Should You Eliminate Junk Food from Your Diet Cold Turkey’

If you find yourself craving food that is bad for you, it may not be a good idea to use a “cold turkey” approach to quitting. For some cold turkey works, but for other they need to gradually wean themselves. Let’s be honest willpower sucks!! Once you burn out your  willpower battery you are heading for the vending machines or the nearest McDonald’s.

Let me define junkfood — yes we all know that we should eat cookies, chips, fried foods.  What I also want to throw in the mix is processed foods.  Some many times I read a food journal and they are “lite foods” “non-fat” foods. Many of these foods are “processed” to make them healthier. Honestly these are no better than junk food. You “feel” better about them because the front of the package may say “healthy” “natural” “whole grain” I encourage you all to read your food labels. 

Have you ever tried one of those diets that claimed to help you burn fat and lose weight at a miraculous rate’ You tried it, and it actually worked. The problem was, it did not allow your body to ingest the minerals, nutrients and vitamins it needs to be healthy, so you eventually regained all the weight you lost and even more. I know that has happened to me in the past, when  I denied myself of EVERYTHING and BOOM the willpower damn power and I was head first in to a pint of ice cream.  That is the same danger that exists when you attempt to quit junk food overnight.

Your body is the most amazing machine ever created. In conjunction with your brain, it learns to adapt your physical growth to whatever fuel you give it. That is why people can live their entire life eating food which is not that healthy for them. The brain and body will keep working hard to let you live as long as possible, in spite of your bad eating habits.

When you feed yourself junk food on a regular basis, your brain tells your body to get used to it. Plus, our brains get lit up by the combination of sugar, salt and fat. If you cut junk food off dramatically, your brain won’t like it. You may trigger cravings. If you are currently experiencing cravings these cravings may intensify.

Since you are tackling in many cases emotional and mental dependency, the most successful route to defeat junk food addiction is to take it slow.

• Begin by keeping a food journal, and write down EVERYTHING you ingest
• Eating 10 junk food items every week, perhaps cut back to 7 or 8 junk food rewards the first week
• Review your list of stuff and think what could be the easiest thing to give up.

Slowly taper down weekly, and forget about a cold turkey approach. There is a reason why your addiction to junk food is so strong. And that means that even if cold turkey quitting works in the short term, your success is often short-lived, and you go rushing back to junk food eventually.

Want an action guide to help you get though your junk food detox’