Customer Reviews

Constant Craving: What Your Food Cravings Mean and How to Overcome Them

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Do you crave certain foods? Or maybe you find yourself eating everything in sight when things are going bad for you? Or do you fall off your diet because you are so hungry? Doreen Virtue, Ph.D., offers solutions to these and other food-related problems in Constant Craving: What Your Food Cravings Mean And How To Overcome Them. Based on her research, which included scientific studies, ancient Chinese medicine, and interviews with her clients, Dr. Virtue says that food cravings are related to our emotions. She defines a food craving as an "obsessive desire for a specific type of food." This is different than a preference, and it often leads people to eat in very unhealthy ways. "Food cravings often stem from basic unmet needs for fun, excitement, or love," according to Dr. Virtue. She explains how each food craving can be traced to a specific emotional need, often allowing people to heal themselves. For example, people who crave nuts haven't met their needs for fun and pleasure in their lives. She devotes a chapter to each kind of craving, explaining how the constituents of each kind of food work in the body to create an illusion of feeling better. For example, nuts contain pyrazine, "which triggers the pleasure center of the brain." She then offers suggestions as to how the emotional needs can be satisfied in ways other than eating, and finishes each chapter with affirmations. Specific cravings discussed include: chocolate, dairy products, salty snack foods, spicy foods, liquids, breads, rice, pasta, nuts and nut butters, cookies, cakes, pies, candy, and high-fat foods. Dr. Virtue emphasizes that meeting the underlying needs as the best way to overcome food cravings. She says that the appetite must be healed, not killed. Several easy quizzes provide guidance as to what kind of eater you are, such as "binge eater" or "stress eater." She also explains how to keep from overeating at holidays and restaurants. She promises that the information in Constant Cravings "will allow you to conduct your own food-craving interpretations. I'll teach you the meaning behind each type of food, so you can analyze--and reduce--your own appetite." Readers will find that she keeps that promise.

Sandra I. Smith

What I especially liked about this book, is that it is not just another diet book. She states simply, eat less and excercise more and you will lose weight. What she does talk about is what type of eater are you and then analyzes what that means and then follows that up with a 5 Steps to Reduce Fattening Feelings, which I think is good, and which I am going to start using today!

It really helped me discover what i really had a craving for. It made me understand more about myself. I think it is a great book if you have constant cravings for certain foods and want to find out more about it.

This book is interesting and good to keep as a reference book. It is very specific about what each craved food means in terms of emotional needs and then offers an affirmation as does Louise Hay. As a therapist I was pleased by the amount of information offered in this book.

Constant Craving by Doreen Virtue is an incredibly valuable resource for everyone who craves particular types of foods, and is having trouble dieting to lose weight. Reading this book will explain why you have those cravings, and what to do about them to get rid of them without having to eat those foods to satisfy the craving.

Constant Craving is not your typical dieting self-help book. Doreen Virtue doesn't push eating too few calories and exercising like crazy to lose weight. Instead, she did research and figured out what types of eaters there are, and what foods people crave, and why they crave them. Once you figure out the type of eater you are, what you crave, and what you really want instead of food, you'll start to lose weight.

As a continuous dieter who has tried more diets than I can remember, I was quite excited to try a new way of looking at diets, and food in general. I don't have a ton of cravings, but sometimes I do notice that I will eat certain types of foods more than others - which I guess could be classified as a "craving." The affirmations for those foods (which for me includes popcorn) really does help me to beat the need to eat that food every day. I won't ever give it up (I do actually like it and it is something gluten-free I can eat), but not eating as much is a definite start!

Overall, I found this book to be very helpful and effective for beating cravings, and hopefully to lose weight too. I've been putting it into practice for about a week now, so it is still too soon for me to tell, but I do think that it will work. I highly recommend this book to everyone who is tired of dieting and wants to think about food differently again.

* Thank you to the publisher of Constant Craving, Hay House, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The book was not an amazing read and anyone who has worked within healthcare or battled emotional eating will not get anything from this book. Basically, we crave foods based on our emotions and the real advice is to get in touch with your emotions and that's that. Many other great books out there that say more and offer more.

I recently downloaded this book on my Kindle, and I couldn't put it down. This book is a godsend for anyone who has problems with food cravings, whether they are short-term cravings that change form time to time or long term addictions to something like chocolate or wine. The book gives a quiz to help the readers determine the type of overeating they do and also provides long term and short term recommendations for dealing with cravings. I found this book when I was dealing with a craving for pistachios and cashews, and I was bowled over when I found that the book not only covered my problem and explained exactly why it was happening, it also gave me the tools to deal with the problem. This book rocks!

This book is a must-have for anyone who is on the nutrition refinement path and especially for counseling other people. I love all of Doreen Virtue's books and projects. This one has great research behind it and is well organized. Although I don't binge, I was fun to list my five top cravings and just look what's behind it and found it very true. This book added more awareness to my life and I am grateful for that. I was slightly disappointed about a reference to use the microwave oven to create an alternative snack. I don't think those two go together. Perhaps the author wanted to appeal to a larger audience?

This book is great to use as an alternative viewpoint, to see what is happening with your body in respect to your emotions, which is reflected in your food choices. It is one of the tools I use with my personal training clients.

This is the first book that awnsers the question, "If this is so bad for me why do I crave it so strongly?" There have been plenty of times in my life where I didn't need something like french fries. I had them yesterday. That shoud be good for a week, but I really need them again today the one serving didn't satisfy me. This book explains why your not sadisfyed and what you can do that works. The problem with most advice is you are told don't eat this and you feel deprived untill you give up. This book is about solveing the real problem so you can feel good about giveing things up.