Can someone share their tips on how to deal with the cravings.

Have some fruit around.
Don't buy chocolate, biscuits, sweets etc.
Have some bread and jam or honey or lowfat spread in the house so if you have to give in to the craving it will be filling and not too bad.

Hope this helps.

I find it much easier to exercise self control when I'm walking around Sainsbury than at 10 at night when I'm feeling weak. So I agree that not buying stuff is the best way. It's funny how I'm not tempted by tins of soup!


Regards, Jon

I have found distraction is a good way of combatting a craving, call a friend, have a bath, get on this site anything that can take your mind off the craving. Easier said than done, I know I usually give in and start again tomorrow! The following is what Paul McKenna recommends, sounds a bit flaky but maybe worth a try.

1 I want you to summon the biggest desire for either a cigarette or a chosen food that you can, right now. If you don’t have a big enough craving, put this technique to one side and come back to it when you’re really feeling it.
2 Focus on this craving for a moment â€" and when you have, I’d like you to rate your desire on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest). This is important, because in a moment we want to know how much you have reduced it.
3 On a scale of 1 to 10, how strong is your craving? Remember, if you’re not desperate for it (ie, your craving is not at least a 7), come back to this technique later.
4 Now take two fingers of either hand and tap about ten times under your collarbone while you continue to think about having your craving.
5 Now tap under your eye ten times.
6 Now tap under your collarbone again.
7 Place your other hand in front of you and tap on the back of it between your ring finger and your little finger. Continue to think about your craving as you do this and each of the steps which follow:
Close your eyes and open them.
Keep your head still, keep tapping and look down to the right then down to the left.
Keep tapping and rotate your eyes round 360 degrees clockwise, and now 360 degrees anti-clockwise.
Remember to keep thinking about your craving as you do this! Now hum the first few lines of “Happy Birthday� out loud.
Count out loud from one to five.
Once again hum the first few lines of “Happy Birthday� out loud.
8 Stop and check â€" on a scale from 1 to 10, what number is your craving at now? If it hasn’t completely gone yet, just repeat the sequence again until it does.

Also I find the GI diet good

"low GI value slowly release sugar into the blood, providing you with a steady supply of energy, leaving you feeling satisfied longer so that you're less likely to snack"

for that one minute of a crave , rush to the kitchen and drink a pint of water! it works, honest! if that fails, drink another pint!

I make individual pots of sugar free jelly and have a few of them in the fridge at all times. About 10 cals a pot and satisfy that sweet hit I sometimes crave.

If I feel like sitting down and working my way through a tub of icecream I go for a run. If I still feel like eating a tub of ice cream after the run, then I do it without feeling guilty. Sometimes you need to binge.

Thanks Paul McKenna, I can't remember what my craving is! I'll go and have a pint of lager and a few packets of crisps while I think about it...

oatcakes....yum! - it's the keeping your blood sugar level so you don't get peaks and troughs

Wendy, Wendy come back from the pub you were craving lettuce!!!!

I agree about not having the food you may crave in the house. I have no idea why but I find making a cup of tea stops my cravings.

The problem with making a cup of tea is I crave a biscuit to go with it!

There are many different things to help with cravings - just a matter of finding the right one for you but I know friends who swear by the tapping.

Good luck.

I find chewing chewing gum gives me something to do with my mouth to distract myself!

Also the WW cakes are delicious, individual portions and low in points. The carrot cake slice is the best!

What about saying to yourself: yes, I know I really fancy xyz (fill in name of whatever your weakness is) but I have decided to do this diet, it's really important to me because... (and here fill in why - keep your list of reasons somewhere handy - post-it notes are good for this) and so I am not going to go with my craving.

Until we learn to do this we will all stay at the mercy of our cravings, which is fine if you're a five-year-old and mummy won't let you over-indulge, but the downside of being a grown-up is that somehow you've got to do this for yourself. You think you can't, you feel you can't, but the truth is actually you can, and you will feel so much better about yourself when you learn to do this.

Well said Berale!

I think some of the craving thing is to do with habit and we have become used to eating between meals. The occasional indulgence becomes a regular thing and I suspect we enjoy it less when we do it more often.

I found two things that helped me: I started reading the labels and told myself that I didn't need to eat rubbish, and I also reminded myself that I don't do that any more. But I didn't allow myself to agonize over why I shouldn't snack because that made it worse. I made a point of being pleased with myself for resisting the temptation each time I walked away from temptation.

On the other hand, that doesn't seem to work when alcohol is involved....

Chris, I like the "I don't do that any more", I think that is a great thing to say to yourself.

Now, you say it's different with alcohol, and I suspect that where for you it's different with alcohol may be similar to how for me it's different with chocolate or cake - we use these things for emotional purposes, they help us relax or cheer up, and so if we're going to get out of this dependency we need to recognise what need these things answer for us and find an alternative way of satisfying that need. Otherwise our good intentions won't last very long.

