WHAT:
This habit is about reducing your snacking and being OK with a little bit of hunger in-between meals.
Alternatively, you could make this habit about improving the quality and healthfulness of your snacks.
WHY:
These days we rarely experience real physical hunger.
More often than not we’re eating because we’re bored, tired, feeling like something tasty, slightly peckish, or simply because we’re eating out of habit rather than checking in to see if we’re actually hungry or not.
This is a good thing from a survival perspective and also useful for fueling physical performance, but it can be counter-productive if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.
Instead, we want you to focus on eating because you’re truly physically hungry, and building well-balanced meals that will sustain you until the next one rather than going from one bad meal to the next by ridging it with snacks in between.
HOW:
We recommend that you stick to your planned number of balanced and well-rounded meals while avoiding any unnecessary snacking or nibbling in between.
Before each meal, consider rating your physical hunger on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is absolutely no hunger at all and 10 is the hungriest you’ve ever been.
Most snacking happens around levels 3-6, so consider waiting until you’re at a 7 or 8 out of 10 before eating a meal.
TIPS:
✅Design your environment for success by keeping less “snackable” foods around. Make it more inconvenient and effortful to actually go out of your way and snack.
✅Reframe your mindset about snacking. You might THINK that you need to snack multiple times a day, but in reality, a little bit of hunger is not an emergency (unless your doctor has said otherwise for diagnosed medical conditions). You can also use the discomfort of avoiding snacks as an opportunity to practice and build self-discipline which will translate into success in other areas of your life as well.
✅Master the decisive moment by recognising the specific moment when you realise that you feel like having a snack. Be mindful, work through the feeling, and remind yourself of why you’re wanting to snack less. You can also use this moment of awareness as a trigger to do something like go for a walk, get a glass of water, or do something else that will distract you from your desire to snack.