an addictive cycle in some people. (Not all - SOME.)

You should also see a doctor and get your fasting blood sugar checked because it's entirely possible that you have a blood sugar-related disorder, aka Syndrome X, insulinimia/insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and so on.

It gives you the fats and nutrients your bodies crave, and in moderation, it won't harm you.

It also makes virtually anything tasty, including terrible bodega mac n cheese.