I don't know specifically what purpose alcohol serves in your case, so am not going to try and guess. I know for me chocolate is an emotional pick-me-up but there are other things that can make me feel better which don't involve an automatic waist expansion, like looking at flowers or the neighbour's cat, or praying, or hearing nice music, or getting a hug from my husband - all sorts of things. It's a question of recognising our needs and finding a way of meeting them.

Don't know if this helps.

Berale, I think I just like the taste!

I'm trying to give up alcohol for two weeks and I miss my early evening glass of wine or an icy-cold G&T. I've managed four days now, but I'm very much looking forward to when the fortnight is over.

I don't think it is anything more than the enjoyment of a different taste; I have looked at how much I drink and I was very pleased to note that I've reduced the amount since I stopped work. I usually have a couple of small glasses most evenings and I'm probably too old to start binge drinking now.

On the other hand, I could do with a new challenge.......

Ah, if it's just the taste then you could try finding other drinks that taste nice. Though of course if your concern is losing weight then just replacing your glass of wine with alcohol-free wine probably won't help, nor will fruit juice... Hmmm... Personally I like fruit teas, some of which are very nice cold too, but that may not be your cup of tea, I don't know.

Anyone else got any suggestions? (You could post a specific question on this and see if others might have any helpful tips.)

I would highly recommend Paul McKenna's book. I was a chocaholic but now I crave nothing, but the main thing Paul McKenna says is that you crave something - have it.

After reading the book and listening to the CD I have no cravings whatsoever, funnily enough I find it hard to decide what I do want to eat rather than trying to stop myself eating what I crave, but two brilliant tips are if you are craving food drink a glass of water first as you may be dehydrated and if you are still hungry after the water then have the food. Secondly my chiropractor says have a piece of fruit or veg before any snacks or meals and also If after these you are still craving/hungry then have what you want the only thing to remember is to adhere to Paul McKenna's rules.

If you crave it then have it? If I did that I would turn into a chocolate mountain.

The thing is to deal with the craving, to face up to it, acknowledge it, and work out a realistic strategy for dealing with it. By realistic I mean I'm not going to rely on just exercising willpower, I'm going to think about what to do instead, what am I going to say to myself next time I fancy XYZ, is there something else I could do instead that would satisfy the same need as whatever it is that I crave - we need to think about why we do these things and decide what new habits we are going to cultivate instead.

In my experience drinking a glass of water does help in some cases, but not always. So it's a question of re-educating myself, building new and better habits.

When I was following a low-calorie diet, the only thing that helped was to stick to a policy of not having easy-to-eat food around. Because I was working long days, I cooked stuff at the weekend and froze it in single portions, so all I had to do was put it in the microwave in the evening.

Breakfast was usually porridge or yoghurt and fruit, and at lunch I bought things like lean meat with a couple of tomatoes - very simple and limited to a short list of items to choose from. This seemed to help remind me that I was on a diet and I was serious about it.

The important thing was to make food that I enjoyed for my evening meal - chilli, curry, shepherds pie, beef in red wine, coq au vin, etc. If I had something to look forward to, it was easier to stop myself eating the stuff I shouldn't.

Thanks guys - there's some good advice here.

Living by myself, I find it easier just to not buy tempting things. (Oddly enough, I can have home-made cake around and just eat a slice every 2-3 days as a treat - and my baking is not that bad!) Looking at the labels on food packets sounds a good idea. And just telling oneself "I don't do that any more". I think the only way to succeed in losing weight permanently is to change one's eating habits.

But there are still those days when you body just craves food.....

I am the cravings queen! Sugar free gum or camomile tea are good for sweet cravings, and Marmite or hummus on a cracker is good for savoury cravings.

I do think though that if nothing will hit the spot like a bag of chips then go on and have it, and just do a bit more exercise the next day

I find gum the worst thing to have at any point because as you are chewing the movement your mouth makes signals to the body and it is getting food when it isn't!

it actually makes me more hungry!

Popcorn made fresh from the corn in the microwave fills you up a treat. i take some to work every day for the afternoon slump.

I've found the online calorie and exercise counter to be a big demotivator:

eg. a choccie bar might be nice, but is it worth a 75 minute walk in the cold to burn it off? Think I'll have a tin of soup instead !

I can't have my trigger foods in the house, at all. (butter, choc, crisps, oven chips). The fridge is now full of yogurt, apples, grapes. I'd love to live on chips, but I'd rather not have the fat arris that goes with them ;)

Fisherman's Friend's are very good and only 4 calories each, especially the extra strong ones and apart from the original aniseed flavour they also do an extra strong mint, and all the ingredients are natural, (except for the sugar free varieties but I don't care for the taste of those, and there's only one calorie difference per sweet anway). They're good to have a packet handy, especially if you crave sweets. Obviously you don't eat them like you would Wine Gums, rather let them dissolve slowly in your mouth and they tend to kill cravings for other things.

Olives are lo cal but either you love them or hate them!! I could happily eat some nice olives from the deli all day long!! As long as they're not in oil... Try some stuffed with garlic, tomatoes, peppers or kalamata olives....