Everyone loves junk food. Biting into something salty and satisfying, or drinking  a sugary and bubbly soda. Unfortunately, junk food doesn’t always love us back. Junk food can pile on the pounds quickly, and also make us feel sluggish and slow throughout the day.

Luckily, there are things you can do to ease cravings so you find yourself disliking junk food rather than enjoying it. Let’s take a look at how.

Understand your cravings

The first step is to look at your cravings, and figure out what specific aspect of junk food you crave the most. This isn’t something you can find on the internet, because only you can know what attracts you the most to junk food. Is it salt? Sugar? A particular item?

By narrowing down what it is that grabs you, you can plan how to overcome these problems better.

Cut your stress

70% of men and 80% of women report stress as their major motivator for reaching for a bag of chips over a healthier snack. When you are less stressed, you are in a better frame of mind to make good choices. Try practicing yoga, meditation, or finding ways to reduce your stress so that you are in a place where you can cut your intake.

Adopt a healthy mindset

If cutting out junk is something you really want to do, it helps to plan and act as if that’s what you want to do. Get junk food out of your house, and only buy planned food from a grocery list. The secret to adopting this mindset, and also to helping your body stop craving junk food, is to just do it.

We can’t make our brain automatically stop craving junk, but if you choose to bring healthy eating into your life anyway, even when you don’t feel like it, your body will adapt surprisingly quickly.

It’s helpful to have a healthy go-to when ever you have a craving, so you can transfer that craving to a different item. As an example, when ever you have the urge to drink a soda, drink a cup of chamomile tea or even a glass of water first.

Your body may simply be trying to get hydration, and not know where else to get it from. By getting a healthy option first, your body may shift to craving or expecting the healthy item instead.

Don’t swear it off forever

Another big mistake people make is to swear to themselves they’ll never eat a potato chip again, and then give up once they binge on a bag of chips. Cravings can be powerful, especially if you are in a stressful time in your life and have no other way to cope.

Allow yourself cheat days, but eat slowly and carefully when you do indulge in food. The first or last bite is generally our favorite, so taking the time notice and eat our food mindfully, we can often get the same enjoyment out of a single chip as we can out of a family sized bag.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-poll-reveals-that-80-_b_7348024