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Losing weight Psychological tricks can significantly reduce our cravings
Losing weight is not easy. Everyone knows the feeling of craving for something sweet and greasy. But chocolate, chips and fries are just the foods that make us really fat. But cravings for sweets are often more than just a feeling of hunger. Rather, there is an already learned in childhood behavior, with the frustration, sadness or other unpleasant feelings are replaced by a positive, behind it. Chocolate, ice cream or chips only help against frustration in the short term. Therefore, we need more of the unhealthy shortly after. Anyone who is aware of this can tackle it. How that works is explained by experts.
Using tricks to change old habits and refrain from chocolate and frustration chips
Eating chocolate and chips out of frustration is part of everyday life for many people. Others reward themselves with the sweetener or greasy for a long, exhausting day at work or, after a fight, first have to eat some nerve food. The reasons for snacking and snacking are manifold. However, they all have one thing in common: Eating chocolate, gummy bears and other goodies is an attempt to replace an unpleasant feeling with a positive one. However, that this supposedly positive feeling is usually quickly replaced by a bad conscience does not seem to deter us from frustration.
According to a recent study, food cravings due to stress during pregnancy are already programmed in the fetal brain. The outbreak of this eating disorder in adolescents can be prevented by a balanced diet. (Image: JenkoAtaman / fotolia.com) Margret Morlo, of the Federation of Nutrition and Dietetics (VFED), talked about simple tricks to tackle our food cravings. "If you have frustration, you want something delicious, something sweet," said the dietician. Of course, healthy people should rather be eaten, but that is often unrealistic. However, it would help to keep sweets and chips out of sight in the office. In addition, working people should only take small portions to work. This slows down the frustration already in advance.
It would of course be best to completely renounce sweets at work, Morlo. If you simply can not do without, you should set firm rules. "No matter what happens, I do not eat more than three candies a day." It also makes sense to record the rules in writing, for example, on a small piece of paper that is kept at the candy. In this way light always a "stop sign" at the handle to the treats. The observance of such rules can be learned.
Only eat chocolate and frustration chips in small quantities
In the first step, sufferers should become aware of their behavior. Who recognizes the problem, have already made the first step. "It's a real learning process," explained Morlo. "Now this is another situation, now I want to eat. You have to be aware of that before you can do something about it. "By reflecting on one's own behavior, a kind of intermediate step is at least built in, before the sweets are picked. "If you then manage not to eat is another question," says the expert.
A common problem is the evening meal of chips. This often affects people who would spend the evening alone. The dietician advises to create alternatives such as sports or manual labor to prevent frustration. Everyone knows that the good feeling of eating lasts for only a short time anyway. Most of the time the bad conscience quickly sets in: what have I just stuffed into me again, how many calories that were, now I will continue to increase and many other negative thoughts wandering through our heads after binge eating. And nothing has changed about the frustration. "The causal situation still exists," Morlo explained. The moment you've swallowed the sweets, you get annoyed. The positive feeling only lasts as long as you eat ".
The dietician reported that the frustration of chocolate and chips is usually a behavior learned in childhood. "You often do that with children," says Morlo. To distract the little ones, to play something unpleasant or simply, so that the children rest, many parents like to grasp Gummibärchen, Lolly & Co. That they do their children long term no favor with many is not clear. Because in this way a behavior is already learned in early child, in which unpleasant feelings are replaced by sweets or other food by positive.
For children do not problematize chocolate and other sweets
Especially with children, care should be taken right from the start to neither positively evaluate nor problematize food as a reward. While a few years ago, the regulation and abandonment of sweets were endorsed by many educators, the trend today is rather a relaxed approach to the subject of food and sweets. Of course, the nutrition of children should be balanced and healthy diet.
Although some children like to eat healthy food, others prefer to eat only chocolate and chips. Parents have a great influence on the eating habits of their offspring. Already in the baby age they can set the course for it. (Image: Svetlana Fedoseeva / fotolia.com) An ice cream, a little chocolate or a lolly will not cause any health problems or being overweight in healthy children. This is also confirmed by the graduate pedagogue Gritli Bertram from Hannover. "It all depends on a relaxed approach to the subject of sweets and, crucially, on the behavior of the parents, which is demonstrated to the child." If the parents ate a bag of chips in front of the television every night, the child could not understand why it was itself do not eat chips.
"If the parents are eating healthily without being too dogmatic, the child would naturally take over this eating behavior. "Still, if the child is constantly eating sweets, there's often another problem behind it," says Bertram. Bullying at school, for example, causes frustration for many children already at primary school age. "Parents should get together with their children and try to find out what the child's worries and problems are and help them solve them." The pedagogue said that it was not a solution to take the sweets away from the child or impose other punishments. (Ag)