Why do you need to become a mindful campfire snacker?

Snacking, I believe is one of the biggest challenges we all struggle with, and we try to overcome depending on the time, day, and location. Snacking can be contributed by several triggers such as workday stress, impulsive cravings, thirst signals, or just plain boredom, to name a few. We tend to associate snacking with a negative eating pattern, but it can be healthy. Of course, the goal of healthy snacking is the quality and quantity (or portion size) of the snack, as I always like to emphasize. Let’s take a look at a typical work day, and when our bodies typically trigger for a snack.

Potentially, there are three pitfalls during a regular work day, the mid-morning boost, mid-afternoon slump, and the late night stress fighting snacking times. I like to think of our metabolism similar to a campfire, and the type of nutrients you eat can either blaze the fire to die down quickly or keep it at a consistent time and rate for the whole day. I believe this is where the quality, quantity, and type of nutrients you eat can be critical in building a mindful snack campfire. Just like with building a campfire, we need to have tinder, kindling, and fuel wood. Think of carbohydrates as your tinder to get the fire going, fats as kindling to raise up the fire, and fuel wood as quality protein foods. Remember the goal is to build a consistent and prolonged campfire, not one that will blaze and die out quickly.

Typically, on a good day, some start the day with a power up breakfast, and yet end up having the morning or after lunch snack cravings. When you do have these snack cravings pick out foods that have all three nutrients proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Utilizing a combination allows your metabolism to be fueled in the right way, and keeps you sustained to get through that mid-morning or after lunch work day meeting. Try to have fruits or vegetables packed as snacks ahead of time, or build a power up campfire drawer at work. Load up the draw with items like almonds, walnuts, peanuts, popcorn, raisins, sunflower seeds or, pumpkin seeds to name a few. If you are on the creative side, can always have a bag of dark chocolate chips, and build up your power snack at work.

Try experimenting and adding in a few handful of walnuts, almonds, raisins, and dark chocolate chips, alternate other options maybe add popcorn the next day. When you have the power up drawer filled with high-quality fuel wood, building your trail mix at work will allow your campfire to remain sustained. Instead, what typically happens is we end up blazing the fire with refined carbohydrates, and crash before the end of the work day. Let’s start by emptying out those desk drawers at work filled with candy, chocolate bars, doughnut sticks and being by putting in quality fuel wood that is accessible. Remember to be mindful, focus on quality and quantity (or portion size), and build a long lasting campfire!!