Why You Just Can’t Resist Those Junk Food Cravings

When you’re trying to get started with weight loss, junk food cravings are the worst.  At least they were for me.  Even worse is the fact that frequently, after some success, they return with a vengeance, only to destroy our progress.  But science offers insight into why and how food cravings might be tamed.

How To Resist Food Cravings

To address the question of how to resist food cravings, first we must understand ourselves.  One tidbit lies in the better understanding of how we deal with temptation.  For that, we can turn to some recent work unearthed by psychologists at Northwestern University.

The experiment researchers conducted was to gather a group of smokers.  They gave participants a test as a pretense to divide them randomly into two groups, telling one group they had tested as having “high” willpower, and the other they tested as “low” willpower.  This was all faked.  They then offered them a cash reward for holding an unlit cigarette while watching the movie Coffee and Cigarettes.  Holding the cigarette in your mouth yielded more cash than in your hand, on a nearby desk, or for the lowest reward, in a different room.  Light the cigarette and you lose the money.

Simple, right?

The group labeled as having “high” willpower was far more likely to try holding the cigarette in their mouth.  They were also three times more likely to fail.  By contrast, the group that was told they have “low” willpower took the conservative approach, choosing to avoid the temptation.

It’s called restraint bias.

It’s the belief that you’re able to control food cravings, and it helps explain why its so common to have some measure of success at kicking a habit, only to backslide.  For instance, why dieters tend to regain their lost weight.  A little success leads us to believe we’ve tamed our inner devils, and its safe to be around them again.

I’m guilty of this.

Back in 1996, I left school and started working.  I took up running and started the Atkins Diet.  Over a 9 month period, I lost a great deal of weight, it took about a year to gain it all back.  Its actually a pretty common phenomenon amongst dieters.

So what’s the solution?  How do you curb food cravings?

The truth is — you don’t.  The best way to resist junk food cravings, or any other cravings for that matter, is to avoid them entirely.  Most people who have had some measure of success at weight loss have done so by avoidance.  That is – not placing ourselves in a position to overeat.  Whether its avoiding the business luncheons or keeping junk food out of the house, we’ve reduced our exposure to the temptation to overeat, thereby reducing our calorie intake.

We fall back into bad eating habits after gaining some success, and thinking to ourselves, “…now, I’ll have just one.”  The first time, it will be just one, but the second, third, and fourth time, we’re eroding our ability to say “No.”

So, after you’ve tossed out the junk food, started skipping lunch with the guys, and swapped the mid-morning Snickers for a handful of almonds, you’ll start to lose weight.  You’ll be fitter and feel better.  That’s when those insidious cravings will start to creep in, and you’ll start to believe you can have “Just one.”  Your best bet?  Avoidance.  Don’t give yourself the opportunity to cave into those cravings.

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