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Is your snack habit ruining your weight loss? · SAY GRACE | Weight Loss + Health for Overwhelmed Women- Stress, Busy, Consistency, Realistic, Motivation, Starting Over, No Restrictions

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Music.
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Today, we are going to talk about a topic that I am super familiar with,
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as it was my struggle for a long, long time.
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So my meals were always on point, but my snacking habit is what threw me overboard every single day.
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And no matter how many times I said, I'm going to do better tomorrow,
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tomorrow came and I never did.
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But now I have won the battle and I'm here to share with you exactly how.
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So today, let's talk all about snacking and weight loss.
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Okay, I can't believe I have not done a topic or a podcast on this topic,
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y'all. This one is like such a topic for me.
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I mean, you will see as we go along why, but I'm just going to dive off into
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it because I do have a lot of information to share today. And so I do want to
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prepare you for what we're going to be talking about.
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We're going to run through at first, like what causes us to snack.
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You know, a lot of us are frustrated by our snacking habits,
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and so we're going to talk about why, why we do that.
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We're also going to talk about how snacking may be sabotaging us, okay?
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We kind of, like, we kind of have an idea, but maybe not exactly,
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and so I'm going to give you some really specifics for how you may be sabotaging
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yourself through your snacking.
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And then some ideas for, like, whether or not you need to change your snack
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habits, like looking at yourself and deciding, do I really need to adjust the way I snack?
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And then if you're one of those that says yes, which a lot of us are,
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then how to do that, right? How to take control of your snacking.
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And so we're going to dive right into it. First of all, like some of the reasons that we do snack.
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We would all love to say, you know, we snack because we're hungry and we want
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to keep our metabolism rolling. And, you know, we like to eat small meals every,
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you know, so few hours, but that's not really what most of us do, right? Right.
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So a lot of us catch ourselves snacking because our kids are having a snack.
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Right. Like if you're with your kids a lot during mealtimes,
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that's that's a real issue for a lot of my moms is like I am just sitting here
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watching my children eat and and it's hard for me not to.
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Right. And so you'll even try not to.
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To like fix yourself your own snack, but then you catch yourself grabbing a
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bite from your kids or you're eating their leftovers.
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Another reason that we snack is it's readily available at all times.
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So I have a lot of ladies who tend to grab something from the break room and
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just mindlessly eat it throughout the day at work, right?
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And so it's almost for some of my ladies, it's like, it's become such a habit,
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you even forget you're doing it.
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You know, like you walk through, you pick up a handful of this or a pinch of
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that, and you've just, you're thinking, oh, it's not that big a deal.
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And it literally, I mean, so many other things are going through your mind throughout
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the day that you don't even remember.
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And this can happen at home too, right? If we have a lot of snacks on our counter
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and whatnot, things that are in our eyesight and things that are easily,
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you can just grab a handful of kind of thing.
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So that's another reason that we will find ourselves snacking.
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Another reason that a lot of my ladies snack snack is for a pick-me-up, okay?
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And especially in the afternoon, around that two or three o'clock mark,
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a lot of us are like, oh my gosh, I just need to keep my eyes open.
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I need to make it till five.
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I need to make it till dinner, like whatever it is.
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And this was a really big one for me, y'all, like a huge one.
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When I was working in an office setting, kept snacks in my desk, right?
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And I thought like, I thought I was doing myself a favor by doing that to prevent
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myself from like going to the gas station and grabbing something or eating something
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that was in the break room. But.
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For me, what started happening is I knew I had those snacks in my desk.
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And so I would like, wait until two o'clock, I had given myself that that time,
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like I can eat a snack at two o'clock.
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And so regardless of whether I was hungry or not, I was always going for that snack.
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And I will never forget, like back then I was so into dark chocolate,
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like super like high cacao, dark chocolate.
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So very like, the better of the dark chocolate, you know,
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but y'all I was eating like half
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the bar you know what I mean and it's still
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just chocolate like it's not anything that's like
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super filling or gonna serve me well but that's what I was eating at that two
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o'clock mark every day and so I wasn't full from that that did not like that
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was not a like fibrous high protein kind of snack and so of course like as the
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afternoon and even into the evening went on,
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I was still hungry, just as hungry as I would have been if I hadn't had the
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chocolate, right? Because chocolate is mainly sugar, okay?
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And so another reason, though, that we do snack is we're starving when we get
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home from work, which is exactly where I found myself.
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Like, I would walk in the door, and a lot of us, I talk to my PFM Plus clients about this a lot.
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Like, they are so frustrated with themselves because they'll do so well all
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day, but then when they walk in the door, it's like they lose all control.
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Like they kind of lose their sanity.
