Stop Snacking With the Inconvenience Factor
One of the worst problems I had with my eating habits was my snacking. I love food. I enjoy eating it even when I’m not hungry. So I would find myself snacking all through the day. Anytime I needed something to do I would find food and eat it. Over time, I realized that this habit is one of the worst parts of my diet. It was quite literally the difference between getting to the weight I wanted to be at or staying at the weight I was. The only problem was, I wasn’t quite sure how to stop.
No matter how many times I told myself that “from now on, things will be different” I would always find myself dipping into that chocolate jar or taking things from the cookie tray. I knew it was bad, I even realized that as I was eating the snack but that didn’t make me stop. So, since will power alone seemed unreliable, I decided to do something else. What I came up with is the Inconvenience Factor. Simply put, I snacked because it was convenient. So if I wanted to stop snacking, I had to make it less convenient. These are the things I came up with:
Never Carry Cash
Cash makes snacking easier because it makes snacks easier to purchase. Less cash means less snacks. That means I carry less cash in my wallet, I don’t carry change with me, the cash I do carry is in $20 bills and I leave my wallet in my desk drawer at work. This way, if I pass by the vending machine or some street vendor, it’s going to be difficult for me to buy anything.
Don’t Buy Snacks At the Supermarket
I don’t care how much will power you think you have, if you have a snacking problem, you shouldn’t be buying things you’ll snack on. That means no buying large bags of potato chips, no buying packages of candy and no buying premade, no cooking required food. You’ll tell yourself that you won’t snack but you will. Leave that stuff in the supermarket.
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
If you do end up buying something, keep it somewhere inconvenient. Putting your potato chips in the highest cabinet you have behind some dishes is a great idea. Believe me, you’re going to need to be really hungry before you go for those chips. Do not put snacks in plain sight. Just seeing snacks can sometimes trigger the urge to eat them.
Buy Raw
This means your food should require as much preparation as possible. The more preparation your food needs the less likely you are to snack on it. It’s real easy to snack on some premade meal you just need to pop into the microwave. It’s a lot harder to snack on raw ingredients you need to prepare.
Stay Away From The Snack Trays
Parties are difficult for me. Everyone always lays out bowls of chips, plates of cookies and trays of finger foods. Best way to avoid eating them is to literally avoid being near them. Go to other side of the room, pick a table away from the buffet or just move to a different room. Do whatever you can to avoid being near the food.
Ask Your Friends For Help
Don’t be shy. In many cases, your friends think going to the supermarket to get a bag of chips every time you come over to play video games is annoying. They might just be glad to hear you’d rather do away with the chips altogether. Same goes for family. Let mom know that you love her food and would much rather save room for the dinner she made than munch away at some cookies she bought at the supermarket. It’s a great way of saying “thanks, but no thanks” to snacks.
The Five Minute Rule
If you can, use the five minute rule. That means every time you have an urge to snack, move away and spend at least five minutes before coming back. If you still want that snack, then maybe you really are hungry. However, in most cases you’ll find that you forget all about that snack in five minutes.
Reward Yourself
Don’t be shy, you’re doing a great job when you avoid snacks and there’s no reason not to reward yourself. Now don’t go overboard but do make sure to positively reinforce your good days. I used to allow myself to buy an iTunes song every day that I went without snacking. At 99 cents a song, I thought it was a bargain compared to the 2 or 3 dollars a day I would spend on snacks, not to mention the extra calories I didn’t need.
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Eating between meals is not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re hungry, eat something. Just make sure you’re eating because you’re hungry and not because there’s food in front of you. If you’re the type of person who eats whenever food is conveniently close by, then maybe you should try to make that food a bit less convenient.
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So true. There are moments when I really can’t keep any snack food in the pantry, because I know I will just go and grab it whenever.
The odd part in that is that I didn’t use to snack. Then I checked all these websites about weight loss and stuff telling you to snack “to avoid arriving too hungry at the dinner table”, and the result was that I accidentally conditioned myself to feel hungry every 3 hours or so. So much for the “good consequences” of snacking, huh.
Now, food on the table at other people’s is another problem. I don’t even know why we feel so compelled to get food out for every bit of occasion? (Cf. your example with video games and chips–who cares about that pack of cookies at 2 pm already!) I’ve told my friends countless times that I’d just enjoy visiting as much if there was only coffee or tea on the table, but I guess food is something too ingrained in our culture to let go so easily.
There are many blog with tips, but I thought the point where you mentioned not to carry cash on you was great. I have not heard that one before and I totally see how that makes a difference.