PMS or TOM craving substitutes
 

I was hoping someone here might have some suggestions. Right before and during the first couple of days during my TOM I crave salty snacks. Normally I don't particularly want for them and I am not one to add extra salt to foods. My question is what are some foods you have used to substitute those cravings? Or do you substitute at all?

I'm SO dealing with this right now (I'm craving a big ol' deli sandwich - my substitute will be a reasonable veggie sandwich tomorrow for lunch).

I am not sure what diet you are following, or what foods you are allowing yourself, but here are some suggestions with some recipe links:

Kale Chips (I've made these. They are great!)
Salsa & Baby Carrots
Mug of Bullion soup
Almonds or other salted nuts- but not too many!
Hummus with Celery
How about just a quick all-veggie stir fry and be a little heavy handed with the soy sauce
Tomato and Cucumber Greek Salad with 1 oz non-fat feta and capers - salty goodness! I don't have my recipe for this in my blog, but happy to pass it on to you if you are interested

If cooking isn't your thing, maybe you can try some flavored rice chips that I see in the chip section sometimes.

Thank you. The salsa and baby carrots sound really good actually and homemade salsa is pretty easy to make. I don't really have a specific plan right now, I am just trying to be aware of what I am eating and making better choices over all. I've been researching different plans and am leaning towards the insulin resistance diet. I will have to check out the other recipes too though, thanks for the advice.

I also wanted to add another piece of advice from personal experience; If you are having a craving, you should definitely feed it - in a healthy and mindful way. If you deny yourself everything, all the time, it's a sure fire-way to end up really screwing up on your plan sooner rather than later. :D

If you like sweet and salty together (that's my big TOM issue), I fully recommend the 100-calorie packs of yogurt pretzels and chocolate covered pretzels. I wish I could remember who it was, but someone on 3FC recommended them to me when I was having much the same issue you are.

For me I crave chips... crave them like no tomorrow. I have two solutions to this. The first is I grab a handful of tamari almonds (which have a lovely roasty salty coating, I think they're roasted in soy sauce?). Sometimes that's sufficient. If it isn't, though, or if I'm craving a salt + chocolate combo I buy myself a single-serving bag of potato chips, split it into two bags, and let myself eat one of them, sometimes with a fat free chocolate pudding if that's what the craving calls for. It's like Pacifica said, sometimes you have to heed a craving, but with a plan!

If you're looking for a quick fix, the suggestions made by other posters are great. For a long-term solution, I'd suggest celery.

Celery is known to calm salt cravings (as well as being an extremely healthy food choice). Eat it raw or juice celery (with apples and carrots) if you're not into eating it.

Thanks for the ideas. I did get a package of the 100 calorie pretzel packs and will look into juicing celery in the future. It's one of the few vegetables that I dislike unfortunately.