The Berlin nutrition expert Dr. Stefan Kabisch explains how to snack mindfully – even if greed is in our genes.
Oh, a few chips, gummy bears or biscuits are really not bad. Let’s say to ourselves and reach into the bag despite a latent bad conscience. And then again. And again. And again. Until suddenly, surprise, it’s empty. Why do we keep falling into this snack trap?
Greed is in the genes
Because the craving for quick energy is in our genes: “In the Stone Age we were busy finding food for most of the day. It wasn’t always possible to kill large animals; people tended to take what they could find: roots and berries, for example, but they didn’t last long,” explains Dr. Stefan Kabisch (38) from the Clinic for Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine at the Charité. “The big exception was fruit, which brought a lot of energy because of the high fructose content, which is why our ancestors stuffed themselves with it.”
This genetic program to get energy by consuming large amounts of easy-to-process carbohydrates (of which fructose is one) is still going on today. The difference to the flight from the saber-tooth tiger: “Today our stressful situations are mostly characterized by mental tension. We then experience relief relatively easily by activating the reward system in the brain – for example with sweets.”
Cheat snack addiction
So far, so logical – but what helps against the craving for unhealthy snacks? The degree of severity with which we yeep afterwards varies from person to person: “It is genetically determined how strongly one responds to the reward principle. That applies equally to smoking, drugs and sweets,” explains Kabisch. According to the nutrition expert, you can outsmart your own predisposition on the one hand by making sure that the actual meals fill you up properly and on the other hand by providing healthy snacks: “Food that is not sweet but fills you up with other components such as a high fiber content, like nuts.”
Mindful snacking helps
But to be honest: If you love chips, nuts are not a satisfactory substitute in the long run, are they? And a handful of chips from time to time wouldn’t be a bad thing – if it stayed with the handful. And that can work – with mindfulness, as the US nutritional psychologist Prof. Even Forman demonstrated in a study: Those participants who followed his mindfulness strategies were twice as likely to maintain their weight loss of ten percent after three years as those who mainly focused on resisting temptation and suppressing thoughts about food. In addition, the quality of life of these people improved overall.
“Conscious snacking is a good starting point,” confirms Stefan Kabisch. These include the following ideas:
► Identify cravings: Craving chocolate? Crisps? Ice cream? Then stand by it and say it out loud.
► Observe the desire: First, consciously perceive the longing for the favorite snack of the moment. How does the stomach feel? What feelings are associated with it, are you perhaps sad or anxious? Does the craving increase or does it die down after a while?
► Accept cravings: There’s nothing wrong with eating something you crave. It’s much more about the how.
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► Consciously snacking: Don’t just start stuffing. It is best to take a small amount from the packaging. Pay attention to every single chip, enjoy it consciously. “If we keep food in our mouth longer, our brain has more opportunities to recognize that a reward is about to kick in. So we eat less overall with the same effect.” In the ideal case of a snack, this means that we can stop after a handful – and still feel good about chips, or perhaps because of it.