Many people struggle with food "cravings." Studies tell us that it's fairly common for food cravings to happen at certain times, quite often at around bedtime. Your guard may be down, you may have had an unusually hard day, and off you go on your not-so-merry way to find that tasty treat. Fatigue and stress often combine to take their toll on best of intentions.

When food cravings are unconstrained, what starts out as a bedtime snack quickly turns into a full blown feeding frenzy...not something most of us fully understand or appreciate. We head to kitchen and every other place where food can hide, clearing a path as we go.

Most food cravings are not about satisfying a nutritional need or imbalance. They seem to be more emotionally related, or God forbid, are caused by plain old gluttony. Exactly why we over-indulge is not completely understood, however our knowledge about this subject continues to grow.

Listed below are some thoughts and ideas about food cravings:

- If food isn't available, you can't eat it! Empty cookie jar and keep it that way! Keep healthy food choices on-hand.

- Recognize feelings and emotions that lead-up to a food craving. Do you have food cravings when you’re bored, lonely, or stressed? If you can identify a trigger, you can deal with emotion that’s making you desire a certain food. Try to deal with triggers in best way you can.

- Sometimes, even recognizing that a craving is about to happen doesn't seem to help. Don't beat yourself-up. There is always tomorrow. Call a friend, make good use of your support network and share your feelings with someone.

- Get enough sleep. When you’re tired, you’re more likely to crave things.

- Never give-up. When you "slip", press-in, bear-down, get a grip, do whatever is necessary to re-gain control. Try to practice restraint most of time, but don't get legalistic and un-balanced in your weight loss approach. Think moderation and not abstinence at all times!

Fat, Sugar, Sodium and Carbohydrate

The sections on a food label shows name of a nutrient and amount of that nutrient provided by one serving of food. You may need to know this information, especially if you have high blood pressure, diabetes or are eating a diet that restricts certain nutrients such as sodium or carbohydrates.

Food labels also include information about how much sugar and protein is in food. If you are following a low-sugar diet or you're monitoring your protein intake, it's easy to spot how much of those nutrients are contained in one serving.

Vitamins, Minerals and Other Information

The light purple part of label lists nutrients, vitamins and minerals in food and their percent daily values. Try to average 100% DV every day for vitamins A and C, calcium, iron and fiber. Do opposite with fat, saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol. Try to eat less than 100% DV of these.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Reading a Food Label

Until you become accustomed to reading food labels, it's easy to become confused. Avoid these common mistakes when reading labels:

-A label may say that food is reduced fat or reduced sodium. That means that amount of fat or sodium has been reduced by 25% from original product. It doesn't mean, however, that food is low in fat or sodium. For example, if a can of soup originally had 1,000 milligrams of sodium, reduced sodium product would still be a high-sodium food.

-Don't confuse % DV for fat with percentage of calories from fat. If % DV is 15% that doesn't mean that 15% of calories comes from fat. Rather, it means that you're using up 15% of all fat you need for a day with one serving (based on a meal plan of 2,000 calories per day).

-Don't make mistake of assuming that amount of sugar on a label means that sugar has been added. For example, milk naturally has sugar, which is called lactose. But that doesn't mean you should stop drinking milk because milk is full of other important nutrients including calcium.

Reading Label Lingo

In addition to requiring that packaged foods contain a Nutrition Facts label, FDA also regulates use of phrases and terms used on product packaging. Here's a list of common phrases you may see on your food packaging and what they actually mean.