#99 Why You Can’t Stop Snacking

Yes, yes, yes. Boss Man, hope you're good. Welcome to this week's episode. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's podcast topic is one that I think we're probably resonating with 90% of people listening to this, whether it's on social media or listening to on the podcast. Why you can't stop snacking. Now again, snacking, snacking, snacking. I hear it all the time. We've had a number of guys who joined us in the last couple of months. And this is one of the things they always say. So I'm just going to paint a picture here and again, this might resonate with some people. You get home from work, put the kids to bed, organize yourself, whatever it might be, you eat dinner, right? So you might have had your dinner an hour ago. And basically comes like eight o'clock, half a say at nine o'clock. And even though the kids are in bed, you're now in the couch, the telly is on. The dinner was grand. And yet what happens is we go to the fridge. We go to the press every single light, right? Now what I will say is I'm going to premise this. I'm going to be sharing with you here a little bit, but why we snack, right? Why people snack? Because I think if you understand and you've got more awareness around why you do what you do, it would actually help massively help. But understand as well, snacking is not a bad thing. If it's factored in as part of your plan, that's important for me to stress here because I'm somebody who likes to snack, especially in the evening time. So it's not all bad. When it becomes a problem is because once when you, when you're massively overuse and two, when it's basically the thing that's either making you sleep off, maybe your whole week goes off as said, you're binge eating and it's this pattern that you feel guilty about. It's an ultimately it's the thing that's actually stopping you from getting results. But the reality is this is a scenario from most people. Now, most Irishmen assume that they've got a willpower problem, right? Or they've got a discipline problem. Here things like, I'm just bad with food at nighttime or I got no self control. I need more discipline, right? This is what they'll tell themselves. But you're not snacking because this is important for me to stress here. You're not snacking because you're hungry. Understand that. You're snacking because something else has triggered the snacking. I have a concept I coach or guys on called STB stressed tired of bored. I've mentioned it before on podcast, but you could be at the stressful day. You might be bored, might be watching some nonsense on the TV, um, your self and your partner, uh, I'll be watching something again. You're not really interested in, um, it's just a habit. Again, you might be exhausted tired. The couch, the tele, the time of night, all of these things feed into subconsciously while you do what you do. It's all part of it. It's all part of what I will call a pattern. It's a pattern and we are all in patterns on a day to day basis. So I just want you to understand the telling is a trigger. The time of night is a trigger. The type of day you've had is a trigger. What you're watching is a trigger. Most people don't snack at 12 o'clock in the day when they're busy at work, right? Because they're in a different pattern. So understand that there's lots of different things that are triggered. You're not hungry. Most like I was in 99% of people who are snacking at night. I'm at eight or nine o'clock after a dinner are not hungry. So they're not hungry. Okay. It's just a pattern. And for most Irish guys, their day looks very, very similar. You get up early, um, you might bring the kids to school or you get the kids ready. You get to work, works a bit mental. You get home at an evening time. You start out the kids. You start out the family. You might have a couple of other jobs to do. You eat the dinner, put the kids to bed, start out tidy up around the kitchen. You finally sit down. It's eight o'clock. Happens at maybe nine o'clock. And guess what happens? Your brain looks for a reward for your day. That's what's going on. So consciously. So after a long stressful day, remember not just at work at home, your second job, your brain is depleted. Does that think called decision fatigue, which I've spoken about before as well? You have so many decisions to make on a day to day basis. Decisions in the morning, where you're going to be going, even decisions how you want to get to work. If you're traveling, uh, decisions at work, when you get home, so many decisions you have to make and that takes energy. And the reality is when you are tired, right? You don't have the capacity to make a better decision. So what happens is you want to reward yourself. You don't want to have to think about it. Your hand reaches for whatever is closest every single time, right? Because you're not, you don't have the energy to make a better decision because you made so many of them across the day. And that's the pattern that you're in. And this is probably something that's really important to understand. It's rarely about the food. It's rarely about the food itself. It's about what the food represents. Let me repeat that. Snacking is rarely about the actual food itself. It's what the food represents. And the food represents things like comfort. The food represents things like a reward. The food represents switching off. So let me repeat that. It's not about the biscuit or the kick-ass. Are the maris ice cream? Are the pringles or the tatles? It's not about that actual particular. Yes, they're all very nice. But it's why that food represents. It represents. I can relax. It represents, oh, this is nice. Comfort. It represents now a time to switch off. That's what it really, that's what it's all about. This is again, is why you don't have pringles in the middle of the day because you're not switching off then, right? You're not comfort then. You're actually in the midst of a working day. So this is an important thing to understand. The biscuits with the tea and satisfying any hunger. You don't have hunger. Remember, you've just had your dinner. So you couldn't be hungry, right? You couldn't be hungry. What that snacking is doing, they're satisfying something else entirely. So it's important to understand that because it doesn't make a difference. How much will power you have? It doesn't make a difference. Like if you hide the snacks and put them in a different cupboard or whatever other tactic you'll see, you first need to identify what's actually driving this snacking. And then you