Overcoming Cravings

Cravings! Cravings, Not John Cravings…… just have a bit of dust!  ?

While this famous line from Little Britain is just a bit of fun, it might have been onto something…

This week getfit.com is talking all about CRAVING!

Cravings can be good (crave for a good work out) bad (crave for chocolate cake for breakfast) or just plain ugly (craving ‘hair of the dog’)!

Three things all cravings have in common!

No matter what it is you crave, all cravings have three things in common

-      Thinking about it doesn’t make it go away

-      Doing it will not get rid of the craving permanently

-      Cravings are triggered by something, working out what helps – a lot!

Let’s take the example of craving for an alcoholic drink:

A craving ‘to have a drink’ is a strong desire for attaining the state induced by drinking. It’s usually a mixture of physical and emotional arousal, thoughts and memories. If someone is actively planning to reduce or stop drinking alcohol, it is inevitable that some level of craving will occur.

Typical situations that may trigger craving will include:

Your environment - the sight of a pub, people having fun drinking, billboards advertising alcohol, a cold pint of beer and a particular time of the day (typically the evening).

Your memories and thoughts – at times you may find yourself thinking of how good you felt when you drank a few glasses of wine on a lovely summer’s day. You may also have thoughts such as “a nice cold drink would really be good” or “how can you go out at night without having a drink?”

Your feelings - experiencing unpleasant thoughts, emotions or feelings; being bored or stressed can also lead to craving. At these times you may typically think: “I need a drink right now! When all this is over I will stop again”.

Wanting to feel better - you may experience craving when you wish to enhance a positive experience. For example you may have learned to link drinking with meeting friends and think that drinking will ‘lubricate’ social situations, making them more spontaneous and pleasant.

This week our tweets will be on the tips and tricks that anyone can use when trying to deal with craving, like all of our blogs and tweets, these are drawn from the extensive library of healthy living advice that is drawn on when creating an individual healthy living plan.

For more information and to see an example report visit www.getfit.com