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You know what I mean? And this is a common thing because like we have kind of
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been on the straight and narrow, like really focused, really trying to knock some things out all day.
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And then when we walk into our own home, we release and we should,
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that is how it should be, right?
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We should feel safe and relaxed and comfortable in our own home.
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But it's also like the whole rest of the day catches up with us.
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And so whether it's stress that causes us to turn to food for comfort or whether
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it's like we're just now realizing, oh, my God, I haven't had any water today.
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I haven't, you know, eaten decent today. Like I missed lunch,
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like whatever that is, you know, it's like when we walk in the door, everything hits us.
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And so we're just like, OK, I'm going to eat, you know. And so it turns into
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like mindlessly eating and usually we eat in excess, you know, even if it's innocent.
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Like I have a lot of ladies who are like, I mean, I walk in the door and I'm
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catching up with my husband.
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But next thing we know, we've gone through the whole row of ritz,
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you know what I mean? And it's not intentional and it's not.
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But you're not even really saying, like, I'm about to pound this whole row of rits, right?
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It's just, you're finally getting to exhale and see your people for the day.
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And it just hits you without you even knowing.
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So that's another reason that we do snack. Or while we're cooking dinner, right?
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Sometimes we find ourselves snacking on ingredients. And y'all,
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this is another one I'm so bad about.
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Man, like when I cook, I will just kind of lick and bite and taste and nibble
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all that, you know, while I'm cooking.
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And then it's like, well, when dinner's here, I'm not as hungry.
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We're just not ideal, right? But we do that, right?
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Another reason we snack is just because we're used to it, right?
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Like a nighttime snack after dinner is very common for a lot of my ladies.
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And it's very common for me personally.
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It is a habit that I got into as a child and I have just not broken,
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you know, and it's like I'm sitting here, my kids are also getting,
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adopting this same habit, you know, because we allow dessert after dinner.
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But for me, again, it's like we don't really enjoy food together a lot.
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And so I just, I don't know, I want my babies to enjoy their dessert after dinner, like whatever.
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It's just one of those things that I'm not going to put a cap on right now because
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I cherished the milkshake nights with my mom and dad when I was little,
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you know, those great memories, you know what I mean?
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But when we have a habit like that of going to get the ice cream every night
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after dinner, it can become problem-some if, you know, we are tracking calories
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or we are trying to like lose weight, you know what I mean?
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And also another reason that we snack is emotions.
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We all got them. And if y'all are me around the 38 mark, I feel like my hormones are getting worse.
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Like my emotions are, you know, even more magnified. And like.
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Yes, work should just be work for a lot of us.
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And like we should be able to hold things at a distance and not let them affect
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us. But sometimes things just do, you know.
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And so a lot of times it will just we will feel like, golly,
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I have been on my last leg all day long.
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And you snap, or you just are done.
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You're just done with the day, right? And so a lot of us have learned to turn
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to food for that comfort because it does provide comfort in the moment, right?
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Like we all know that at this point, that like high sugar, high salt,
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like snack junk type foods do make us feel good. Like it releases endorphins.
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We are kind of like on a miniature high while we're eating these delicious things.
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So like we can't say that they're not going to cause us comfort because they
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are going to give us that comfort.
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It's just short-lived, right? And so, but a lot of us, We know that,
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but we still do it anyway.
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You know, if we've had a hard day, if we are just kind of filled with emotions,
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we will turn to that snack, that, you know, usually not very healthy snack for the comfort of it.
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Another reason is just mindless eating, right?
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And I talk about this a lot, like making sure your food is behind closed doors,
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if at all possible, because if it is visible, we just find ourselves grabbing it more.
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You know what I mean? Like it just is what it is. And so, you know,
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don't put the plate of cookies on the counter.
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You know, I know in a true Southern home, we've always got a,
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you know, a cake dish out on the counter with a cake inside of it,
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you know, and it's always cute.
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And, you know, if you look at any Southern magazine kitchen picture, you will see that.
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But like, I can't do that, y'all.
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And I don't know many people that can because we're going to eat the cake every
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time we walk by that beautiful glass, you know, pedestal tray.
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And so, but that is a reason that we snack. It's just there and we're like, okay, let me grab this.
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You know, and then you go back by and you're like, let me grab this.
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And next thing you know, you find yourself walking by just so you can grab another little bite.
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You know, one thing that I do at Halloween is I always have candy corn out and
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I'm like, why do I, why do I do this to myself?
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I'm the one that always walks by, you know, my cute little Halloween bowl and
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grabs the candy corn, you know, but it's, it's what happens.
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And that's just one of the reasons why, because it's just visible.
