Welcome to Day 29 of Sleekgeek’s free 30-Day You Healthy Habits Challenge!
Each day for the next 30 days you will receive 1 task to complete in order to help you eat, move, think, or sleep better.
Today’s task is no snacking:
Most of us are used to having breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. Today we’re going to shake things up a bit and take those snacks away. This is to help you differentiate between actual hunger and habitual eating. Very rarely do we experience actual hunger – it’s because we’re usually armed with snacks to keep that feeling at bay.
Don’t get us wrong, we don’t have anything against snacking. We just want you to be more mindful about your food habits – and the easiest way to do that is to take out the snacks. This way you will see that usually you’re eating out of habit rather than hunger.
How to complete today’s task:
This one is simple:
- Don’t snack at all.
- Eat your main meals and don’t have anything except water in between.
- Make sure that your main meals are enough to keep you full.
- Take note of when you start feeling “snacky” and what your triggers are (boredom, stress, habit).
- If you have a medical condition and have been advised by a health professional to snack regularly or eat frequently then follow their recommendations. As an alternative challenge, try focusing more on the different physical or emotional hunger signs that you experience that you experience throughout the day.
Here’s a guide for emotional/habitual hunger vs physical hunger:
| EMOTIONAL HUNGER | PHYSICAL HUNGER |
| Starts suddenly. | Starts gradually. |
| Felt mostly in your head and upper body, near the “surface”. | Felt deep within your stomach and gut. |
| A sharp craving that you can’t stop thinking about. Tend to be incessant. | A growling pang or hunger that is noticeably there, but not distracting. Tends to come in waves. |
| You become fixated on a specific food, taste, or texture. | You are open to many options including vegetables and less palatable foods in general. |
| Is never really satisfied, will often come back sooner or later or requires you to eat until you are uncomfortably full. | Stops when you are full or have eaten enough to stay the hunger. |
| Stays around or comes back soon if you eat something other than what you are craving. | Goes away regardless of what you eat, provided you eat a sufficient amount. |
| When eating, it may trigger feelings of self-loathing, guilt, regret, or shame. | When eating, it doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself. |
| Associated with mindless eating due to stress, frustration, or boredom. | Associated with purposely fuelling your body with what it needs. |
DONE!
See you tomorrow for your FINAL Day 30 task!
If you have just stumbled on this page sign up for Sleekgeek’s full 30-Day Healthy Habits Challenge right here. It is 100% free.
WANT MORE OF THIS KIND OF THING?
- Read our blog post on How Eating Slowly Can Help You Lose Weight.
- Read our blog post on 4 Causes of Weekend Overeating (and how to fix them).
- Read our blog post on 5 Ways to Take The Guess Work Out of Meal Preparation.
- Join our 30-Day REBOOT Nutrition Challenge.
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