5 Tips to Stop Eating Junk Food

Are your cravings for junk food sabotaging your health and fitness goals? Use these 5 tips to stop eating junk food and finally kick your cravings for good.

Cookies. Chips. Pastries. That unrelenting craving you have for your favorite junk food? The blame doesn’t land entirely on your head.

Your body isn’t designed to crave junk food. Junk food is designed to trigger cravings.

Food is big business. Which means that decisions are made based on driving business (read: money), NOT on fueling your body or keeping you healthy. And it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find a new one. Which means food manufacturers do the research and develop products that they know will keep you coming back for more.

Sugar. Salt. Fat.

Big food biz doesn’t care that these ingredients are directly linked to the obesity epidemic happening in America. These ingredients are physiologically and emotionally appealing. Your brain is wired to crave them because to your ancestors these ingredients could mean the difference between survival and extinction. Science knows that and the food industry pays for science.

Rude.

CUT THE CRAP: 5 TIPS TO STOP EATING JUNK FOOD (FOR GOOD)

Okay I’m done food industry bashing. The positive news is that you can cut the cravings. With a little conscious eating, a good deal of awareness and time, you can eliminate the trigger foods and alleviate the mental battle that 3 pm inevitably delivers on a daily basis.

#1: KITCHEN MAKEOVER

Hungry girl see, hungry girl eat. It’s not rocket science: if the junk food is in your kitchen/refrigerator/pantry/car/purse, you will someday eat it.

Doing a kitchen makeover, aka getting rid of the unhealthy items and junk foods and replacing them with healthier options is a Top Ten move on the Setting Yourself Up For Success chart. Why are you keeping food around that doesn’t support, or even worse, compromises your goals?

Start by moving through your kitchen and collecting all of the products you find that don’t have a place in your diet. You know what they are. Make piles: throw out, donate, make-spouse-move-to-non-home-storage-space. Next, send the expired or opened items to the dump and donate the rest to a local food shelf.

Now, believe me I understand that the idea of throwing out food shocks some people. Some excuses I hear from my clients when we walk through this exercise:

• But my kids…
• But my spouse…
• I can’t throw food away.

Reminder: #changeishard. But it’s worth it! And if you really want to succeed you need to start getting real with yourself.

If you don’t want to eat the junk food, do you really want your family eating it? Also, it’s not like you’re throwing out food and leaving the cabinets empty! You’re going to fill those holes with healthier versions of the snacks you love.

Download my free Kitchen Makeover Checklist (above) or click here << to get the step-by-step guide and detailed how-to.

#2: FIND (AND BREAK) THE PATTERN

We often reach for snack foods and junk food for reasons other than hunger. Boredom. Stress. Anxiety. Junk food and all of it’s sugary, salty, nostalgic glory, is comforting…which makes it even harder to not overeat.

There are three pieces to the habit cycle: trigger, behavior and reward. Breaking the junk food habit comes down to identifying and disrupting the habit cycle.

What is the trigger? Most often, the junk food trigger is not hunger. Instead it could be an emotion, an environment, a time of day or a social context. Many people reach for food when they’re feeling overwhelmed, or sad or stressed. Other times it could be that 3pm witching hour when it’s been hours since you last got up from your desk and your brain isn’t focusing on emails anymore. Or it’s happy hour on a Friday when you think, “It’s been a long week. I deserve this”.

Once you’ve discovered what the trigger is, you can alter your routine just a little bit and derail the habit loop before it gets started!

>> If you snack because you get stressed out, work a 5-minute space of You-Time into your schedule a couple of times a day. Use that time to combat stress before it starts.

>> If you snack because you’re bored at 3pm, get up at 2pm and go for a walk. Talk to a co-worker and let your brain take a break from the stimulation of email after email.

>> If you go overboard at happy hour every Friday, schedule a different kind of happy hour. Don’t walk yourself into that situation that throws you off course.

What is the behavior? In this case, it’s giving in to a craving and/or snacking mindlessly.

What is the reward? Interestingly, the reward in this case turns negative quickly. Sure, there is something comforting about a handful of pretzels when your feeling down. But that quickly turns into regret, guilt and self-deprecation.

Once you realize what reward you are actually seeking (i.e. comfort, a break, a release of energy, human interaction), find a different, healthier solution! There are plenty of outlets and opportunities to reward yourself for a day well done that have nothing to do with chips and salsa.

#3: SLOW DOWN

Did you know that it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to recognize and respond to the hunger signals from your stomach? When was the last time you spent 20 minutes consuming a snack?

Slow it down to increase the amount of satisfaction you get (from any meal). If you’re not ready to throw in the towel with that Ben & Jerry’s, you don’t have to. Simply slow down and savor the moment rather then rushing through it.

You might find that the snack you thought was so tasty, and that gave you so much satisfaction, is really not all that good.

Slow it down by…

• Eat without distractions. No TV. No Email. Just you and that bag of gummy bears.
• Set a timer.
• Using a plate and utensils. Tell yourself that to enjoy that snack, you have to eat it like a real meal. #work
• Choose whole, real, fiber-rich foods that take time to chew.
• Chew each bite 20-25 times.

#4: MAKE A LIST OF SNACK-WORTHY FOODS

Decide on 10-15 foods that are “snack foods”.

Create a list.

Then, stick to it.

Try to focus on quality over quantity. One reason that snack foods are so easy to over-indulge on is that they combo in jumbo sizes. They come in jumbo sizes because they are full of cheap ingredients.

Choose as many whole, unprocessed foods as possible. Here’s my list if you want to get a jump start!

• Hard-boiled eggs
• Fruit and yogurt
• Fruit and peanut butter
• Hummus and sliced vegetables
• Crispy chickpeas
• Cottage cheese
• Guacamole and baby carrots

#5: TRACK IT

Do you know what’s really annoying? So annoying that it’ll make you want to stop mindlessly reaching for snacks just because it exists? Having to track every bite of snack you take is really annoying.

Tracking each snack works for a couple of reasons.

First, it means that you can’t just throw the M&Ms in your mouth and forget about it. You have to pull out your notebook, or log in to your meal tracker app and take the time to also write it down.

Also, it forces you to accept how many empty calories you’re actually consuming. It’s easy to take a handful from the bowl and forget about it. Allot for those calories. More importantly, take accountability for that decision.