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And then also, like, another reason that we snack is just kind of what I mentioned earlier about.
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Our hunger caught up to us. You know what I mean?
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Like we had a really busy day and weren't able to stop and eat or.
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You know, we didn't eat the right quality of things.
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So, you know, it was kind of going through us pretty quick. And next thing we
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know, like our blood sugar drops.
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And next thing we know, we are legit hangry. Like we are seeing red.
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There is no, like no time to like chop up some lettuce and make a salad for
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heaven's sake, you know, and so we just grab what we can and shovel it in to stop the hunger pains,
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you know, and so that is that's a reason we snack a lot of us,
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you know, and so I think I think a lot of the things that I just mentioned as
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far as reasons are also like things that you can find shame in and you can wear
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guilt about and I don't like I mean,
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you heard me, I was just like laughing through a lot of this.
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And every single thing that I just said, I am a, I am, you know, a victim to, okay.
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And so we cannot just be like, oh, I've got to stop, you know,
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grabbing the M&Ms as I walk by the M&M bowl on our counter.
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Like, that's really hard to do.
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Okay. And like, no one has that level of willpower.
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You know what I mean? or I've got to stop, you know, eating out of control when I'm hangry.
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Like, again, like no one has that kind of willpower.
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Like our body takes over in that moment. And so I don't think any of the things
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I just said, like, I don't think we need to.
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Stop them. It's about being aware of them, being honest with yourself,
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like so much of weight loss is awareness, right?
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And so being aware of these habits, some of them that I said that may have stood
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out more than others, right?
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And just knowing about them, just saying like, well, dang, I just ate all those
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cookies. And, you know, it was because I haven't had enough water today,
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and I skipped lunch today or whatever, like just staying aware of it.
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But just because you're aware of it doesn't mean you have to put on the badge
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of shame. Like you do not have to wear it around, you know?
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Stay aware, like when is something I'm gonna be really lame?
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Stay aware of it, don't wear it.
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You know what I mean? But for real, for real, for real, because like I just see that so much.
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Like so many of the things that I just mentioned, people act like something
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is like deeply wrong with them because they have those habits.
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And we all could have them if
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we didn't put the right things in play to
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make sure they don't come about if that makes sense and
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so I do just want to like give some examples though of how we may not even realize
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the effect like that little snacking can have on us and so the first one I think
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is really important and I know it's it's one that that gets gets a lot of us
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y'all and it's just how the little bites add up.
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And so I did a calculation for us just kind of I sat here and I thought about
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what would I do, you know, and so I did a calculation.
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Okay. And so even if you're tracking, right, like some of this that I'm about
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to list out, you may not even enter into your MyFitnessPal or wherever you track,
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because you're just thinking, oh, it was just a little bite,
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like it doesn't count, you know what I mean?
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And so let's just say you wake up this morning, you make your kids toast with jelly on top. Okay.
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And you're, you know, if you're, if your kids are like mine,
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they didn't eat half of it. They left the crust, like all the things.
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Right. And so what do you do?
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You eat like the leftover or the little bit of the crust with jelly on it,
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half the toast with jelly on it or whatever.
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So we're going to call that 40 extra calories this morning that maybe we didn't track from that.
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Then you go to work. There's some brownies in the break room, okay?
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All throughout the day, you go by and you just pinch off. Like you pinch off
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half or a fourth of a brownie and you just, you know, do that.
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Or even if you're at home and there's brownies on the counter,
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right? We walk by, we pinch off, pinch off, like at least three or four times, right?
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That can be up to 180 extra calories of your little pinches that you did not
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even register because it was just a little bite each time that you walked by, right?
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Even though if you're like me, you like walking by eight times. You know what I mean?
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Then let's just say you keep like big baggie of goldfish at your desk or you
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were in the kitchen, you know, doing some chores, cleaning up and you grab some, a handful of goldfish.
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Okay. A handful of goldfish run you about 70 calories.
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Okay. Then let's say your boss keeps Reese's cups on her desk and you grab three
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and you eat them throughout the day. They're just little snacks at your desk. You know what I mean?
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And then let's say you get home and you're talking with your husband or you're
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a little hungry while you're cooking dinner.
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So you pull out a slice of cheese and a couple Ritz crackers,
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about five Ritz crackers, okay? That's another 160 calories.
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And so your little snacky bites that may or may not have even registered in
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your brain, if you add all of that up, that is 580 extra calories for the day, okay?
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And that's mostly empty calories, right?
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I mean, we get a little bit from the cheese and cracker situation, but not really, really.
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I mean, all of it's mostly empty calories, right? And so this 580 calories,
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not only is that more than a meal for some of us, right, that you just mindlessly
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grabbed and snacked on throughout the day, but.
