Seven Steps to Breaking the Food Seduction

Tired of feeling like food has an uncontrollable hold on your life?
Wondering whether you really could live without chocolate, cheese,
sugar, or meat? Here’s a list of tips to help you free yourself
from unhealthy food cravings:

1. Start with a good breakfast. Cutting hunger is the first step
in cutting cravings.

2. Choose foods that steady your blood sugar. Beans, green vegetables,
fruit, and whole grains help prevent blood sugar dips that can lead
to cravings.

3. Eat at least 10 calories each day per pound of your ideal body
weight. This tip is directed at calorie-cutting dieters who do not
realize that, if they eat too little, their bodies stop making an
appetite-controlling hormone called leptin. A person whose ideal
weight is 150 pounds needs at least 1,500 calories per day, and
probably much more.

4. Break out of craving cycles, which can occur daily, monthly
(with a woman’s cycle), or yearly (with the change in seasons).
Monthly chocolate cravings, for example, can be reduced with a
low-fat, vegetarian diet, which tends to reduce the hormone
swings that lead to cravings.

5. Exercise and rest are keys to restoring your physical resilience.

6. Use social support. Enlisting the help of friends and family
makes changing habits much easier.

7. Take advantage of other motivators. New parents, for example,
may decide to eat healthy foods not just for themselves, but
for the sake of their children.

Most importantly, try the “Three-Week Break.” Research shows
that if you have managed to set aside an addicting food, such
as chocolate, for three weeks, you crave it much less than if
you had just had it yesterday.

Breaking the Food Seduction includes a Three-Week Kickstart
program and dozens of gourmet “addiction-free” recipes,
including Portobello Mushroom Steaks, Eggplant Pecan Pesto,
Tunisian Potato Salad, Spicy Noodle Soup, and Carob Walnut Fudge.

Media Center Health Research About PCRM Catalog Join Us Search Site Index
Home

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

5100 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Ste. 400, Washington, DC 20016
Phone: 202 686 2210