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Day 13 - Beck Diet Solution, Overcome Cravings

Alex Iwashyna via Flickr
Following the theme of the last few days, today we expand on what we’ve learned about experiencing and withstanding discomfort to beat another weight-loss saboteur: cravings.  We all know the drill of giving in to cravings.  First, we feel that sharp, nagging urge to eat.  Sometimes we don’t even fight it at all.  Other times we may try to fight that craving but the craving is stronger.  So the craving wins and we get up and eat, usually far too much.  

It doesn’t have to go like this however, and Beck encourages us that even though we may feel intense cravings in the first weeks of our weight loss plan, these cravings will soon diminish and not be so daunting – as long as we keep increasing our resistance muscle and not giving in to the cravings.
Start by definitively deciding you are not going to give in to the craving.  Don’t give yourself a choice to eat.  This concept is expanded on when we get to the NO CHOICE chapter.  But for now, we also examine the actual sensations of the craving as we did with hunger, review our entire arsenal of weapons against cravings, and choose the most effective ones.
The next time you experience a craving, use the Cravings Rating Chart to ask the following questions: 1) Date/time of the craving, 2) How uncomfortable did the craving get on my discomfort scale (0-10), and 3) What anti-craving strategies did I employ?
Beck told us on Day 11 that if it’s been anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours since we ate a reasonable meal, then any urge to eat is probably just a desire or craving, not hunger.  Fight back against these urges by also doing the following:
  • Call the feeling what it is – a craving.  That will help you fight it better.
  • Stand firm, reminding yourself how much you want to strengthen your resistance muscle, not your giving-in muscle.
  • NO CHOICE – tell yourself eating is not an option.
  • Visualize the entire process of what will happen if you give in to the craving – don’t just stop at how good you think it will feel if you eat.  Also see the aftermath – feeling engorged, weighed-down, feeling guilty, defeated, out-of-control…maybe even throwing in the towel, letting your STs get the better of you, eating more and more and getting further away from your weight loss goal.  How good does that food seem now?
  • Vote with your feet – remove yourself from the situation and get away from the food.
  • Drink a no/low calorie beverage.  Water, diet soda, or something hot which can make you feel full again, like coffee or better yet, tea.
  • Relax.  One way to do this is with deep breathing techniques.  Or you can investigate other relaxation strategies.
  • Distract yourself with some activity or task, like getting started on a work project, taking the dog for a walk, calling someone, and so on.
The book also gives you a Distraction Activities Chart, saying that some activities like watching TV or reading just don’t cut it to get your mind off eating.  In the left-hand column of the chart, list all the distraction activities you can think of, then in the right-hand column list their effectiveness on a scale of 0-10 after you’ve tried them.  Make a note of the most effective ones in your journal.  Again, cravings may seem formidable at first, but as we get in the habit of employing these techniques to fight them, we see the cravings aren’t so insurmountable after all.
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