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Old Sat, Nov-11-00, 13:07
tamarian's Avatar
tamarian tamarian is offline
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Plan: Atkins/PP/BFL
Stats: 400/223/200 Male 5 ft 11
BF:37%/17%/12%
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Location: Ottawa, ON
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Food cravings: In your head or tummy?
Patients come to psychologist John Foreyt's office all the time to talk about food cravings.

If they have a bad day with the kids, they feel as if they have to have cookies. After a dull meeting at work, they race to the vending machine in desperate need of a Snickers bar.

Every time they watch a movie, they crave popcorn. And when they drive by a Dunkin' Donuts, they feel the need for a treat.

Foreyt, director of the nutrition research clinic at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, helps people examine what's causing the cravings - frequently it's stress and tension - and then teaches them how to deal with them.

Giving in to urges and cravings for everything from chocolate to cheeseburgers is one of the toughest challenges for weight-conscious people.

And many people could overcome their cravings if they just took a 10-minute walk until the craving passed or learned how to indulge that urge within reason, say several top national weight-loss researchers.

Experts say there's a difference between real hunger and cravings.

Hunger is a biological need to eat something because your stomach is empty, says psycholgoist Thomas Wadden, director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. If you come in the house hungry as a bear, almost any food you like will satisfy you, he says.

Wadden's research shows that when people are really hungry, they tend to want to eat protein rather than high-sugar, high-fat foods.

A craving is an intense desire for a specific food. You are watching a movie and you think, "I've got to have some popcorn," Wadden says.

Most obesity researchers say many people have psychological desires for certain foods. What they don't agree on is whether some desires for food are also biological.

Wadden's research shows that some women crave chocolate during their menstrual cycles.

Some other researchers theorize that people crave carbohydrates (breads, cereals, cookies) because of a deficiency of the brain chemical serotonin. Other researchers say it's mostly fat that people crave.

"There is no question there are psychological cravings, but it's hard to separate that out from the biology," says Yale University psychologist Kelly Brownell. Whether there is a biology underlying cravings here is really not known."

Scientists are still struggling to pinpoint the psychological reasons for cravings, but they say many cravings are caused by stress, anxiety, depression and fatigue.

People often crave foods that remind them of their childhood years, like grandma's chocolate chip cookies. "The minute you get under stress, you turn back to childhood," Foreyt says. "You return to the state before you had all the stress.

"We generally crave fatty, sweet foods that we equate with love. We don't crave foods that are good for us."

Most people crave something, Foreyt says. And how they handle their cravings often shows up on the bathroom scales.

Foreyt says people have to plan for cravings. If they know they're going to be faced with a delicious-smelling sweet roll at the mall, they need to get ready for that by either allocating some calories or preparing themselves to resist it.

Wadden says it's hard to resist cravings with so much food readily available. If you see a McDonald's, a desire for french fries may pop into your head, he says.

It's fine to indulge cravings occasionally, Foreyt says. Research shows that people who don't ever give into cravings end up feeling deprived, he says. They are called restrained eaters, and they are the most likely to fall apart and binge.

But before people give in to any craving, they should try to wait it out, Foreyt says. "Cravings wax and wane, and generally they won't last for more than 10 minutes."

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

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