Help! I Can't Stop Snacking!
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By: Lindsay Taylor
The good news: After a rough year and a half, many people are finding their way back to something like “normal” (even if it’s a new normal).
The bad news: We picked up some not-so-helpful habits during our time underground. You’re not alone if you’re emerging from your cocoon feeling a little worse for wear!
There’s no time like the present to start shedding those bad habits so you can get back to being the glorious butterfly you’re meant to be. For a lot of people, priority number one is getting their eating back on track.
“Help, I Can’t Stop Snacking!”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard this in the past few months. Are we surprised? What with all of us stuck at home bored, overwhelmed, and in close proximity to the kitchen, snack attacks were bound to happen.
Let me go on record as saying that I don’t think snacking is always a problem. Yes, we’re big fans of intermittent fasting around these parts, and snacking is widely maligned in the ancestral health world at large. I haven’t forgotten that Mark’s most recent book is called Two Meals a Day!
There’s no denying that some folks make significant health gains when they start eating less frequently. At the same time, the empirical evidence for or against snacking is decidedly mixed. Some studies show that frequent small meals or snacks impair weight loss, glycemic control, appetite regulation, and various health markers. Others find that snacking is neutral or even beneficial for these same parameters.
As for the “humans aren’t meant to snack” argument, depending on their food environments, our paleolithic ancestors probably “snacked” as they foraged for plants that didn’t require cooking.1 You’re telling me that every one of those delicious berries made it back to camp? I think not. However, that’s not at all what snacking looks like today. Where modern humans run into trouble is with overconsumption of hyper-palatable, low-quality, pro-inflammatory foods. That concept would have been totally foreign to our ancestors, but it’s what most people mean when they say they “can’t stop snacking.”
If you’re stuck in a snacking rut, here are six things to consider:
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