The Myths Promote Workday Snacking
Do you find yourself snacking more during work? If so, you're not alone. Many people start their day with a stop at Costa Coffee for a latte and a pastry, croissant, muffin, or cinnamon bun - as a reward for completing a few tasks or work calls in the morning or before lunch.
However, this morning routine can be the starting point of a cycle of snacking throughout the day. The first bite of the pastry may make you feel good, but by the second or third bite, you may start to feel weird in your body and mind. You may find yourself taking sips of your latte to get a caffeine boost to cheer up your mind. If you're not busy, you may start to crave more food, thinking you're still hungry, and that's when the snacking begins. You might grab some chocolate from your office or eat until lunchtime, thinking it's better to have an empty stomach for a few hours before a decent lunch during the lunch break.
As time ticks by, you may find yourself wanting lunchtime to come quickly. If you're lucky enough to be busy, you may forget you're hungry, and all the stress might overwhelm you and make you forget to eat. You might then turn to coffee to keep your mind going. However, this can cause your mood to swing because of the stress and your energy levels get lower and lower. This is the moment when your glucose levels may crash due to the morning pastry. This daily routine is common among workers, and it can cause you to be constantly stressed out due to the modern world routine.
Let me tell you that when you are in this routine, there are a few bad habit cycles or myths that you are trapped in.
Myth 1: Sweet or Baked Goods are the Best Breakfast Options
Many people believe that having a jam with toast, cereals, pancakes, or crumpets with honey in the morning is the best way to start the day. However, this is just a marketing ploy inherited from a cereal manufacturing company in the 1900s. After World War II, breakfast cereal companies targeted children by selling ready-to-eat cereals, and added sugar to improve the flavor. This new concept of cereals began to boom, as they were made mostly of whole foods from soaking oats to drying out, making it easier for children to consume without hating the earthy taste of oats.
For example, Kellogg's cereals always label their boxes as "high in fiber, proteins or even vitamins," using fancy colors to attract mothers who think it is normal to buy such cereals for their children's breakfast. If you are one of those moms, guess what? You have fallen for the myth of sweet cereals in the morning, which is not necessarily good for our children's health.
Myth 2: It is normal to reward yourself with sweets after hard work.
You may believe that indulging in sugary treats is a well-deserved reward after a hard day's work. However, the reality is that sugar is not as rewarding as you might think. You may argue that sugar releases dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, the part of your brain linked to reward, novelty, and motivation. While this sounds logical, it is important to understand that dopamine is more than just a neurotransmitter responsible for good emotional responses. Dopamine is highly addictive, similar to how you feel satisfied before and during showering, but shortly after, you feel meh. The "I feel good" dopamine release after consuming sugary foods goes through the same process as masturbation, becoming highly addictive.
When you eat sugar, your brain produces huge surges of dopamine, similar to how the brain reacts to heroin and cocaine. With this alarming information, it is essential to start rethinking whether sugar is genuinely rewarding or just addicting. Instead of relying on dopamine to feel good about your work, why not seek out other long-lasting, feel-good hormones that are beneficial to your body? While we may not know much about different types of feel-good hormones, it is clear that sugary product companies are aware of the addictive properties of sugar, which is why they include it in their products. By doing so, they create regular customers who keep coming back for more. Even promotions like "buy one, get one free" make you twice as addicted for the same price. During work hours, you may unwittingly become a puppet of companies that promote their foods as rewards for hard work.
Nowadays, many companies provide free snacks for their employees, making it seem like a pleasant work environment with rewards for hard work. However, it's important to remember that these companies are in the business of making a profit. Providing employees with snacks like Snickers, Bounty, or Cadbury chocolates costs roughly 20 pounds a week, making it a profitable investment for companies. Instead of thinking of indulging in sweets as a reward for hard work, consider it a reward for cocaine, which is similar to the effects of sugar.
Myth 3: You can eat whatever you want during the eating window of intermittent fasting.
You can still get away with eating junk food if you are in a caloric deficit, but if it's not part of your total calorie intake, then there isn't any harm. People often wonder whether they can eat fast food while intermittent fasting and the answer is yes, you certainly can! But there is always a catch; just make sure that whatever you do consume fits within your daily calorie total. Let's say a Snickers you got from your work is already 488 calories, a little bar, but the same as 5 eggs' calories. You will eat more than the calories you needed during the day in the eating window, especially with the thinking of "I can enjoy any food if I am fasting after that."
Although the focus of intermittent fasting is on when you eat rather than what you eat, that doesn't mean you can eat whatever you want during your eating windows and still lose weight. If your diet consists mostly of calorically dense foods like fast food, you probably won't lose weight or fats. Your motive for intermittent fasting is driving you crazier for snacking because this false theory makes you want to have more and more, and even during fasting, you are just feeling starving rather than fasting.
Starvation is a lack of the nutrients necessary for proper bodily functions. You can eat at McDonald's or processed foods every day, even in your fasting eating window, and still starve as the systems lack vital nutrients and can become so deprived that you eventually risk sickness and disease.
Fasting is the state the body goes into as a form of energetic conservation and/or healing. The body assumes a resting period where we allow the digestive processes, as well as parts of the excretory system, to shut down. Yes, this is what it means to be intermittent fasting.
When you skip breakfast or have a late breakfast around 10 or 11 am and stop eating before 7 pm, you can still feel starved, and it makes you look forward to tomorrow's breakfast time. During that time, you are just starving yourself but not fasting when you have a "just eat whatever you want" mindset. It is because you are snacking as much as you can before the fasting time. Take a moment and think about how you feel during the eating window while snacking all the time. You feel infinite thoughts of fancy foods come to your mind and distract you from what you should be concentrating on in your work. This leads you to the behavior of snacking, snacking, and snacking.
Bottom Line
You are more likely to snack during the day if you have sweet foods for breakfast. We have been ingrained to have sweet breakfasts in the morning by cereal companies since the 1900s. Nowadays, cereals are sweeter and more colorful to target children, and parents often believe that they are healthy for their kids. Secondly, you may think that sugar is a reward for your hard work, especially as a treat after a long day. However, the explanation of dopamine on the internet is ambiguous, as it does not take into account the overall health perspective. Dopamine provides short-term pleasure, similar to illegal drugs like cocaine, which is not something you want in your daily routine. Lastly, you are more likely to snack during the day because you may approach intermittent fasting with the idea of eating whatever you want during the eating window. Eating junk food will not provide you with enough nutrients to feel satiated during the fast, and you will feel starved if you consume unhealthy foods during the eating window. The next day, when you break your fast, you are more likely to crave more junk food and feel unsatisfied, making it difficult to concentrate on your work.
