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Dissipated energy, representing a monotonically increasing state variable in nonlinear fracture mechanics, can be used as a restraint for tracing the dissipation instead of the elastic unloading path of the structure response. In this work, in contrast to other energy-based approaches that use internal energy and the work done by the external loads, a novel arc-length approach is proposed. It directly extracts the dissipated energy based on crack openings and tractions (displacement jumps and cohesive forces between two surfaces of one crack), taking advantage of the global/extended method of cracking elements. Its linearized form is developed, and the stiffness factor of the arc-length restraint is naturally obtained by means of the Sherman-Morrison formula. Once cohesive cracks appear, the proposed approach can be applied until most of the fracture energy is dissipated. Results from several numerical tests, in which arc-length control and self-propagating cracks are jointly used, are presented. They demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method, which captures both global and local peak loads and all snap-back parts of the force-displacement responses of loaded structures with multiple cracks.