There's nothing wrong with treating yourself to chips, cookies or another snack that gives you pleasure. The key is moderation, but the problem is that mindless snacking prevents the body from knowing when it's time to stop.
Author Mindy Gorman-Plutzer, who writes about reworking your relationship with food in The Freedom Promise, shared with HuffPost Live's Nancy Redd on Wednesday the power of mindful eating. The secret, she said, is giving your organs a chance to respond to what you eat.
"If we are eating because we're stressed, if we're eating in an effort not to feel emotion, we're totally outside of ourselves. We're disconnected from our bodies. When we're disconnected from our bodies, we're disconnected from our hunger cues and our satiety cues. It's very hard at that point to stop when we've had enough," Gorman-Plutzer explained.
She then demonstrated a careful way to consume your favorite snack that turns it into "self-kindness as opposed to self-indulgence."
"I'm going to eat it slowly, and I'm going to allow my body to taste it, and what happens is my brain then registers the fact that I'm eating. It signals the rest of my body that food is on the way, all the hormones and chemicals get going, and my body is ready to receive food," she said.
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