can address that instead because maybe if it's you're overworking, maybe you're stressed, maybe you're actually under eating during the day. Maybe you're actually not eating enough across the days. When it comes to even time, like, I eat nothing today. I don't know what I'll have a couple of things. Maybe you don't actually have a wind down routine to unwind and and feel more relaxed. You need to fix the cause, not the symptom. And another thing that really fixes this is when you actually allow an evening treat or an evening meal as part of your overall plan, then it becomes part of the plan. So it doesn't become this snacking thing that you do. This grazing you have, it actually goes, I'm going to go and have my evening meal, which might include a biscuit or two, but it becomes part of the plan. This is why plans are so important. This is why the guys you work with, that's the biggest game changer for them because they want to have no guilt around if they've got a kick up as factored into one of their days. Or they have a couple of biscuits or they have maybe a toss of sandwich. It now becomes part of the project, right? It doesn't feel like, oh, I shouldn't do this exactly. This is one of them. This is one I'm having. So what we first fix the cause of why they might be snacking in the first place or grazing because. Most people are not aware of that. So a couple of things here. I want to give you some practical tips that would be useful. If you eat more protein during the day, and again, I'm not going to say protein protein, but most people are under even protein, having protein in every meal, simple protein choices breakfast, but include things like Greek yogurt, eggs, two very simple choices during the morning time lunchtime, any form of meat, walk really really well, where there's a sandwich, whether that's in a salad, whatever you're having for your lunches, everybody has different types of lunches. Dinner time then you don't have your meats, probably for most people fish again, tunas, all that kind of stuff works really well. But if you have enough protein during the day, what happens is your cravings actually reduce. The reason people have cravings, craving is basically your body's a desire for fast form of energy and normally sugar is the thing you crave. It's because our blood sugar level has been all over the place and it's because we're not eating properly across the day. Again, this is why having a proper plan and structure in place that actually balances your blood sugar levels, your energy solid. So when you come to the event and you enjoy your dinner, yeah, you might fancy something, but you don't have this big craving. You're not absolutely wrecked, right? You're properly fueled. So when you have a decent structure and decent protein across your day, guess what happens? Your your evening cravings actually drop, especially if you're hydrated as well across your day. And second thing I would suggest is building a simple wind down routine. Again, if you've got a routine that actually triggers your body and your central nervous system to unwind, then your body feels more relaxed. In other words, it's not craving or it's not really wanting another type of reward. Remember, it's not about the food you're choosing, it's about what the food represents. And for a lot of people, it's a reward for a long, hard day for a lot of people as comfort. But you can actually give that reward in different ways away from food, right? And then the third thing which I would suggest and I've already mentioned is something I do myself. Okay. Is that a snack for me, I actually factor in evening meal or some form of snack in to my day. So I will have maybe some form of a yogurt bowl can sometimes be really nice. I can make sometimes protein pancakes can be really, really good. I might have a toast to sandwich like it's factor this part of my plan. So after dinner, if I have dinner around half six, seven o'clock, around half eight, nine o'clock, an hour and a half. So before I go to bed, I might have something when I always have an evening meal because it's something I look forward to and this factor this part, I don't, I don't end up snacking on pringles or crap. I have a high performance evening meal, right? That becomes part of my overall plan and this removes any form. form of guilt or any form of grazing because I know I'm going to have eye four times a day. It's very simple. It's locked in. Right? So, hope that's useful. And again, just a summary, the lads who crack evening snacking, this is important. Lads who crack, quote, unquote, evening snacking, don't have more discipline than you. They don't have more discipline. They just understand, number one, what's actually driving it, usually STB being stressed, being tired or being bored. And they have a plan that allows for, they don't have to think about it. Remember, decision fatigue, one of the biggest game changes for all the guys we work with is they don't have to think about their food ever. We do all the tracking for them. We do all the weighing for them. So, they don't have to think about it. Okay? They don't have to think about it. They just have a plan that has all the foods they normally eat included in it. How many slices of bread? How many slices of ham? How many spots? How many kickats? A lot of our guys are shocked to factor in. But when it's factor is part of the plan, they don't have to think about it. It just becomes the part of the plan to follow. Because I believe Irishmen in particular are very good at following plans. They just have the wrong, they just don't have a plan to follow. Right? So, the thing that wins from most people is they don't have more discipline. They understand why they're snacking. So, we fix the cause, the stress. And I think there's a question here from James on Instagram about stress, managing stress. I'll come to that in a moment. So, they fix the cause of the problem. Being stressed or tired or bored by having a wind down routine, by having better boundaries across the day, by being having more energy across the day, from their diet, from their whole. all that kind of stuff. So, they fix that part. And then they might have a factor in an evening plan, an evening meal plan day and after dinner. So, now it becomes part of the overall weekly result. So, they don't have to rely on willpower. They don't have any guilt around these other negative emotions that can troll people off. Okay? So, if you. if this is resonated and you have a snacking problem, as such, you don't have a snacking on, you've got a