How To Satisfy Your Cravings, Healthily

It’s been another one of those days: places to go, deadlines to meet, meals to cook. You find yourself daydreaming about crisp, salty potato chips.

Pretty soon it’s an insistent, must-have-it-now craving, and before you know it, your hand is deep in the bag.

Rather than berate your lack of willpower, once in a while, indulge yourself. In a 2007 Tufts University study of healthy women, 91 percent reported having food cravings (which the researchers define as an intense desire to eat a specific food).

In other words, cravings are common, and the key to successful weight management, experts say, is learning to address cravings rather than always deny them.

“You first have to accept that having cravings is normal, but you don’t have to give in to every one,” says Tufts study coauthor Susan Roberts, PhD.

“The people in our research who manage their weight the best are not those who crave foods less often but those who give in some of the time.”

What triggers a food longing? Hormonal fluctuations are thought to be the cause in premenstrual women, though no one knows for sure, says Roberts.

Other theories include a physical need for calories and emotional cues. “If you haven’t eaten for hours and you’re really hungry, that is a physical craving, and you should eat,” says Bonnie Taub-Dix, MA, RD, CDN, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

Read more at CNN