If you rely on willpower to curb food cravings, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
I don’t care how disciplined you are, we all have a limited amount of willpower we can draw from.
Push it past a certain limit and it’ll break.
That’s why it’s crucial you control your environment.
For example, say your guilty pleasure is cookies.
Once you have one, you can’t stop piling them in your mouth.
You’ve been known to delete an entire sleeve of Oreos from time to time.
Not something that makes you feel very good about yourself, eh?
Now, the best way to stop eating cookies is to get cookies out of your house.
If they’re not there you don’t even need to utilize willpower to not eat them.
Simple, right?
But for food cravings, there’s another factor you need to know about.
It turns out that your gut microbiome play a significant role in the urges you feel.
After all, your gut and brain are in constant conversation.
A perfect example of this connection is obvious to anyone who has taken a “turkey nap” after thanksgiving dinner.
Turkey meat contains the amino acid tryptophan, which gets sent from the gut to the brain.
It’s then turned into a neurotransmitter serotonin that makes relaxes you and makes you sleepy.
All this to say, a healthy gut microbiome is crucial to keeping your food cravings under control.
While this was previously only seen in insects, a recent study has observed it in mammals as well. [R]
And the best way to improve your gut microbiome is to improve your diet.
Colorful vegetables and probiotics like kombucha, sauerkraut, and yogurt are all known for their gut microbiome benefits.
Ironically, cravings are often the reason it’s hard to eat a healthy diet.
So, it’s important to have other methods in place to get you to the point of reducing those urges.
Even after you’ve done your best to control your environment, cravings will still find their way through.
When they come, just observe them without judgment.
If you can substitute the craving with something healthy to eat, go for it.
If you aren’t in the mood for anything else, you’re probably not hungry at all.
Just drink some water and get back to whatever you were doing.