How to Overcome Temptation For Food

Overcome Temptation When On Diet

So, you have set your mind to lose weight. Then, temptation comes in the way. Now you need to know how to boost your will power to overcome the food temptation, so as to keep those kilos off.

Don’t fight it

You will have good self-control if you don’t use the will power often. Instead of trying hard to fight off the temptations, set up your daily life such that you don’t have to fight them, or minimize the fights. In another word, play defensive game. How to do that? Open your fridge, can you identify all the sinful stuff – frozen pizza, chocolates, canned drinks, left over cakes, etc? Throw them away and never buy them again. Do the same with the kitchen cabinet, toss away the crunchy and salty chips, rich and sweet cookies, and anything that you should be avoiding. When you don’t see it, you don’t have to fight against it.

Eat proper and balance meal three times a day, consist of carbohydrate, protein and vegetables, and eat enough so that you don’t get hungry after 2 hours. When you are not hungry, you will think of food, and you will not have to combat the temptation. That should conserve more of your will power supply for more challenging times.

Keep the glucose at good level

You need good blood glucose level to fuel your willpower to overcome food temptation. Your brain needs glucose to function at an optimal level. Good level of blood glucose sends constant flow of signals to the brain which are linked to regulating hunger and energy intake. Studies have shown that people with steady glucose levels were more able to complete difficult task than those whose glucose level declined during experiments. That doesn’t mean you can go for chocolate bar – glucose is too easily available from this straight sugar. Go for fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy products, and even protein, which take longer time for your body to convert to glucose, and of course, they are healthier too.

Reward yourself wisely

Do you incline to celebrate after enduring a tough, long hour workout? Well, you should reward yourself. Don’t use your willpower to deny yourself a well-earned threat, but it is important to ensure that your reward does not outweigh the workout. The calculation is easy. If you have burned off 500 calories, keep your food intake to less than that. Celebrate in such a way that it doesn’t ruin all your hard work. Go download and listen to your favourite songs when you work out, that will keep your work out enjoyable, and you may not need another huge reward to make yourself feeling good.

Stay Alert

You need to stay alert to fight off temptation, so sleep early, and sleep enough. Willpower is low when you are sleepy. If you sleep late, hunger pangs will come and haunt you, and you may end up opening the fridge looking for food to munch.

Short of sleep due to work ? Take a 10 minutes nap. It will help the sleep-deprived you to overcome hunger caused by disrupted satiety hormones leptin and ghrelin.

A cup of coffee with real sugar, not artificial sweetener, is definitely a good way to increase your alertness. In fact, studies have shown that caffeine and sugar increased the cognitive performance of the cortex region of the brain, which supports your ability to stay focused and goal-oriented. Now, you will definitely need that to confront temptations.

Delay, Don’t resist

When it comes to food temptation, delaying it to another time, instead of saying no, can work miraculously. Studies have shown that people who postponed eating a bag of potato chips were more able to overcome temptation than those who tried hard to refrain from eating the crunchy and tasty snacks. Saying no intensifies the feeling of deprivation, which makes it more difficult to fight off. Postponing it gently weakens the desire, when you are about to lose to temptation.

It can be challenging to postpone all the fattening food and drinks at one go. To start off, postpone one or two food that tempts you the most. As time goes by, add more food to your list. You will achieve better results this way.

Scare Yourself

Often than not, we tell ourselves that, another piece of French fries will not make any difference to our waistline. Instead of fending yourself to eat, why not take the opposite approach, scare yourself with a tall tale. Overestimating the calories of the food will help you to establish the link between fattening food and being out of shape. When you are tempted by the Double Beef Burger next time, imagine that the burger contains 3000 calories. That will prompt you start picturing yourself with extra 5 kg, which should help you to say no.

Copyright

The text and all images on this page, unless otherwise indicated, are owned by Ingenira who hereby asserts her copyright on the material. Permission must be granted by the author in writing prior to copy or republish this article in print or online. However, please feel free to copy the first paragraph with a link back to this page. Thank you.

© Ingenira