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They didn't serve you and your body in any way for your weight loss, okay?
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And so I want to be clear here because I talk about how we can enjoy the foods
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that we love here and like that is forever and never, amen, the truth.
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But all those 580 calorie foods that I just ran through, like were those anything
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that you just sat down and like soaked in and enjoyed every bite?
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No, baby. You were eating that toast as you were bringing the paper plate to the garbage can, right?
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You were shoving that brownie in as you were walking back to your desk talking to a co-worker.
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You were probably not even registering the Reese's Cups as you were sitting
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there typing or, you know, trying to get whatever done for work.
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Definitely the cheese and the Ritz crackers, you were not, you were not savoring
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those bites because you were trying to get homework done and dinner cooked and
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you were catching up with your husband.
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Like you were not like registering or savoring any of this food that you ate.
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So in my perspective, it's like, well, that was 580 calories wasted, right?
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Like what could I do with 580 extra calories at the end of the day or whatever,
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any time of day that I could savor?
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Baby girl, you could go get like a real nice milkshake from Chick-fil-A, right?
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Like you could get, oh my gosh, a steak dinner almost, you know, for that.
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Like something that you just, I mean, think about something you truly love that
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you usually in one sitting wouldn't eat 580 calories worth of because it's 580
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calories in one sitting.
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But think about how much better and more enjoyable it would have been if you
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like made your plate full of my favorite.
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Y'all, I've talked about this here before. There's that Oreo fluff.
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Like it is just so good. That is what I would spend my 580 calories on,
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right? And I would make myself a big old bowl and I would sit there and like
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register that I'm eating it and savor every single bite.
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And so not only is it, you know, 580 calories either way, right?
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But if we're sitting down and we're savoring every single bite,
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our brain is registering that like, oh, we're enjoying this.
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Like, this is wonderful. like and then so then
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you finish that my in my
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case the oreo fluff satisfied you
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don't feel deprived anymore like it's like that willpower tank that i talk about
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sometimes here like your willpower tank is filled all the way up because you're
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like heck yeah i'm gonna get back to losing weight tomorrow i just sat down
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and savored every bite of oreo goodness you know what i mean and so you don't
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feel deprived from all the good things.
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But if you treat these 580 calories.
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In the little snacks here and there, the way that I just described,
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again, your brain hasn't registered that you savored or enjoyed anything.
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And you may end the day thinking like, oh, I hate trying to lose weight.
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You know what I mean? I feel so deprived, like because none of it registered
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that you actually got to sit and enjoy and mindfully eat that food. Okay.
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So another way we don't realize the effect of our, you know,
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snacking can be that it can throw off our balance in our meals.
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So for instance, if you kind of snack like all morning long,
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but then lunchtime rolls around and you're like, well, I'm not hungry,
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you know, and so you kind of skip lunch or you grab a piece of fruit at lunch.
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Well, then you've had no balance in your lunchtime meal.
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Like you've had no protein in your lunchtime meal. And odds are if you were
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snacking all morning long, like you weren't snacking on jerky sticks, you know what I mean?
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You were snacking on, again, like not very nutritious foods.
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And so you have had no protein, and then you had a piece of fruit.
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And so heck yes, sister, around two o'clock, your blood sugar is going to bottom out.
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You are going to be hangry. You again are going to go looking for snacks, right?
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And then odds are when you get home, you are going to be absolutely starving
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by the time you cook dinner, if you haven't already eaten the house down between,
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you know, lunch and dinner. Okay.
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And so a lot of times people like, I hate like, it's, it's, it's,
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it's weight loss, worst nightmare.
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A lot of times people will like really try to not eat much at all in the first
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half of the day to save calories. Or a lot of people will just say like,
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well, I'm just not hungry or whatever. And.
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But it is actually like sabotaging yourself later in the day because that hangry,
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ravenous behavior hits and it hits a lot harder because finally,
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like our bodies are not just gonna, you know, not have food all day long.
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And so when you hit that point where it's like, feed me and feed me now,
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truly, I mean, you feel weak, your vision is blurry.
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Like, and it just, again, it doesn't matter what you eat or in what quantity
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because you are so freaking hungry that you're just like, again, seeing red, right?
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And so, you know, that snacking habit can really throw us off of our macro balance
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and just truly nutritious foods in general throughout the day.
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Another reason, you know, for our snacking causing issues is just like if we
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are eating out of, if we're eating because we're hangry,
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if we're eating mindlessly, or if we're eating out of emotions,
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we are usually not staying in tune with our hunger and our fullness cues, okay?
