Hi friends, happy Friday!
How is it going?
First of all, a BIG “thank you” for your overwhelming response to my last two posts in Caring for Heart series, part 1 and part 2. Am very happy to know that it has helped so many of you in understanding the signs and symptoms of a heart disease or an impending heart attack. We also discussed how we can keep our heart healthy.
Hope you shared them with your family and friends too. This makes my writing every Friday so worth it, for me!
Join me on Instagram here, for a regular dose of motivation and information relating to health, nutrition & fitness:
https://www.instagram.com/healthcoach_smita/
Now, with those posts done, let us go back to that simple but very important tool that can help many of us in understanding whether we are genuinely hungry or if it is just some sort of comfort that we are seeking from food.
Many of us would benefit from being able to learn to differentiate between real hunger and just a craving for comfort food (also called as psychological hunger). This would help us tremendously in our weight management goals.
As a nutritionist and a health coach, I find many of my clients struggling with binge-eating or comfort-eating for various reasons. Sometimes, these reasons are nutritional and most times, psychological. How can one differentiate? Let’s see:
- Do you find yourself snacking too often?
- Do you feel most of your snacking is mindless eating?
Here, take an “Apple Test” before you reach out to snacks and other munchies.
What is an Apple Test?
Apple test is nothing but asking ourselves a question before we start munching on mid-meal snacks. The question is:
“Can I eat an apple right now?”
An alternative could also be another fruit or vegetable that you can’t overeat e.g. a mango fruit won’t be an ideal choice if you love mangoes. I personally use a “cucumber test”.
If the answer is “yes, I am hungry and an apple sounds lovely, I can eat it”…go ahead and eat that apple. If the answer is “no, I don’t want an apple right now, I want that piece of cake/bag of chips/some order-in/ice-cream/cookie only…do know that you are not hungry. It is just that snack calling you!
If weight management/weight loss is our goal, it would be best to not listen to that snack. A little willpower comes handy here. It helps to know that we really are not hungry but are just getting tricked by a mere snack!!
This is called emotional hunger or mental hunger. We also call it as comfort-eating. Binge eating is not too far off either.
So What To Do Now?
Alright, so you don’t want an apple, what now? Distract yourself from the idea of eating by:
- Drinking water – half the times it is thirst, trust me
- Talking to ourselves about why do we feel hungry at the moment. Since it’s not food clearly, what exactly is that we crave for?
- Going for a small walk
- Getting busy with some other task/activity
- Talking to a family member/friend
- Playing with a pet
Take this “Apple Test” next time you reach for mid-meal snacks and see if it helped. It has helped me and my clients for sure. I would love to know about that experience.
Till next Friday
Love, Health & Peace
Your Health Coach
Smiita Krishna
