Feeling hungry when you’re just bored is a common challenge, especially in environments that promote habitual snacking like the workplace or during downtime at home. Here are some inventive ways to tackle boredom eating by addressing your environment and mindset.
Hungry When Bored: The Art of Distraction and Replacement
Boredom causes your brain to confuse it with hunger, and you might find yourself reaching for snacks. To eliminate this, create a distraction that is just as fulfilling but doesn’t involve food. For example, take up a tactile hobby, like molding clay or putting together DIY model kits, something to keep your hands busy. Instead of eating, substitute the action with sipping on fruit-infused water from a large jug, so when “boredom hunger” strikes, you hydrate yourself instead.
How to Stop Boredom Eating: Mindful Awareness Practices
A practice of mindfulness can change the way you react to boredom eating. Let’s start with the easy one – begin a daily practice of mindfulness meditation which can be used in apps like Headspace or Calm that include details to begin understanding what triggers your desire to eat when you are bored. Every time you go for a snack, take a meditation or deep breathing moment. Taking this moment you will realize if you are eating out of hunger or habit.
How to Stop Snacking at Work: Strategic Snacking
Change the way you snack while at work by planning and cooking. Take something to work that you can snack on, (think nuts in shells like walnuts which take time to crack as well, win win). This, in turn, makes you consume at a slower pace. Hold a weekly office challenge where co-workers brings healthy snack recipes or one day out of the week be a ‘snack-free’ zone place on earth (or your office) to promote mindful eating rather than mindless snacking.
What to Do Instead of Eating When Bored: Skill Building
Substitute snacking with things that add value to either your personal or professional growth. Learn a new language on Duolingo for example in the time you would usually be reaching for a snack. Their sessions are concise and entertaining, successfully diverting your mind from eating to studying. Or you can create a jar called “boredom” and write small tasks or achievable skills and choose one overtime you have nothing to do instead of eating.
I suggest sticking to these practices. These strategies are made to not only get your mind off snacking but also enrich your life with healthy habits and activities that serve you as a person. Utilize these ideas and save yourself from getting bored-eatings but also amp up your daily health on the whole.
Thank you for reading my article about “How to Stop Snacking When Bored” and I would love to receive your comments down below, in case of any.