Is a snack half-time the way to win at weight loss?

August 29, 2016 Ashley 0 Comments

Have a tendency to overeat?

The answer may be to put down your food stabber.

And, no, I don’t mean that in a snarky “just dredge up the willpower” kind of way, either

Rather, what experts advise about revising your waistline is to waste a little time in the middle of your meal doing something other than eating. It’s like a (possibly temporary) nosh pause you’re taking, where roughly halfway through your meal, you simply set a semicolon in the middle of your supper, and literally put the fork (or spoon… or finger strangled burger) down. It’s not necessarily indefinitely. This doesn’t signify the cessation of the meal. It doesn’t have to mean you’re throwing in the moist towelette on wing night. All that it means your taking five for your mind and midsection to get on the same page.

You see, the issue often is this: sometimes when we’re hungry enough, we treat our food like it’s gonna Usain Bolt off our plate if we don’t eat it quickly enough. The problem with that is that our belly organ’s line of communication with our brain doesn’t move quite as speedily. It takes the old snack cave a bit more time to tell our think organs we’re all fueled up, and thusly give it the green light to put a red light on munching. And that’s when we end up in glutton land – when we bypass satiation and keep eating. By taking a mandatory ingestion respite, though, your belly can message your mind that it’s time to stop – or continue.

Hence that “snack halftime”.

So what can you spend that time doing in lieu?

Anything, really.

(Well, except this. A watched potbelly never deflates.)

In fact, I myself often end up spending that time filling up on water (especially if it’s a salty meal), checking social media or email (probably not the most “mindful” of the options, but whatevz), or (brace yourselves for this one) actually speaking sans distraction to whatever company has come to supper with me. And you know what? After five minutes of some engaging activity (reveling in my social media validation, making to-do lists I’ll never do, adding filters to my latest selfie…), it makes me forget how delicious my dish of coconut-curry-tofu-whatever is. Which means I’m able to honestly stop and determine whether my belly’s legitimately hungry for more, or my tongue’s just getting greedy to feed on more of the taste I’m craving.

So, next time you find yourself treating eating like an Olympian event, try pressing pause on your jaw.

It’s a great way to get back in touch with your bod and end up with leftovers in your fridge…

Instead of over your belt line.