Prepare Snacks Ahead of Time to Avoid Boredom Eating

If you are having a craving, take time to determine if the hunger is biological and then enjoy a healthy snack either way. Once you understand what you are feeling that is causing you to snack, it makes it easier to deal with your exact emotions. Creating a plan with a more flexible structure for meals and snacks is a good starting point for managing your daily intake of fuel and nutrients.

Whether you are actually working from home or just spending more time there, it is important to recognize signals for boredom eating to overcome the need to constantly reach for a snack. Planning snacks ahead of time will keep you from hanging out in the kitchen (or break room) and grazing all day.

Too often, snacking is a source of entertainment…

Sometimes there are good reasons as to why you are bored and identifying causes may result in choosing options other than eating. Listed are some strategies for better managing the boredom that maybe driving your food cravings:

• Brush Your Teeth – When you are bored with what you’re doing and find yourself craving a particular treat, brushing your teeth is a convenient and healthy way to distract yourself from those nagging urges to eat.
• Get More Sleep – Sleep is an important time in every day, as critical hunger hormones like leptin and ghrelin are produced and released. Set your intentions for always getting more sleep to boost your energy levels.
• Be a Mindful Eater – To avoid eating out of boredom, practice mindful eating. Don’t eat distracted and make sure you enjoy every bite. That way you want blackout from eating the whole bag.
• Drink Enough Water – Dehydration leads to less blood circulating throughout your body. So, it is critical to drink enough water every day. Even then, it takes about 20 minutes for what you drink to hydrate your cells.

Boredom eating happens when food cravings take center stage…

Human behavior is filled with paradoxes. When it comes to controlling boredom eating, the most important thing you can do is find a distraction that will help to reset your cognitive thinking. Boredom eating often leads to overeating and unwanted weight gain. A recent study suggests that staying busy while doing anything will make you much happier that you would have been doing nothing.

When you stay busy, it is closely associated with staying positive. Physical hunger is tied to the last time you ate and tends to come on gradually, whereas emotional hunger is triggered by emotional events, such as stress, anxiety, fatigue, worry, and especially boredom.

Boredom sparks creative thoughts like food cravings. At Metabolic Research Center, we teach you how to recognize signs of real hunger by its subtle cues and to be mindful of all your daily hunger patterns. Snacks can play an important role in helping you manage boredom eating.