Why do we snack? And how to stop!

Snacking is the act of eating small (or large in some cases) amounts of food between meals. Snacking can be one of the main challenges of a healthy diet as we can build unhealthy and compulsive snacking habits that can lead to binge eating and eating disorders.?

In this piece I am going to explain some of the reasons why we snack and take control of this habit.?

There are many reasons and triggers which lead us to snack both for good and for bad. They can be physical such as hunger, lack of energy or a quick way to get nutrients into the body. They can also be psychological such as boredom, stress, habitual or related to feeling rewarded.?

Psychological reasons for snacking are deeply connected to our body's hormonal responses and this can lead to patterns between our feelings and our eating habits. Here’s how.?

Stress and Cortisol: When we are stressed our body releases a hormone called cortisol and this can trigger cravings for high calorie, sugary and fatty foods. This response is rooted in our biochemistry because when we were primitive stress usually resulted in danger and led to the need for immediate energy. This is why you might feel peckish when you are stressed at work or picking at food when you are overthinking.?

Emotions and Neurotransmitters: Emotions like boredom, sadness and anxiety can also affect our snacking behavior. When we are feeling these emotions, our dopamine and serotonin levels drop leading us craving something to bring them back up such as sugary or fatty foods. It’s the reason why you look for a snack out of boredom to stimulate a dopamine kick. These dopamine kicks can be associated with the feeling of reward and pleasure making them an addictive habit when our mind is not occupied.?

Social and environmental : The environment and people around us can play a large part in our snacking habits. Being exposed to food advertisements, candy on store shelves and seeing other people around us eating snacks can set triggers in our mind to snack. And they make us crave that dopamine kick that we talked about in the last paragraph. Shops are designed to set this trigger off as they have the shelves near the till packed with surgery foods to tempt us to pick up a treat while we wait to pay for our goods. Don’t let them fool you.?

Learned behaviours: Our eating habits as kids largely affect our eating habits as adults. If we were brought up in a way where we were rewarded with a snack for a good deed we did then we start to associate snacking to rewards. The same is true if we were given food as kids when we were upset to help with our emotions. As adults we then look to food to cure our emotions. Keep this in mind when we want to reward your little one with a snack and think of the habit it is building?

So how can we reverse these habits??

The first step in breaking these habits is being aware of the triggers that lead to them. One action we can take here is keeping a food journal to track not only what we eat but when we are hungry and what is leading us to feel that way. This can help you pinpoint the trigger leading to your snacking.?

Another thing we can do to break the habit is reflect on our feelings. We should be asking ourselves, “Am I really hungry” or is this driven by stress or boredom? When we bring on this mindfulness it helps us catch ourselves and prevent us from raid our presses out of stress. On this topic we need to find a new coping mechanism for when we feel stressed or bored and associate this with something else other than eating. For example I can go for a quick walk about the house when I'm stressed as opposed to rushing to the fridge.?

The last and probably the most impactful action we can do here is control the environment around us. Make it as hard as possible to snack on sugary goods. If we truly want to kick the habit don’t have them at arm's length away in your home. When I wanted to stop snacking on sugar goods after christmas I literally got all the Heros, celebrations? and all the other rubbish thrown in the bin. Some might say it's wasting food. But snacks with that little nutritional value are really food.?

I really hoped you enjoyed this piece and found it useful and if you have any questions when it comes to nutrition please don’t hesitate to reach out!