A Not-So-Unique Problem

Besides will power, is there any way to get rid of cravings for junk?

My family insists on buying MASSIVE bags of chocolate chips and chocolate candy. I tried to make a case that we should buy the 70%+ cocoa kind which don't take nearly as much to satisfy a craving, but they like what they like and what they like is the utter crap.

The problem is I like this crap too, a little too much. Chocolate is the only thing in the world that can tempt me, so of course we need to have 10 lbs. of it...! (ugh, upwards of 3000 calories today...)

Any advice for the weak willed?

This may not be the same for everyone, but I find working out on a daily basis keeps my cravings under control.

I do allow myself one piece of something each day though...c'mon it's almost Halloween!

Luckily chocolate does not tempt me. If it did I would be a balloon right now as my Fiance' has about 5 bags of it in the house. :/ However, if it was a pie of pizza I would be screwed. Haha...I'm just waiting for him to dial up Papa Johns and my first temptation being there, oh and birthday cake. (my birthday is in December. Ahhh.)

I would say let yourself have some chocolate maybe a fun size bar 1 or 2 a day. OR...you can just save treats for holidays. Give yourself a cheat day on Halloween and make sure you eat absolutely healthy up until then. However, that might backfire as you seem to be really craving the stuff which could lead to a terrible binge if you wait for Halloween. So my advice is probably the first suggestion. Limit yourself to 1 to 2 pieces of the fun size stuff...take two out of the bag and get the rest of it out of sight. Good luck.

Just a suggestion: is there any way you could become responsible for buying some of your own food (or just snacks) in the household?  

That way you could develop a kind of mind set, where they have their food - you have yours.  

As you would be supporting yourself a little bit more, you MIGHT become less inclined to be tempted by their junk?!?!

Or you could even get your own cupboard so you don't have to face the junk?  

Every little helps...get your family to fit a padlock on the junk cupboard if necessary!?! ha ha.

(I moved back home last year, even though I did lose weight I would succumb and would snack late at night after telling myself all evening I wouldn't LOL).

If you're of an age where paying for your own snacks might not be feasible and you say you have already spoken to your family - well then, yeah, it might require SOME will power to avoid cracking :-S

Keep yourself busy of an evening, but maybe not by exercising so much, studying, chatting online, dvd's, reading...etc anything you like.  Keep occupied. 

As for low cal alternatives - I find sugar free marshmallows are really good for sweet cravings. 

Also, dried fruit and a small amount of nuts?  Could be yoghurt coated if you fancy.

Another suggestion is to make allowances for snacks in your cals...that way you wont feel you are denying yourself so much when it comes to snacking and might be less inclined to succumb again???

It's that time of the month, and I want my chocolate!!!

So, I buy myself a bag of good dark chocolate; 60% cocoa or better.  4 pcs is 220 calories.  I try to keep it to 2 pcs a day and I log it in before eating it so I am more aware of what - and how much - I am eating. 

Eat it slowly.  Eat it thoughtfully.  Don't mindlessly stick it in your mouth as you read or watch tv.  Concentrate on enjoying it.  Think about how it tastes, feels, smells.  I find that when I do this, less satisfies more.

Kay.

thankfully while I like chocolate I don’t have to have it but I do have to have something sweet, I was eating hard candy but it just didn’t do much so I decided to make my 8 pm snack a dessert luckily while looking at the store for my fav 200 cal honey bons I found eddy’s fruit bar, my god at 60 cals they are just delicious and that’s my dessert.

the best thing you can do is find something chocolate and low cal or even high cal and eat it as a snack everyday. I have discover food to us is like not letting a cat have something, the less we get it the more we want it. So if you control your intake of chocolate you may not crave it as much.

Have you tried suggesting buying *both* the chocolate they like (for them) and the 70% chocolate for you?  If you have enough willpower to ignore theirs and only eat small amounts of yours, that'll help you out without them having to "suffer".  :-)

i have the same problem with my family! there's a little bowl of fun sized reeses and kitkats, and i can't help but eat them! at first it was hard to avoid eating them, but lately i've been keeping it down to maybe 2 a day.. i didn't have any today!

just keep yourself busy, or ask for your family to like hide the stuff so you don't have to see it everytime you walk into whichever room they keep it in. there's really nothing else you could do with poor will power.. ://

i love the idea of a padlock as turnertower said :P

I know what you're going through, in a sense. My mother never reads the nutritional information for ANYTHING. My parents and I are Korean immigrants, but my little siblings are growing up in America, which means they have much of the same tastebuds as their classmates. Since my mom isn't so good with western foods--(cake, spaghetti, whatever) she just buys whatever crap is cheap and available. We have tons of microwave dinners packed with sodium, preservatives and fat, bags and bags of potato chips, brownies, cookies...

Will power is a big part of it. So try to just eat your meals, and stay out of the kitchen or wherever the junk is as much as possible. And yeah, this is the same lame advice people hate each other for, but sometimes having a piece of fruit and a glass of water does help. Say you're craving a chocolate bar. Though it may be painful at first, once you've eaten an apple and washed it down, you might find that the initial sugar craving has ebbed significantly.

I'm in the same sort of situation - my family eats very unhealthily. What helps me is that I always offer to do the grocery shopping on the way home from school, which cuts out the excess junk.

Since it's nearly Halloween, I've been surrounded by sugar, especially at school. I bought a small bag of trick-or-treat-sized candy and I keep it in my room. If I'm still REALLY craving sugar at the end of the day, I can have a piece. This helps me avoid ice cream or cake or whatever dessert my family's having, because I know I can satisfy the craving with far fewer calories.

Also, to echo cindolin - eating fruit really helps my sugar cravings! After substituting fruit for candy all the time, I've come to associate green apples with dessert, so they're like a treat now. :)

Convince yourself it's gross?  Read the ingredients, if it's the crappy stuff, it's probably mainly chemicals.  Research how those chemicals are made, what they do in other situations, that sort of thing.  Think of them as chemicals and milk.  PETA has some remarkable "facts" that should talk you out of consuming milk pretty fast if you try hard to believe all of them.

Or, just eat 'clean' for a week or so (no processed foods, limited added sugars, no meat, no dairy, all whole-grains) and then just try a piece of the candy.  It'll most likely taste disgusting, plastic-like, or way, way too sweet.

Or, just remind yourself that you can eat them.  Nothing's stopping you, it's your body, you can eat pretty much anything you want.  But, you don't really want it, or else you would eat as much as you want all the time.  You want to lose some weight, so you know what you want, and you're getting it!  Why let candy interfere with that? ;)

And of course, as everyone else has mentioned, do the shopping.  Since I've been doing the shopping, avoiding junk food is way easier, even though I don't like very much of it anymore anyways.

You really just have to stop eating it with willpower. The hardest part is at first, once you get used to it, you'll find that it isn't so hard to resist anymore.