How Exercise Can Help You Manage Boredom Eating

Researchers say emotional eating most often happens as a response to loneliness, boredom, or stressors like anxiety or anger. Taking care of your mindset and mentality is essential to avoiding boredom eating. If you are feeling bored, opt for a quick walk to help you avoid eating for the sake of it. Plus, you will be less likely to overeat as exercise can lift your mood and positively affects appetite hormone production and release.

When you turn off your brain, you turn on an autopilot that you can’t trust. However, you won’t have to worry about reaching for chips or cookies when you choose to prepare healthy snacks ahead of time. Mindfulness is essential in helping people become more aware of harmful eating habits, food triggers, and causes of boredom.

Boredom eating can quickly become a problem…

On occasion, snacking for reasons other than hunger is just fine, as long as you maintain control of your daily energy intake, but  boredom eating can become a problem when it is your coping mechanism, and you turn to food without realizing it:

• Fresh Veggie Snacks – If raw vegetables are not your thing, consider a snack of pickled vegetables to satisfy a desire for a salty, savory, and crunchy treat. There are a number of vegetables other than cucumbers available in pickled form, or you can make your own and add a little heat.
• Plain Popcorn Snacks – Whether you are trying to lose weight or not, popcorn is a whole grain that offers many of the same benefits as wheat, barley, and oats. In fact, popcorn is usually acceptable for most low carb diets.
• Eat Mindfully – If you were driven to eat out of boredom, do not create other distractions while eating. Focus all of your attention on the experience of eating a nutritionally healthy meal or snack.
• Healthy Fruit Snacks – Since fresh fruit should be part of a healthy menu plan, it is a good choice for keeping you full between meals and the natural sugar makes it a satisfying substitute for sweet cravings.

Being uninterested in a task can lead to boredom…

To avoid boredom eating, it is important to understand the difference between emotion hunger and physical hunger triggered by the normal production and release of ghrelin hormone. When you feel bored, you are really restless to do something, but nothing feels compelling or motivating.

It is easy to confuse boredom with laziness, but they are notably different.

Feeling uninterested in a task at hand can lead to boredom. In fact, boredom can occur even when you feel energetic but are unsatisfied by an activity and have nowhere to direct your energy. Re-focusing on the task can be an effective distraction.

Managing boredom is a matter of adjusting your mindset to find your rhythm. Truth is most people prefer being active as opposed to doing nothing. Visit Metabolic Research Center for personalized tips on managing boredom eating.