Friday, May 6, 2011

Hindsight is 20/20 and weighs more

Hunger shouldn't take you by surprise.

You don't go on your lunch break and suddenly think, "Well my goodness!  This is odd.  I suddenly feel like eating something."  And it's really not that strange when it's mid-afternoon and you've skipped breakfast and barely eaten any lunch and suddenly you're gripped with hunger which leads you, logically, to the candy machine.  Or, worse, you haven't eaten enough during the day and come home and raid the kitchen cabinets where no one is watching and you have all the time in the world.

Hunger doesn't sneak up on you.  How many times have you regretted eating something?  And how many times was that eating precipitated by being so hungry that you couldn't think about anything else but eating that food?  It's pure science, really.  We are designed to need food.  Our body is going to get it one way or another.  Either you're going to plan ahead and feed it before you hit "the point of no return" or your brain is going to go right past that mark and make you eat a whole bag of chips before you even realize what happened.

Plan ahead.  If you go home from work everyday starving and you tend to overeat once you're there, you need to eat an afternoon snack before you set foot in that doorway, preferably 1-2 hours before you hit the doorway.  Or if you constantly find yourself at the snack machine because you haven't eaten a big enough breakfast or lunch, you need to 1) eat a bigger meal and/or 2) bring your own snack.

When I'm at work, sometimes people will offer me snacks or desserts in the middle of the afternoon, and I usually decline (but definitely not always).  It makes me laugh when they say "Oh, she's so disciplined.  She doesn't eat that stuff."  I don't say "no" because I'm "so disciplined" and I'm having to fight back my true desires.  Ha!  The true story is that I'm not hungry because of the nice little snack that I had planned and brought with me.  It's much more enjoyable to plan ahead and feel good about your food choices, then to look back and regret that doughnut that you ate because your stomach was growling and you didn't have anything else to eat.  Hindsight is 20/20 and weighs more.

What about you?  Are you good at planning for that "point of no return"?  What's your favorite healthy snack?

1 comments:

Morgan said...

Hmm! This is good "food for though." No pun intended!

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