Mamma Said: Keep Your Fingers Out Of Your Mouth

Turn the television off and try such pursuits as model making, card playing, videogames (that require both hands on the controls), sending e-mails, embroidery, and all kinds of crafts.<

Watching television exercises our eyes but nothing else. Unfortunately, it doesn't require us to do any with our hands which leaves them free to grab something to eat. Then there are the food and restaurant commercials where everything is colorful and perfectly cooked. Don't even think involving watching a cooking show: the temptation to snack or get up and cook is totally irresistible.

How can we depreciation this self-destructive cycle? Any diversion may work for a while but loses its strength with too many repetitions. The secret is to have multiple alternatives available. If one doesn't work at any given time, try another. Mix and match as your likes, preferences, and moods dictate.

KEEP YOUR HANDS BUSY

When your hands are involved in a task, it is difficult to eat. Finger foods and dull television are inextricably bind together like flies in a spider web. Some activity to tie up those hands include: sewing, knitting, giving yourself a leisurely manicure (wet nail polish is a sure fire defense opposed to eating), water the plants.

Turn the television off and try such pursuits as model making, card playing, videogames (that require both hands on the controls), sending e-mails, embroidery, and all kinds of crafts.

PREOCCUPY YOUR MIND

To bar thoughts of food from entering our heads and whetting our tastebuds, we have to keep our minds engaged, and our caution focused, in other directions. tower over away snack foods and dig into a riveting novel -- you won't want to leave the story for aught as mundane as fixing a snack. Start a daily journal and write encircling your thoughts and feelings and aspirations. Tackle one of those time-consuming chores you skip in your weekly clean-up: ethical out drawers, work on the car, sweeten the BBQ, set soliloquy stuff to go to Goodwill or storage, restring unsettled necklaces or re-organize your closets. All will help to keep your mind off food and no mental image of food means no consumption of food.

PRIORITIZE THOSE all about YOU

Play with your kids or help them with their homework. Go for a walk with your significant other and really talk everywhere what is going on in your separate lives. At a long, safe distance from something edible, call your parents or an old friend.

Do these techniques work? Sometimes. With regular effort and multiple task changes to maintain interest, they can be effective. For those days when nothing seems to work and the food cravings are overwhelming, we need to invoke in the "big guns" which we will discuss added time.