6 Mindless Eating Hacks

Being home due to the quarantine has made it very difficult to cut down on mindless snacking. These are just a few of the tricks used to help stay on track:

Dehydration

Often when we're overly eating, we’re simply thirsty and our bodies can’t discern the difference between the two. Before grabbing a snack, assess your hydration status and start the day hydrating well to help avoid cravings.

Eat on a schedule

Eating on a schedule helps you recognize when you’re out of control. Eating every three hours, small meals, or grazing throughout the day on small meals allows us to stay satiated and ultimately avoid mindless eating. Setting a timer for every three hours is helpful and having a cap time will allow you to be more mindful and intentional about your eating. You could always schedule in your snacks!

Exercise

Exercise helps release hormones that stimulate our hunger. Ghrelin, for instance, is deemed the "hunger hormone" because it increases food intake. According to a study by J Sports Sci Med, an "exercise regimen had a positive effect on reducing appetite which is related to reduced acylated Ghrelin responses over time." When I exercise, it not only decreases my desire to over eat, but it also increases my metabolism. A good way to find the right exercise regimen that works for your particular body would be to receive an IDLife DNA report! Mine tells me I'm not a long distance runner, but would see results in sports like gymnastics!

Make snacks less accessible

Making snacks less accessible is a hack that I use to avoid nibbling all day. Whenever there are tempting snacks in the house, I place them in an odd spot like the oven or a cabinet that I don’t often use in order to create increased effort to go for the snack. However, the best method to decrease accessibility is to leave it at the store. LOL

Close the Kitchen

I also try to mentally close the kitchen 9PM to help control my late night eating. But if all else fails, I move to another room level in the house to stop the madness. Once the kitchen closes, having a late night ritual that gets you ready to sleep also helps. Brushing my teeth is my late night key to control over indulging.

Use Nutritional Supplements

Lastly, I use nutritional supplements from IDLIFE. The Slim+ product has a proprietary blend of ingredients, chromium, and a probiotic that helps with sugar cravings and increases metabolism along with improving gut health.