pattern problem. And if you want to break that pattern, you need to understand it. Now, again, we have a whole framework on this. I'm happy to send it over. So, just send me a message with the word snack. And I know you've listened to this podcast episode. I've been tuned into one of these lives. Send me the word snack. I'm any my social media Instagram mainly. It's probably the best one. And I'll send you a simple framework how to do this. Right? To answer James, the question, things really go question. How about managing stress? So, stress understand comes in many different forms, firstly. And I think I've done a couple episodes on stress. But, most of you are not aware of the different types of stress. So, there's loads of types of stress. For example, there's physical stress. Right? So, like, one of the things people are. if they over-trained, they're under physical stress. There is emotional stress. There's social stress. There's loads of different types of stress. But understand that stress is just basically your stress hormone cortisol that we all have. It's a hormone that keeps us alive. It's a really important thing. And having some form of stress is important. We didn't have a. Cortisol stop. We wouldn't survive. So, the reality is understand that not all stress is bad. But what happens is people are in a stressful situation, otherwise their cortisol hormone is too high because of their lifestyle. So, managing stress really is context-dependent because it's understanding what is causing the stress and what type of stress you have. But basically some simple lifestyle things that can help. Number one is making sure you've got a decent sleep routine in place, because that's when your whole central nervous system is recovering. So, what I would say is go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time. That's the first thing I would say. I'm just going to give some practical tips here, James. Hopefully they're useful. Second thing is manage caffeine intake. Caffeine is a stress trigger. So, in other words, it spikes it. It's not bad. I think it's really good for a focus and being intentional. But if somebody's. I know if I'm feeling a little bit more stress than normal, I would cut back on my caffeine. So, two cups a day is a good place to start from. Most people don't have any caffeine after two or three o'clock. Again, that will help with sleep and that's why those two are linked. High quality food, avoiding processed food. So processed food is any kind of food that has a long shelf life. Try to eat wholesome foods as much as possible. Again, that's just better for your whole digestion system because stress, again, your gut has a big impact on stress, your brain. Like, all these things are linked underneath the hood. So small things like that can be useful. Breathing techniques, actually managing your breath. I'm not into. I'm not a breathwork person at all. But if I'm feeling stressed, somebody that works really well and our mental performance coach own talks or climbs about this. Inhale for four seconds. Hold your breath for four seconds. Exhale for four seconds. Reset for four seconds. Right? So it's like 16 seconds. That's one round. Do three rounds with that. So it's like a door. Inhale, hold. Exhale. Reset. Four, four, four, four. Do that three or four times. What will happen is you will change your whole system from an actual stress standpoint and it will just reset it. So you'll feel much calmer. Okay? So if you're in stress, this is such an easy thing to do because you don't need any equipment. You can do it at your desk. You can do it in the office. You can do it in the car. You can do it before you go to bed, right? For feeling stressed. So that's another practical tip. I think really been important that using that kind of breathwork, eating higher quality foods, getting good sleep, managing caffeine content. I want to give you five or just think five tips is probably useful. And I would like. I suppose it's understanding what's causing the stress. Like I'm not to show what that, what your situation is, but I think just maybe having. Like if you're not training and exercising, that's a great way to reduce stress as well because you're allowing the stress to come out. So like cardio can work, strength training can work. I would suggest low-intensity cardio is probably the best piece of exercise if you've got. If you've got high stress because strength training or high-intensity training is actually putting physical stress in your body. So if you're in a highly stressed state, any of our clients are in a highly stressed state when they start, we don't want to put any more physical stress on them. So we put them in maybe zone two cardio, which is basically some walking incline walking. I actually do a zone two cardio session today as a part of recovery day, which I basically sat on the bike for 40, 45 minutes and listened to a YouTube. But that was my exercise as such for today. It wasn't a training session. It's more of a recovery session, but what it does is it helps me recover because my body needs and needs to be in a recovery mode a little bit. I felt it today, right? So there are five tips, some form of exercise, low-intensity exercise. Hope that's useful James. Hope that's useful for anybody else listening and really good question, by the way. Because stress does lead to overeating, stress does lead to snacking. It's a cause of it. So again, I think the main thing I want to stress here when it comes to snacking, it's understand is never about the food. So if you can actually understand the pattern of snacking your rim, it's being caused by other things in your life, usually being stressed, being tired, maybe boredom, and understand that snacking happens in certain patterns. I've shared some tips on what to do there. Understanding it, understanding the triggers, finding ways to solve it, again, having different evening, wind-down routines and so on. And if you found this useful and you'd like a simple framework on fixing it, I've done a whole episode. I think it's like episode 30-something. I'm not sure it is on snacking, evening snacking. That goes into more detail, but I can send you over framework for you to read on a PDF, send me the word snack on social media, Instagram, particular, or I think my WhatsApp is also an Instagram if you want to send it there and we can send that over. So guys, thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the questions. Really, really solid. And yeah, until the next episode. Have a great day and I'll talk to you then.