Some specific foods are SOOOOO tempting!!!

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Today at 4:13 pm

Are you venting or asking for advice? If the latter, there are some things you can do to avoid temptation:

1. When shopping, stay away from the aisles in which your trigger foods are sold.

2. At checkout, look away from the rack of candy bars and snacks deliberately placed there to generate impulse buying. Read the front pages of the National Enquirer or other rags instead. Or your smartphone. Or a paperback you stash in your purse for this purpose. Or, best of all, a piece of paper on which you've written words of encouragement to yourself.

3. Never go food shopping hungry. Before you go, make sure to have something healthy and moderately filling: a glass of milk, a bowl of salad with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, a fruit, half a sandwich, something like that. Or indeed a full meal if it's time. And maybe even a small indulgence like ONE piece of candy, then get out of the house.

4. Go with a list and discipline yourself to buy only what's on the list and nothing else, no matter how good it looks.

5. Stall. Tell yourself you'll go back to buy the trigger food, but only after checking out. Chances are that by then, either the urge will have dissipated, or you won't want to bother with the hassle of going back.

6. Chew gum.

7. Before and during: visualize yourself slim, supple and healthy, valiantly resisting temptations like some samurai princess wielding a razor-sharp sword and annihilating obstacles in her path.

As temptation will always be there, like snakes in the jungle, you need to learn how to handle it. Practice makes ...maybe not perfect, but pretty darn good.