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So when we are hangry, mindlessly eating, or emotionally eating,
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we are also usually overeating, okay?
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Because again, it's the awareness, right? Like in those three scenarios, you are less aware her.
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Of yourself. You're just trying to make whatever it is stop.
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Well, specifically, if you're hangry or if you're emotional,
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right? You're trying to make that feeling stop.
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And so you're not thinking like, let me measure out my nuts.
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Like you're not thinking that, right? You're just shoving it in.
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And then that's when we also find ourselves, you know, on the back half saying
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like, oh my God, items so full. You know what I mean?
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Because hunger and fullness cues had nothing to do with the mindless or the
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emotional eating, right?
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And usually if we're eating out of being hangry, our fullness cues come too
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late because we're eating so fast.
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So that can really affect, obviously, our weight loss, right?
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Plus, if you're eating out of emotions and truly mindlessly eating too, right?
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You're not achieving what your body is likely asking for.
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You know, like when we are emotional and we turn to food, it is never going to solve the problem.
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And so we eat the food and then usually we overeat, like I just mentioned. And then what does it do?
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It creates actually an additional problem because then we're feeling bad for
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ourselves. We're feeling like, oh, I'm never going to lose this weight.
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We physically feel like full or miserable because we probably ate things that
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didn't serve, you know, our bodies well either way.
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Because your body, when you're emotional or when you're stressed or when you're
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tired, your body is not saying, feed me.
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You know, when your stomach's growling, you know, when you feel the hunger cues,
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your body is saying, feed me.
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But when you're emotional, your body is saying, give me rest because you're
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tired you know give me calm because you're stressed right like.
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Release this tension because I
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can't hold it anymore you know like so so we should be doing like things that
24:44
are more of a true release for whatever the body is trying to tell us right
24:50
like stretching and you know getting up and taking a walk if you've got a lot
24:54
of tension or doing a five-minute meditation if you're stressed,
24:58
or literally going to bed early and letting the chores wait if you are truly
25:02
like just exhausted, you know?
25:04
And so unfortunately, when we do eat out of emotions.
25:10
It's really actually creating more problems for us because the true root of
25:15
the issue was not resolved.
25:17
Okay, so I've gotten all up in, you know, why we snack and why it sucks for us and all that.
25:23
But so now you're like, what, should I just stop snacking altogether?
25:27
Like I know if some of you are probably already like, well, I'm just,
25:30
I'm not gonna snack anymore because everything she said is correct.
25:32
And I just, you know, I need to quit my snacking habit. No, that is not what I'm saying, right?
25:37
Snacks are actually really great. Like little snacks between our meals are great
25:42
for boosting metabolism, controlling that blood sugar and keeping you satisfied
25:47
in between the meals so that you aren't hangry later, right?
25:52
So that you aren't coming in the house to cook dinner and eating a whole meal
25:55
before you make the meal.
25:56
You know what I mean? Like this is why snacking is important.
25:59
We just need to be more intentional about it.
26:04
Again, awareness. We need to be more aware of it.
26:07
Okay. And so just a few questions to ask yourself to know, like,
26:12
do you really need to reassess your snacking?
26:14
Like, should you think about reassessing your snack habits?
26:17
One thing I really encourage you to do is ask yourself, are you truly hungry?
26:22
Like, think back just to this week alone when you were snacking on something
26:25
specifically in the afternoon for a lot of us, right?
26:28
Were you really hungry or are you just snacking around the same times or in
26:34
the same places out of habit, right? Like, my kids want a snack every afternoon.
26:40
And so it's like, Constance,
26:42
Do you like, are you really wanting a snack right now?
26:46
Or are you just eating a snack because you've pulled all this junk out of the refrigerator for them?
26:51
You know what I mean? And just like when I was working, you know,
26:55
and I was snacking every day at two o'clock, like, was I really hungry?
27:00
And did I really need to eat the chocolate for the snack? Right?
27:03
Like, so a lot, we're just creatures of habit, y'all.
27:06
And so sometimes we find ourselves snacking because this is what we've done every day before today.
27:10
You know what I mean? At this specific time. So just ask, like shake it up,
27:14
ask yourself that, you know?
27:16
Or another question is, do you notice that your snacks affect your meal makeup?
27:21
Like, are you one of those people I talked about who like snack and then don't
27:25
want lunch and then you consider it a wash?
27:28
You know, you're just like, well, since I snacked all morning,
27:31
but I didn't eat lunch, it evens out.
27:33
You know what I mean? Is that your style of eating? Because it could actually
27:36
be doing more harm than good.
27:39
Or you can ask yourself, do you find yourself starving? And then overeating
27:43
without even realizing it specifically like towards the end of the day.
27:47
Like are you one of those that ends the day like you're headed home from work
27:51
or you walk in the door or whatever and you are so hungry and then you over
27:57
consume and then you also eat dinner and then you're going to bed so mad at
28:02
yourself because you blew your weight loss again.
28:04
And it happened truly in the past few hours, you know, because earlier in the day you were on point.
28:09
You know, these are just a couple of questions to consider.
28:12
And if the answer is yes, you know, yes, I am constant sabotaging my snacking
28:17
and I need to change it up.
28:19
Here are you some tips, okay, for how to take back your snack habit.
28:25
Okay, my first one is to plan for it, right? If you want to get a grip on your
28:30
snacking, but you don't feel confident in going cold turkey, right? Plan for it.
28:36
So build your designated 2 p.m.
28:39
Snack or your nighttime treat into your day every single day.
28:43
Like a lot of people will say, like, I'm just going to try to stop snacking at 2 o'clock, you know?
28:47
And I'm like, no, because if you are all, if your body is used to that snack
28:51
at 2 o'clock every day, then it's like it's going to want it and you're going to give in to that, okay?
28:58
And so, and same for the nighttime, you know, treat, like I was talking about
29:01
earlier. Like if you have eaten ice cream after dinner every day for the past
29:06
30 years, like that's not where to really start by taking away your ice cream, right?
29:12
Like you can build up to that eventually, but there's probably a lot more work
29:16
that can be done around that ice cream and leave that ice cream alone for right now.
29:21
And so planning for the snacks can be really helpful.
29:26
And so, you know, I've just mentioned like how I would hold,
29:28
I would hold until two o'clock.
29:31
And so one, but then I would just eat chocolate, right? And so one of the things
29:34
that I did start doing was I would still eat that two o'clock snack, right?
29:39
Like I am not a person that can go from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
29:42
Without any food. And so I would still eat the two o'clock snack.
29:45
I would just make sure I had something more nutritious there to snack on,
29:51
okay? And then truly limiting myself like to one or two squares of that chocolate at the very end.
29:56
Like that was the icing on the cake after I had had, you know,
30:00
my Greek yogurt cup or, you know,
30:03
a string cheese and some fruit or even like I tell you all the time,
30:07
I love some peanut butter nabs like that is a fine snack if you need something
30:11
that is non-perishable that you can keep with you at all times.
30:15
Right. But the chocolate came at the end and I went to the lengths of portioning
30:21
out two squares and putting them in little Ziploc baggies.
30:26
And that was just a good visual for me instead of having the whole chocolate bar at my disposal.
30:31
And it made me think like, if I'm about to go back and grab another one of these
30:35
Ziploc baggies, number one, I've only got enough Ziploc baggies for this week.
30:40
So that means Friday, I don't get no chocolate if I eat two today on Tuesday, right?
30:45
But also it just makes you say, what am I doing? It's that, again,
30:48
it's that awareness. Like, am I really about to go back in this drawer and grab the second bag?
30:53
And two, I've said this on many other podcasts too, but like waiting a beat,
30:57
right? If you do really think you need that second bag.
31:00
Baggie of chocolate or whatever, say, I'm gonna wait five minutes,
31:04
and then I'm gonna make my decision, you know, so anyway, planning for it,
31:07
I have a lot of clients who will track,
31:10
like, usually their their most prized snack or their, you know,
31:14
something that they just feel like I've got to have every day to stay satisfied,
31:17
like mentally and taste bud wise, they'll track it at the very beginning of the day.
31:22
So that like, so ice cream, for instance, like if they're an ice cream at night kind of gal,
31:27
every morning when they wake up, they put their ice cream in already as if it's
31:32
already spoken for so that then they can build their day around that ice cream
31:39
still fitting in, if that makes sense.
31:41
And so that's just a really great, a really great idea. And I did this forever.
31:45
I've talked to y'all about how I eat cereal, you know, at night a lot,
31:49
and I've really gotten better about that habit.
31:50
But for a while, it was almost every single night.
31:53
And every single day, I would put my cereal in ahead of time because I knew it was happening.
31:58
You know, I could trick myself and I can say all the things that I wanted to
32:02
say to myself to pretend like I was not about to get that cereal tonight,
32:05
but I knew it was happening.
32:06
And so I went ahead and just got honest with myself and said,
32:08
I'm going to go ahead and accept it and put it in, you know.
32:12
Another way to like take back your snack habit is to truly create a new eating rhythm for yourself.
32:18
So like enforcing breakfast, lunch, and dinner, no matter how small it has to be at first, right?
32:24
So just getting yourself into the habit of having those three balanced meals.
