Eating more to cut cravings?
 

Hi all,
I was just reading Glory's success story and she said something that really hit home with me. She mentions that eating more calories actually caused her to lose more weight, not gain it.

I'm having a similar experience. I've just been through a very rough few months and have found myself going back to the diet/binge cycle. In fact, I'd been on the cycle for months of being "good" and eating 1100-1200 calories a day of healthy food during the week and then when Thursday hit (my Friday since I'm a student and have no classes on Fridays) I'd suddenly feel the release of tention from the whole week and would go on a binge for the evening. Then Sat and Sun I'd be good most of the day and Sun night the thought of going back to school would depress me and I'd binge again.

I decided this weekend to chuck the diet mentality that has been so weighing me down for years and just eat whole good food and not worry too much about calories. I did a calorie total in Fitday just to see what it is and I'm eating about 1500 calories, 300 more a day than I was. But you know what? I didn't have a binge craving the whole weekend and I'm feeling much more satisfied than I have in the past few months on whole foods. I was eating a lot of processed stuff (especially because I'm a vegetarian so veggie burgers and hot dogs and sausages and all that) but I've moved to mostly whole foods and it's making a world of difference.

I just hope it will continue like this!

Tam

You might enjoy Intuitive Eating #2 and we would love to have you join us.

I definitely think avoiding being too hungry helps quell cravings, or in my case, bingeing. One nice thing about whole foods is they are simply more filling than processed 'stuff' so you get full quicker and stay that way longer. A huge salad with a little cheese, olives or nuts for fat stays with you much longer than a bag of chips, at least IMO.

Yep - it definitely worked for me. I was so used to dieting being about depriving myself. I was used to being always hungry and not liking the foods I ate and wishing the diet was over. Switching to eating a lot of whole foods I liked was a huge paradigm shift for me. Before, I always had cravings, always binged - I always feel like my lack of cravings/binges this time was nothing short of miraculous.

I also wonder if it was the addition of so many whole foods that made a difference. When I starved my body, it wanted quick, high energy foods (sugar/fat) and it wanted nutrition (vitamins/minerals/healthy fats/protein) it wasn't getting. When I started eating 10+ super foods a day, my body got all the nutrition it needed, and the endless binging/grazing ended.

On the non-eating front, I get really intense cravings for sugar (not chocolate, chips or other stuff, just sugar) when I let myself get really tired, and when I'm doing a huge amount of exercise. The tired issue became crystal clear when my DD was new and I was so sleep deprived--there was just no denying the correlation. The exercise-induced cravings usually happen in the last phases of marathon training when I hit 10+ mile runs. Better eating patterns don't usually help those, although more sleep and rest do.

However, the cravings for chocolate, chips, other junk do get to a more manageable level when I'm eating enough healthy food. They never go away completely, but I can eat them in a portion-controlled way. There are a few trigger foods for me that this is not true of, but most things are OK.

Anne

When I first "re-joined" 3FC a few weeks ago, I read something (I think in the chicks in control section) about the parallels between food obsession and hunger and alcoholism. I always scoffed at the notion that dieting was easier than quitting booze, because I figured an alcoholic can quit booze entirely. I still have to eat - but I have to do it while still trying to actively "starve" myself.

The point someone made about alcoholics was this - they still "drink", they just don't drink alcohol. As simple as that statement is, it was huge breakthrough for me. I realized, I could still EAT and enjoy - there were just foods that were wrong for my body, like alcohol is wrong for the alcoholic. This simple realization gave me license to go out into the world and find whole foods - things that would still give me the pleasure of eating, but would not trigger the unhealthy binger that I once was.

Once I had that license, and began to fill myself up with whole foods I realized that a lot of the "hunger" that I had been feeling before was being artificially created for me. For example, the evil that is high fructose corn syrup! The more of that you take in, the more of everything else you want!

So, now when I feel REAL hunger I know that by eating more whole foods, I am not only satisfying true body hunger, I am continuing to do good things for myself and my future child.

:carrot: