Using this ‘inclusion strategy’ can help you lose weight — and means you get to eat dessert

Goodbye, sundae scaries!

Junk food tastes so delicious, but these cravings frequently sabotage diets because they lead to overeating and weight gain.

Now, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have found a way that you can have your cake — and eat it too! They determined that following a nutritious meal plan that allows for small amounts of tempting treats can reduce cravings and spur weight loss.

“If you are eating and snacking randomly, it’s very hard to control,” nutrition professor and study author Manabu T. Nakamura said.

“Some dietary programs exclude certain foods,” he added. “Our plan used an ‘inclusion strategy,’ in which people incorporated small portions of craved foods within a well-balanced meal.”

Research indicates that food cravings — often triggered by stress, sadness or boredom — tend to decrease with weight loss.

Nakamura’s team wanted to investigate whether reduced cravings correlated with greater weight loss and whether these changes lasted well after meeting weight-loss goals.

“Cravings are a big problem for many people. If they have a lot of cravings, it is very difficult to lose weight,” Nakamura said.

“Even when they are able to control their cravings and lose weight, if the cravings come back, they regain the weight.”

Researchers recruited 30 obese adults with conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.

The volunteers answered questions about their cravings for hot dogs, desserts, pancakes and chips every six months.

Using a scale of 1 (never) to 6 (always), participants rated themselves on statements such as, “Whenever I have food cravings, I find myself making plans to eat” and “I have no willpower to resist my food cravings.”

Researchers used the scores for the 15 statements to calculate the intensity of their cravings.

To learn how to deal with these desires, participants took 22 online nutrition sessions devised by the university’s Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

They were instructed on how to select nutritious food while minimizing calorie intake. Researchers tracked their progress by having dieters weigh themselves every day before breakfast.

Twenty-four people completed the 12-month weight-loss program, dropping an average of 7.9% of their starting weight.

More than half said they used the inclusion strategy to manage cravings — some as often as three times a day.

Those who utilized the technique reported weight loss greater than 5% and consistent reductions in the frequency and intensity of their cravings, especially for sweets and high-fat foods.

Of the 20 people who finished the subsequent year-long weight maintenance program, the average weight loss was 6.7%, which included any regaining of weight.

The findings, published recently in the journal Physiology & Behavior, suggest that diminished food cravings after weight loss are more strongly tied to a decline in body fat than to the negative energy balance created by dieting.

“This basically debunks the hungry fat cell theory, a longstanding hypothesis that fat cells become starved for energy and trigger cravings, causing dieters to eat and ultimately regain what they lost,” Nakamura said.

“That is not the case. As long as you stay at a healthy weight, your cravings will remain low.”