32:30
And by balanced meals, I mean, it has protein, fat, and carb in it,
32:34
okay? And again, it can be wonderful.
32:37
For a lot of my ladies that are trying to incorporate breakfast in,
32:40
I'm like, it can be one piece of toast with a little bit of peanut butter on it.
32:44
Because like, that is you have, you have accomplished breakfast that way.
32:48
Like it doesn't have to be, you know, scrambled eggs with a side of toast with
32:52
some avocado on top with a glass of juice or whatever.
32:55
Like it doesn't have to be some magnificent breakfast.
32:58
It can be something quick and small, but it needs to be at eight o'clock or
33:02
seven o'clock or six o'clock or whatever.
33:03
Whenever you first wake up and get your body going? Because you're telling your
33:07
body, you're telling your metabolism, this is breakfast. Okay.
33:11
And so then same for like lunch and dinner. We don't snack all morning long
33:15
and then skip lunch or have a banana for lunch, right?
33:18
Like we are going to try our best, even if it is a banana with peanut butter,
33:24
a banana with a handful of nuts, a banana with a string cheese,
33:28
like something that is more than just carb at noon.
33:32
You know, a banana is all carb, y'all. And so it's got to be more than that.
33:36
It's got to be something balanced that you can call lunch.
33:40
And this just truly gets your body into the habit of number one,
33:43
expecting food at those times.
33:46
And number two, filling you at those times so that you are not starving at one
33:52
o'clock, three o'clock, five o'clock, or whatever, trying to catch up for your
33:56
lack of balanced meals throughout the day.
33:58
And I will say this has been a game changer for me. And I don't I don't know
34:01
if I've talked about this on the podcast much. But like a couple years ago,
34:04
I started eating breakfast.
34:06
I was really not a breakfast girl. I would sip on my coffee till about 10am.
34:11
And then honestly, I would suffer from 10am until lunchtime because I was having
34:16
that like sugar crash, that caffeine crash.
34:20
But then I'm like, I'm not going to eat until lunch, you know, and, and it.
34:25
I literally cannot, this needs to be a whole nother podcast,
34:28
but I cannot explain to you the difference in like productivity and mental capacity
34:34
and like less brain fog and energy that it has had on me, hormones, my word of mercy,
34:41
that it has had on me just by,
34:44
starting the day with breakfast, like before coffee. Okay.
34:49
And it took me a while though, because I did like the thought of eating breakfast
34:54
truly made me gag in the morning.
34:57
Seriously, the peanut butter toast thing, that was me. And so I would go to
35:00
make one slice of toast with a little bit of peanut butter on it.
35:03
And I swear to you, I would get ready to eat it.
35:06
And I could just feel my body like gagging already because that's how much was
35:11
not interested in breakfast in the morning.
35:13
But now I wake up ready for breakfast.
35:17
My hormones just feel so much more balanced. My energy is so much better.
35:21
And like my meal times have gotten a lot better because of that.
35:25
And I do, honest to God, and I believe that it is part of the reason I no longer eat cereal at night.
35:32
Like now at night, I really am never hungry for it.
35:35
You know, whereas before I was, and that's because my body at the end of the
35:39
day was saying, wait, wait, wait, we're still hungry.
35:41
You haven't fed us. Like our blood sugar's dropping, like all the things,
35:44
right? Trying to catch up for the first half of the day that I did not eat.
35:48
So anyway, that's just like a personal thing. So trying that to see what might
35:54
happen. You know what I mean?
35:56
Another tip is to keep some easy but decent snacks around so that you do grab
36:02
those instead of like the kid's fruit roll up or whatever, right?
36:06
Like when we are hungry and when we are searching for a snack.
36:11
It's probably too late at that point to be thinking about what am I going to
36:15
eat? Because you're so hungry, you don't care, you know?
36:18
And so having some easy things around that you can just grab and they're kind
36:22
of your go-to for snacking.
36:24
So some of my favorites are nut and fruit or peanut butter and fruit.
36:28
And then I love a Greek yogurt cup. You can even put some granola on top.
36:32
Those protein packs are really great. Like you get them by the lunch meat section
36:36
and they've got like nuts, cheese, sometimes dried fruit.
36:39
Like those are really easy, right? You just literally rip the lid off and eat it up, right?
36:44
A protein shake or a protein bar, you know, or just any kind of little bar.
36:50
It doesn't have to be like a straight up, you know, chewy protein bar.
36:54
A lot of people don't love those, even though a lot of my ladies love those Bilt Puff bars, y'all.
36:59
And then the new ones coming on the scene, the bar, I think they're called Barbell.
37:02
Those are really good too, but it doesn't have to look like that.
