Three Easy Ways to Reduce Your Food Cravings

Many of my patients ask me for advice about how to reduce their appetites or cut cravings for certain foods.

As a general rule, if you are craving something, your body probably needs a small amount of it. If you're craving fat, you probably need some fat. If you're craving bread, eat one piece of bread.

The problem is that most of us aren't that good at receiving messages from our bodies. In fact, we're used to ignoring them. Tired? Have a cup of coffee. or It's Martha's birthday, time to eat a piece of cake whether you're hungry or not...

After years of overriding our body's signals, it can become hard to be sensitive to what we really need. The following behavioral techniques will help you reset your appetite so that sticking too a healthy diet doesn't feel like an impossibility.

1. Get Enough Sleep - Recent studies show that individuals who get four hours of sleep a night have a 24 percent larger appetite than individuals who sleep for eight hours a night.

Why? Because people who sleep less produce less leptin and more ghrelin. Leptin, a hormone produced in fat cells, lets the brain know that it's time to stop eating. Ghrelin, a hormone produced in the gastrointestinal tract, stimulates an individuals appetite.

The result? When you don't get enough sleep, you're hungry more often. If you're trying to lose weight, you've got to prioritize a good night's sleep.

2. Reduce Your Stress ASAP - When the body is under stress, it produces more cortisol, a hormone that stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism for increased energy, increases insulin production and increases appetite.

Weight gained because of increased cortisol production tends to gather around the abodomen, so if you are accumulating belly fat then you know that it's time to take steps to decrease your stress level.

3. Your Brain is Hard-Wired to Seek Out Fatty Foods - A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that fatty foods trigger memory consolidation using the same neural pathways as emotional learning.

What does this mean to you? Comfort food isn't just a clever catch phrase - it's a real, palpable emotional experience, and gives scientific evidence to support the fact that overeating can be triggered by specific emotional situations.

In addition, this information gives insight into the failure of lowfat diets. Without fat, a meal is not satisfying, and therefore indiviudals are tempted to overeat.

How can we overcome this deep-seated programming? Eat a little bit of a fatty food. The small portion will satisfy your craving and, if you give yourself a minute, you'll feel satisfied. (The key word in that sentence is "little.")

Another great tactic is to stay focused on a goal that you want to achieve - fitting into your skinny jeans or climbing the stairs at work without losing your breath - and let that motivate you to take a pass on the comfort food that you're craving.

In short, the answer is easy: three small meals a day, consisting of protein, fat and carbohydrates; two snacks and as much water as you want. Stick to this, and you've got it made.