8 healthy ways to suppress junk food cravings

culled from:pulse.ng

We will struggle with cravings, the good news is they are not your fault!

It turns out that our hormones cause our cravings, and hormones are the messengers that influence how we feel, what we want, and how fast our body stores fat.

When our stomachs are empty, they produces a hormone called ghrelin that causes hunger which sabotages our weight loss efforts. If you let yourself go hungry, your cravings will be too intense to resist!

Therefore, the trick is to stay full by eating wholesome foods that suppress your appetite and avoiding junk foods like a plague.

Here are eight healthy tips on suppressing junk food cravings.

1. Drink a big glass of water, wait ten minutes and see if you are still hungry before putting anything in your mouth.
2. Chew gum- keeping your mouth busy will distract from the cravings.
3. Eat an apple, its better to have sugar from a fruit rather than refined sugar and it can keep you full for one to two hours.
4. When you have a craving, distract yourself by doing something, for instance, walking or doing a chore.
5. Eat something that contains fiber, for instance, orange, as it is filling and can stop the release of the hunger hormone ghrelin for about an hour.
6. Drink green tea as it may help you feel satiated for two to four hours, depending on what kind of meal you ate recently. Over the long-term, if you drink green tea daily, it will help prevent storage of excess fat and improve your body’s fat-burning ability. It also affects your appetite-regulating hormones, thus, it can change how your body metabolizes food and handles cravings.
7. Brush your teeth after meals as the minty taste left in your mouth suppresses the cravings.
8. Do not go into the kitchen after six pm.

Try these tips and your body will thank you eventually.