The ultimate goal with the foods we enjoy—regardless of if they are highly nutritious or not—is to be able to practice mindfulness and moderation and eat foods that make you feel your best. You want to get to a place where you can include all foods sensibly and always #LikeHowYouEat. Food is meant to be enjoyed. It is a gift from the Lord—otherwise He would not have taste buds! However, if you are struggling with feeling powerless over certain cravings / foods (or having trouble eating foods that you love but which don’t love you back / make you feel your best) here are 5 tips to help you navigate until you get to the place of feeling comfortable in all situations and with all foods.

1️⃣ Involve God! Pray and ask the Lord to empower you to use moderation. Ask Him to show you what His best plan and approach for eating looks like. Don’t worry about what works for others. Allow Him to lead you to *your* best practices. Also know they will evolve with time. Write out scriptures that empower you to make sensible and self-disciplined decisions. Refer to them when you are struggling.

2️⃣ Focus on truly enjoying your food. Find ways to make new healthy foods fun. When you focus on what you *can* have instead of what you can’t, you are less likely to feel deprived. Don’t eat things you don’t enjoy just because you think you need to. Every meal doesn’t have to be absolutely amazing, but as much as possible, make your meals satisfying. When you do, cravings decrease.

3️⃣ Upgrade your choices. Find ways to make healthy versions of your favorites. This is especially important if some of the foods you crave leave you feeling less than your best. You don’t have to do away with desserts if you love something sweet every day, just use recipes with healthier ingredients that don’t make you feel bad. Or, if you are a snacky / salty person, look for things that satisfy that crunch factor and flavor craving, or make them yourself at home. There are all kinds of prepackaged foods that meet this criteria, and you can make all kinds of snacky things with an air fryer. You can even make chips in the microwave without oil!

4️⃣ Include them! One of the things I love about #IIFYM, Is that it allows you to make all foods fit without feeling like you’ve deviated from your plan. It’s one of the things that helped me with #EDrecovery. When I stopped looking at foods as “good” or “bad” and judged myself and “on” or “off” plan, the self-sabotage died. I stopped over-eating my trigger foods when I realized I could have them any time if I really wanted to. I stopped restricting foods that I once viewed as not healthy. Ironically, urgency and scarcity around food dissipates when you allow those foods. I have also found that saving a small amount of the indulgent thing I’m craving for the very end of the day works well to keep me on track the rest of the day. If you are ready for practicing moderation, include them!

5️⃣ Limit exposure. Until you feel confident that your trigger foods won’t cause you mental stress (or cause you to pass your guardrails into unhealthy behaviors) and you can practice healthy boundaries with them, don’t keep them in the house. Then practice exposure to small amounts of what tempts you until you can practice moderation with them. Also, if you are struggling with a food that you just plain don’t want to eat because it doesn’t make you feel your best, don’t look at food / recipes / pics of the food that tempts you! I learned this the hard way. I figured if I could not have a certain food, I would satisfy myself mentally by looking at pictures of it on Pinterest, Instagram, etc. All it did was leave me craving that food MORE. After praying about it, the Lord told me to stop looking and when I was obedient, the cravings went away!

Reader Questions:
1/ What’s your best tip for navigating cravings in order to keep a healthy relationship with food?
2/ Which of these sounds the most useful?

| Kaci

P.S. If you are struggling with finding a way of eating that you enjoy and which also allows you to reach your goals and feel your best, check out my Meal Mastery Mentorship coaching program! Food freedom and your best life are waiting!

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