What's the first step to overcoming food cravings?

Te first thing to recognize is that food is not the problem.  When a food craving comes to your awareness it is simply an indication that something is off within your body, emotions, mind or spirit.  The next step is to go deeper and ask yourself the four questions:

1.  What happened today?
2.  What emotion did it make me feel?
3.  What does that emotion feel like within?
4.  And what do I really want?

For example:  lets say you want potato chips.  First, ask yourself "the four questions".  1) my teacher looked at me today with a negative expression on her face. 2) Her expression made me feel stupid. 3) Stupidity feels like worthlessness and disempowerment. 4)  I really want to feel smart and worthy.  In this example, what do potato chips have to do with feeling smart and worthy?  Nothing.  The goal then is to give yourself what you are truly looking for.   Next find things that you cannot BLT (bit, lick or taste) that make you feel smart and worthy and then practice giving those things to yourself.

Maintaining Your Weight Loss

Anyone can go on a diet and lose weight, but keeping the weight off is a whole other practice and there are three different parts to weight wellness: gaining, losing, and maintaining.  Most people get frustrated with losing weight because they go from losing to gaining without ever staying at their new goal weight.

My tip for you is to understand that losing weight takes compounded momentum, maintaining your new weight takes the mentality of minus one, and gaining the weight back is the sabotage of the two.  For example, a man and woman achieved a 20 pound weight loss: the man is 175 pounds and the woman is 120 pounds.  They now need to be eating for that smaller body, if they resort back to eating as a 195 or 140 pound person, their weight will creep back up.

Maintaing Your New Weight:

• Establish a New Set Point: After you lose ten to twenty pounds, commit to staying at this weight for a month and your body will get used to the new weight and want to stay here instead of creep up. 
• The Minus One Mentality:  Recognize that staying at this new weight takes less food.  So from this point forward become comfortable with the idea of less.  Eat one less of everything when you indulge.  And for the ladies; if you only eat half of something, then get used to eating half of that half...kind-of-idea!  
• Leave Two Bites: When you indulge in something you LOVE, don't eat the whole thing, but rather leave two bites to remind yourself that you are stronger than food.  

Good Luck and Congratulations for your success!