How to Avoid Junk Food

     So one thing I have noticed is a lot of people (maybe most people even?) have a very hard time not eating junk food. They wonder how can people who workout and keep fabulous bodies have the discipline to not eat sweets and so forth. Well myself, for some years now, I have always watched what I eat. I always keep junk food to a minimum. It is not a staple of my diet (say meats, vegetables, junk food, etc...), just a small side part. So I figured I'd write some on why I think I can avoid junk food.
     One thing many people complain about when trying to stop eating junk food are the cravings. You workout and then you get hit with massive cravings for sweets (cookies, cakes, wafers, chocolates, etc...). These cravings can be extremely powerful and incredibly hard to resist. The thing is, you can actually get rid of them if you stay disciplined long enough. Roughly, what causes the cravings is your body's blood sugar level. Basically, whenever you consume something like cookies, cakes, candy bars, or what have you, well all of these are loaded with simple sugars. They are a simple carbohydrate that your body utilizes immediately and there's a LOT of them, so you overload your blood-sugar level.
     In response, your body then works overtime to lower the blood sugar level, and ends up overdoing it, and thus lowers the blood-sugar level too much. Thus your body craves energy. What provides instant energy? Sweets! Thus begins a viscious cycle that is hard to end. For most people, this is just part of how they function. Rarely do they actually watch what they eat. If they decide to try giving up sweets, their body, any time it needs energy, will create cravings for sweets which can be maddening.
     For people trying to give up junk food and get into shape, this can be incredibly torturous. However, if you stick to it, your body eventually will adjust and lose the cravings altogether. And I do mean literally LOSE them. As in, you can actually be hungry, and be in the presence of a box of fresh donuts and yet not have cravings for them whatsoever. Oh, you might desire them to some degree, but you will not need any massive amount of willpower to avoid eating them.
     So how to go about losing the cravings? Well, for starters, you need to always make sure to maintain a balanced blood-sugar level. This starts with ending the sweets and making sure to eat meals with a decent quantity of complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates take longer for your body to break down. As a result, they are slower-acting. They do not provide instant energy, but they also do not spike your blood-sugar level.
     For example, if you finish a workout and now crave sweets, a candy bar or cookies will provide you with instant energy, whereas eating a plate of whole grain pasta will be slower-acting. You won't start to feel the energy for about twenty minutes or so. However, when you do, you will not crave the sweets the way you had. The thing is, when you get used to eating like this, keeping your blood sugar level balanced, it becomes easy to avoid sweets almost altogether because your body never craves them. It never craves them because:

1) Your blood sugar level is always balanced, and

2) If you get hungry, your body is no longer used to the sweets as it's source of energy. This takes a little while, but eventually your body gets used to having a balanced blood-sugar level and to getting energy from healthy foods, and thus when hungry, even very hungry, sweets are not an irresistable craving.

     Another key thing to keep in mind is that junk food should never be a staple of your eating. It should always be something you consume after you are mostly full from healthy food. This way, it is far easier to consume it in small quantities. So if for example someone brings in a birthday cake, don't eat it if you are hungry. If you are hungry, it means your body needs food. This means that cake is the last thing you should be eating. Eat something healthy first, then eat the cake, and this way, you'll probably only want to eat a small piece of the cake. If you eat like this, consuming a whole candy bar at once may be near impossible because you are always too full. You'd feel like you are force-feeding yourself.
     You can wake up in the morning, eat say eggs and hash browns with some sausage or bacon, which will fill you up, then at lunch you eat something healthy and filling, and thus you are pretty full so you probably will either not want the desert, or you will only want the desert in a small portion because the main course filled you. Same with dinner. You eat a healthy, filling dinner, and it fills you up, and gives you energy, and you either are too full for the chocolate cake, or you only want say a small piece of it because you are full from the main course.
     Non-sweet junk foods such as cheeseburgers, McDonald's french fries (pretty much any fries cooked in fat), thick pizzas, etc...to avoid these, again, eat healthy. If you find yourself hungry and craving a pizza or burger when you know you shouldn't, eat something else that is healthy and filling. Eating such foods as cheeseburgers or pizza is fine if done occassionally, in moderation though. But try not to make it a staple of your diet. Try to keep them as treats, like junk food.
     If you start eating in this fashion, you can end up with a big leg-up in terms of nutritional eating, because no longer will you be a slave to sweets. You may even get to a point where you can't understand how people can eat such large quantities of sweet food. Myself for example, I do not drink coffee. Too much sugar and I don't like it in general. Soda I rarely if ever drink. Very occasionally, I may drink one, but it is very rare. I also am not able to consume a whole candy bar at once.
     One final point is that eating healthy can also help control your appetite better because your body gets lots of good nutrients. Too many people eat junk food all day long, and then complain about still being hungry and of having no energy. This is likely because the food has virtually no nutritional value. Thus they end up overweight from the fat and sugar content, but constantly hungry and lacking in energy due to the lack of nutrients in the stuff they eat. Eating healthy foods packed with nutrients will reduce your body's want for food while giving you lots more energy, along with filling you up so that you do not have cravings for junk food.