How to Stop Craving Food: 5 Tips from Nutrition Experts

Learn these 5 expert tips to stop craving food and control your eating. 

Food cravings can be a major obstacle to maintaining a healthy diet.

Whether it’s a sweet tooth or a salty craving, giving in to these urges can lead to overeating and weight gain. Fortunately, there are strategies you can use to curb your cravings and stay on track with your nutrition goals.

Here are some tips from nutrition experts and scientific studies on how to stop food cravings for good.

Looking for more ways to stay healthy? Check out this post, 7 Effective Habits to Maintain Your Weight and learn important tips for weight management.

Disclaimer: I am not a health/nutrition expert. These are tips I have found that work for me and have been suggested from certified nutrition experts and research.

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Why We Crave Foods

Food cravings are much more complex then a simple sweet tooth or a strong desire to eat a certain food.

Food cravings can be affected by a bunch of different factors including: brain messages, behavior, food accessibility, stress, sleep, exercise, hormonal changes, and medications. 

Although the list seems lengthy, the good news is, we have the ability to control these cravings and how the brain signals appetite and cravings.

So let’s get into what actionable tips you can do today to stop craving food.

5 Ways to Stop Craving Food

1. Exercise Regularly

Everything always comes back to exercise. Exercise can help stop food cravings and control your appetite.

Nutrition physician, Dr. Feinsinger said, an important part in eating healthier is exercise because it increase your own “feeling good” chemicals also known as endorphins.

Food cravings can be your brains attempt at increasing the sensation of feeling good. However, if your body is getting it’s dose of essential hormones and neurotransmitters from other factors, such as exercise, food craving may decrease.

2. Avoid choosing Hyperpalatable Foods Regularly

I know what your thinking…what are hyperpalatable foods?

Hyperpalatable foods is just a fancy term for the foods we crave. Specifically, they are foods that are easy to digest and create positive feelings of pleasure which is why we want to keep eating them regularly.

They stimulate the release of metabolic, stress and appetite hormones which play a critical role in food cravings.

When eating a meal, appetite hormones are releases to signal fullness to the brain. Additionally, when you haven’t eaten in a several hours, ghrelin is released to signal hunger to the brain.

However, an article published from Harvard’s School of Public Health suggests, eating hyperpalatable foods too often interferes with these hormones and food cravings can occur even when you are not hungry.  

Hyperpalatable foods can be broken down into three different categories. Remember that you do not need to completely avoid these foods, rather limit them.

Hyperpalatable foods to Limit:

• Meals containing both sodium and fat (e.i. pizza)
• Desserts containing both fats and simple sugars (e.i. ice cream)
• Foods containing both carbohydrates and sodium (e.i. bread and pretzels)

In other words, limiting your consumption of desserts, carbohydrates, fast food and other less nutritious food can help with stop food cravings.

3. Use Peppermint Oil to Curb Cravings

Essential oils can do more than just add a good-smelling scent to the room. In fact, each one has it’s own therapeutic benefit to your health.

Peppermint has been commonly used to increase energy, soothe sore muscles, boost brain oxygen concentration for better performance, and you guessed it…control appetite and food cravings.

According to a study, breathing in peppermint oil every 2 hours or as necessary, can help lower hunger and stop food cravings.

Now…unless you keep a small container of peppermint oil in your purse or wallet, every two hours might be a hassle.

Instead, I like to light a peppermint candle after dinner or late at night when my cravings usually become the greatest.

4. Limit the Consumption of Craved Food

A study from the National Institute of Health (NIH), found that a decreased frequency of consuming the foods from the Food Craving Inventory, including high fat foods, fast food, sweets and carbohydrates, was associated with a decreased craving for those foods.

Additionally, it also found that an increase in consumption of those foods, also increased the cravings as well.

So what does this mean?

The more you eat a certain food, the more you crave it.  

If you are able to get past those initial 2-3 days without giving into that unwanted craving, it will get substantially easier and your cravings with start decreasing naturally.

This also works with nutritious foods. The more you eat it, the more you crave.

5. Try Dopamine-Inducing Activities

Foods that are full of sugar, salt, oils, fats and other additives are designed to be addictive because they trigger your ‘feel-good’ response, dopamine, which keeps you wanting more.

In other words, when you satisfy your cravings, your brain gets a reward: the feelings of pleasure which is caused by the release of dopamine.

Therefore, you crave these ‘unhealthy’ foods because there is deficiency of dopamine and your body is looking to fulfill that.

This being said, a study has shown that stimulating the brain in ways other than eating, increases the levels of neurotransmitters, importantly dopamine, in the blood which decreases the need of cravings.

Dopamine-inducing activities include:

• Exercise
• Listening to music
• Spending time in the sun
• Shopping
• Smelling cookies bake in the oven

Read more: 25 Ways to Increase Your Dopamine Levels Naturally

Anything that makes you smile or feel good can stimulate dopamine in the body. 

So, the next time you feel a food craving coming on, try one of those activities above.

And that is it! At the end of the day, food craving are 100% normal and something everyone experiences once in a while. 

While it is completely okay to give into those food craving, doing this too often can result in unwanted habits and weight gain.

I definitely get some pretty strong craving and these tips have helped me some much. Let me know if you found any of these tips useful and what your favorite way to curb a craving is! I’d love to here.