37:06
Like it can look like a little mini Cliff bar or a kind
37:08
bar or any kind of nature valley bar like it doesn't don't
37:11
don't make it you know stressful just have
37:14
a bar or something that you would
37:17
be willing to grab instead of a
37:21
sleeve of oreo cookies you know what i mean or pretzels
37:25
with cheese like a lot of people love to buy the little cubed cheeses
37:28
that would be a great one to just have a little bit of that with some
37:31
pretzels deli meat rolled up into a tortilla is
37:34
an easy one cottage cheese cups if you're
37:37
into cottage cheese popcorn is a great one
37:40
i told you about peanut butter crackers hummus and pita chips like literally
37:44
you pull out the sabra hummus you pull out the stacy's pita chips and you got
37:48
yourself a balanced snack y'all and it took two seconds right so just keeping
37:53
some things like that around that you know you would actually enjoy don't go
37:56
buy hummus if you hate hummus okay But you know,
37:59
you see what I'm saying. Just have some things available for yourself.
38:03
And then another one, another tip is to create a rule for yourself when snacking
38:08
or just eating in general, right?
38:10
Like this is a really great eating in general rule.
38:14
When I eat, I am going to sit down and I'm going to have it on a plate no matter what.
38:20
Like you are like we are not eating while also working or watching TV or just
38:28
kind of staying distracted because our body cannot register all the things.
38:33
And so if you're watching TV and you're really into this show while also eating,
38:37
your body is not like able to.
38:41
Do all the things it does to stay aware and to stay, you know,
38:44
conscious of consumption the way it would at the level it would if the TV was
38:50
off and you were just sitting down and eating.
38:53
You know what I mean so keeping the
38:56
distractions low and then also having
39:00
it on a plate you know a lot of us mamas are really
39:03
bad about grabbing it walking around whatever having it on a plate again sends
39:07
that signal to our brain like oh here's a plate here's food on it we are now
39:11
eating you know what I mean so just yeah if even if it's a snack even if it
39:16
is that handful of goldfish we talked about earlier, could you put it on a napkin?
39:20
Could you put it, you know, on a paper plate and just sit down at the counter
39:25
for five seconds and eat it, you
39:27
know, instead of grabbing a handful and throwing half of it in your mouth?
39:31
You know, yes, yes is the answer. Yes, you could.
39:34
And so again, that will also help keep you in tune with like your portion control,
39:39
right, which is, which is,
39:41
necessary for weight loss, obviously. And your body will more readily hear those
39:47
fullness signals because of you just sitting down without distraction and actually
39:53
eating while visually looking at it on a plate.
39:57
So I do want to just remind you guys, I mean, as always around here,
40:00
right, it's not going to be perfect, right?
40:02
Like I am going, this podcast is going to end and you're going to be so motivated
40:05
and you're going to, you know, order your groceries with all these great snacks to keep around.
40:11
And then next thing you know, you're going to find yourself eating them fruit roll-ups again.
40:14
You're going to have had, you know, your boss's Reese's cups again.
40:17
You know, like it's not going to be perfect.
40:20
It's just like you're going to have to stay aware, right?
40:24
Like changing a habit, especially a habit we've had for a long,
40:28
long, long time, also takes a long, long, long time to change, right?
40:33
And so there, again, there's no shame. There's no guilt. There's no whatever in it.
40:37
It's just, if you detour, if you did kind of suck it up today,
40:41
then come right back to it when you realize, right?
40:44
Even if you're halfway through the goldfish, grab that napkin,
40:47
put the rest on the napkin and sit down and eat them.
40:50
You know what I mean? So just like, keep going, keep trying.
40:54
You know, a lot of, I have noticed so many ladies lately, like giving up because
40:59
they had like one screw up or like one bad week or whatever.
41:04
And like, we've got so much going on y'all that that is that
41:07
is the inevitable we are going to have tough weeks we
41:09
are going to have weeks when we eat better than others and so it's
41:13
just about keeping at it
41:16
and getting back to it you know what I mean so I hope this was a helpful podcast
41:21
I know I know it's just been one that that was has been a really big game changer
41:25
for me and my weight loss and and my eating habits in general and so yeah as
41:31
always and especially with your snacking y'all remember to Say Grace.
41:34
Music.
41:36
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Say Grace podcast.
41:40
If you enjoyed it, it would mean the world to me if you left me a five-star review.
41:45
Also, make sure to follow the show so you don't miss another episode.
41:50
Plus, if you're interested in learning more about losing weight and eating the
41:54
foods you love, make sure to subscribe to my email list by going to perfectfitnutrition.com. See ya!
42:04
You.