Hear how newly certified dietitian Jennifer Lyons describes her stepwise approach with Craving Change cognitive-behavioral techniques.
“First, I encouraged my client to be more aware of her usual food intake using the three types of hunger tool. My client was amazed at how often she was snacking for a reason other than ‘stomach hunger’. She identified some habitual snacking based on where she was and the time of day, plus a lot of boredom snacking.
The next step was to choose a cognitive behavioral strategy to address this. She chose to have a list of distractions to choose from that would fulfill her emotional need. Just having this awareness and plan gave her a sense of control over her emotional eating.
I really liked the simplicity of this approach to snacking. Rather than just saying “drink water and ignore it” which rarely works, this strategy goes to the core of what emotion is driving the craving. It is empowering to have options that are personalized to the individual since they know what will fulfill that emotion more than anyone else. I will return to this CBT approach regularly!”
Jennifer Lyons, RDN, CDCES, Jenn Lyons Nutrition, LLC
