IDK about anyone else but even though I have reached my goal and know that I HAVE to and need to continue to eat healthy - why do I crave all the crap still? Is there something in my diet still that is making me think I need that other stuff - or is just a mind over matter type thing?

I have always loved breads - donuts, cakes, muffins that type of thing and I still crave them and am so completely tempted by them. So I have them once a while to kill the craving or just ignore it - or shift my diet again to see if i can get it to stop?

I just don't know what to think

How often are you having the sugar / white flour junk? I'd recommend cutting it out completely, going cold-turkey, and see what happens. You will continue craving for a while, but eventually I'd be very surprised if you keep craving. Give it 30 days and see what happens.

Well I have bread of some sort pretty much every day - either Subway or chicken sandwich. Also another kicker for me is chips - i eat way too many of those - definite weakness for me!

Try switching to whole grain bread and only eating it with protein. That might help.

For the last two years (since I committed to low-carb eating "most of the time"), I've tried to find an amount/frequency for high-carb foods - I haven't found it yet.

Maybe the day will come that I can (but right now, I'm kind of guessing not - or at least not more frequently than once a month, as I've not tried less frequently than that).

Cravings are food memories, so for me, the longer I go without eating something, the less I crave it. Eventually the craving disappears. But if I were to eat that food again -- man, I'd be craving all over again! So for me, cutting something out completely is the best way to stop cravings.

If you never quit the junk, then yes, you will always have cravings for it. Cravings for chips, white bread, and sugar are all basically the same thing. You must cut out all of it if you want the cravings to go away.

I learned while I was way off plan, that if I ate a white carb or sugar that all I would want for days after that would be more crap food.. which led to me just eating all the crap food that I wanted because I wasn't at a point mentally to stop myself.

I just had it happen again.. I ate 1 little rice crispy treat (my 4 and 5 year old made them so I had to tell them how well they cook ) and 1 led to 4 once the sugar hit my mouth I lost all control for a few minutes!

So basically I need to get rid of all that if I want to stop craving it. Chips and breads totally? Hmm chips I could do without but I love to have sandwhichs - how do they eat those on the biggest loser then? I guess that is where I am confused - they always show them eating subway. I get the italian or whole wheat bread.

You need to get the whole wheat. For sandwhiches at home, our grocery store carrys a low cal wheat bread (actually it's just sliced really thin.. like 2 slices is as thick as 1 slice of regular calorie ), I stick with that for myself.

Thanks! I will see what kind of bread I can find tonight at the store and NO chips!!!! Even if my DH whines! lol

Whole-wheat bread does not trigger cravings for some people, for others it does. You will need to experiment to see whether it can remain in your diet and not trigger cravings.

Make sure that you are buying bread that is completely made from whole grains, not just partly. And you want the kind that doesn't have HFCS, coloring, and other additives in it.

If they are showing contestants on the Biggest Loser eating bread from Subway, then they're doing that as a product placement advertisement, not as an actual recommendation that it's nutritious food. Subway is pretty much crap for nutrition--the bread may as well be white bread.

I'm also a white bread/muffin/potato girl. I can't have any of it. It just sort of kick starts something and then I'm craving it for days. The whole wheat bread works for me.

I found that when I cut bread/sugar/carbs out of my diet drastically for a short time (about two weeks), then I lost all my cravings. Now I am slowly adding them back in, at lunch and dinner, to see what I can tolerate adn what I can't.

Half cup of rice is fine. One cup triggers cravings the next day.
A whole soft pretzel triggers me.
One Red Lobster biscuit is fine, if it's the only grain at the meal.
One high-fiber waffle is fine, with berries, peanut butter, and low-sugar syrup. Two is too much.
One slice of double-fiber whole wheat bread is fine for lunch, but not for breakfast.
Oatmeal at breakfast is right out! But 3/4 cup of Kashi Go Lean is fine.

It's going to be different for each person. Just keep track of waht you eat, and when you have cravings look back at what you ate that day and the day before and see what carbs might be the culprits.

Something that really helped me with this was About.com's "Can Carb Cravings be your Friend?" Hope you find it helpful, too.

Hi guys! Just thought I'd toss in my .02cents into this topic about Subway.

Subway is good IF you're using the whole wheat bread options. However, just recently Jillian Michaels posted on her Facebook account that it has "come to her attention that Subway uses High Fructose Corn Syrup in their bread" and that she's "upset" because they promote Subway on the Biggest Loser.

However, she also went as far to post that she "will do a free T.V commercial for Subway IF they get rid of the HFCS in their products".

These are loose quotes, of course, but I found it interesting regardlessly.

As for craving controls? You need to figure out what works for you. If you can sneak a small portion (every now and again) into your diet (diet, in referance to anything you consume / drink) than that may sate the cravings. Some people need to rid it completely, else it triggers them to eat it contiously.

Also, it works for certain foods, too. For instance I absolutely LOVE trail mix. So healthy for you, but highly calorie dense. I can't bring this into the house. I'll eat huge portions of it without remorse. But chocolate? I still have a family size bar of 70% dark cacoa in the freezer that I nibble from time-to-time and I'm sure it'll sit up there for ages yet. Chips? I can portion out a small handful and be done with that craving. Icecream? No way in ****.

You need to figure out what works best for you.