By Maury M. Breecher, Ph.D., M.P.H

You don't have to be hungry when you are on a diet, according to Robert M. Johnson, M.D., author of The New Charleston Program: The Permanent Weight-Control Solution. A person who eats three nutritionally balanced meals a day, plus a few small snacks, cannot possibly experience true hunger. It's physiologically impossible to have a true hunger pang under those circumstances. However, overweight individuals on a proper diet can and do experience cravings, desires, and urges for specific foods which they often interpret as hunger.

If you take even part of this advice (and the free advice I'll send you on a weekly basis, when you sign-up below),  you will learn to think like a thin person and eat only when you experience true hunger. These tips will help you banish your hunger cravings.

1. Drink several glasses of water or a cup or two of hot soup before each meal to cut the edge off your hunger.  A cup of hot tea, coffee, or lemon-flavored water also cuts the edge and will help you fill up quickly. 

2. It is often hard for people to resist snacking during TV commercials. Instead of running for the refrigerator, do short exercises: Walk around the room on your toes, jog in place, or do simple stretching exercises. While sitting, you can extend your legs, wiggle your toes, and make circles with your arms. These exercises will take your mind off of hunger urges.  It will take your mind off hunger until your TV show resumes.

3. If you do snack, munch on measured portions of bite-size pieces of fruit such as melon balls, pieces of apple, pear, oranges, peaches, banana slices, strawberries, etc. It is important that these foods already be prepared. If you are hungry and have to prepare the bite-size pieces it's too easy to overeat while you are preparing them.

Maury M. Breecher, Ph.D., M.P.H. is a longtime health writer whose work has appeared in newspapers, major woman's magazines, and on the Internet. He is co-author of The New Charleston Program: The Permanent Weight-Control Solution

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