If I can think of one "food" category that challenges me most these days, it is snack foods. If they are in the house, I will eat them. I like the taste of crunchy, salty things.
Recently, my husband Mike and I went grocery shopping. I spotted some guacamole tortilla
chips and looked past them because I know, "If they are in the house, I will eat them."
So I had no plans to buy them.
However, Mike spotted them too. And he wanted to buy them, so he did. Here comes a curve ball!
So, the chips were in the house. What do I do?
That first day, I ate some.
But here is the difference in how my old self would have dealt with this versus how I deal with it now:
Old Me
1. Get the whole bag.
2. Sit in front of the TV or computer.
3. Start eating out of the big bag. "Forget" to track the
amount.
4. Blank out and become an eating machine until my hand scrapes the bottom of the bag.
5. When I come back to myself, think "I can't believe I ate all of that." Shame, guilt, and depression comes on me. I think, "I'll never change."
* By the way, "Forgetting" for me meant lying to myself that I would write it down "later," knowing that later was never going to come.
New Me
1. Plan A: Keep the chips out of the
house or if the chips make it into the house (not by me):
Plan B: Look on the back of the bag to see how many chips are in 1 serving. Count them out in a dish. Put the big bag up out of my sight.
2. Document the amount either by writing it down or use an
app.
3. Eat my serving and enjoy it with full attention, guilt free.
The main reason I don't want to make a regular diet of snack foods is because the servings are so small, they pack a large calorie wallop if you eat a large amount.
One of my sisters-in-law found this out the hard way. She was once deceived into thinking that she wasn't eating much in her small, daily bag of trail mix.
It was only through reading the label that she discovered that her daily bag of trail mix had 10 servings in it!
If you are having problems with your weight, I would wager that snack foods are a regular part of your diet, whether sweet or crunchy.
Don't blank out. If you choose to eat them, then do so with full awareness, control your portions and enjoy your serving.
However, if it is a food that you have difficulty controlling, then my advice?
Don't bring it into the house: "If they are in the house, I will eat it." That's just reality.
You have to know your weaknesses and do what you can to protect yourself from them for your
health's sake.
1 Corinthians 6:12 says it best:
"All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any."
As long as you blank out and avoid exposing your habits to light, the more those habits will have power over you.
Your habits eventually write your destiny in this way (I read this a long time ago):
"Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap your destiny."
If you want to achieve your destiny of good health, then sow actions and habits that nurture it.
As for me, I put the bag into the back of the freezer so I didn't have to look at them after eating my serving of chips. Mike ate the rest.
I had other foods that I could eat when I wanted a snack. Sometimes we can eat more simply because we don't give ourselves better
options.
However, you have a win/win with better options and don't have to deal with the snack food blues!
Be blessed in Health, Healing, and Wholeness,