Magical Tip for Conscious Snacking

First Listed August 9, 2009

I’m so excited to have Diane Carlyle share with us some great tips on the subject of making conscious food choices and she also sends out a wonderful newsletter, Spark, with weekly, easy self-care tips – and you all know I’m all about self-care!

Enjoy!

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Magical Tip for Conscious Snacking

by Diane Carlyle

One the most challenging – and rewarding – areas of self-care is diet. Whether we like it or not, there is a lot of truth to the old adage, “You are what you eat.” You can’t live without nourishment, and what you choose to nourish yourself with has a huge impact on your health and overall well-being.

But if, when you think about shifting your diet, you feel a knot in your stomach, you’re not alone. There’s a quote I love: “I don’t want to live in a world where I have to eat sugar-free sugar cookies.” Can you relate to this? I know I can!

There’s a common misconception out there that “eating healthy” means saying goodbye to all of your favorite things, especially sugar.

Sugar is ubiquitous, and this is, let’s be honest, for a good reason – people LOVE it! Humankind has a sweet tooth and has since the very beginning of its existence. Even modern hunter-gatherers, when they have a reliable source of honey, will eat it until (and after) their teeth rot.

It’s true that shifting your relationship to sugar and reducing the amount of sugar you consume is one of the quickest ways to improve your diet and overall health, mood, and energy level. But does that sentence conjure up images for you of the food police, breaking down your door to seize the remains of your chocolate bunny (sans ears)?

To my mind, that’s very much the sugar dilemma that most of us face. Deep down, even if we don’t have the pithy words at our fingertips, we feel a kinship with the French author and moralist, Francois de La Rochefoucauld who said, “to safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.” It’s also true that we have a limited amount of willpower, and there’s just too much sugar for most of us to successfully resist it.

That’s why it can be helpful to develop what I call a Sugar Standard. With a Sugar Standard, you decide to care for yourself in the highest way, and caring for yourself in the highest way includes treats – but only of the highest quality.

For example, let’s say you love chocolate. Instead of grabbing a handful of M & M’s every time you walk by the office candy bowl, decide that you’re only going to enjoy high quality dark chocolate, and keep some in your desk so that it is always available to you. That way, when you pass the M & M’s, you can remind yourself that you have a choice and that you have something better available to you if you really want chocolate. Or suppose you are a cookie connoisseur and you find yourself always running off to the deli for an afternoon treat. Get in touch with what you love about cookies, and ask yourself if those deli cookies really match up to your standard. If they don’t, skip them, and give yourself something that does.

Because it makes your decisions conscious, a Sugar Standard will help prevent you from eating automatically out of boredom, which usually means unconsciously consuming a lot of sugar. With a Sugar Standard, you consciously choose to release poor quality, sugary foods from your diet. As a result, you will naturally begin to decrease your sugar AND you will enjoy your treats even more and with less guilt. And that’s the first step towards having more energy to enjoy your life and live your divine spark!

About the Author: Diane Carlyle, CEC is the founder of Divine Spark Coaching, dedicated to guiding you in developing your own practice of spiritual self-care – a conscious way to of caring for yourself so you can enjoy your life and let your divine spark shine! If you’re ready to jumpstart your self-care now, then visit www.divinesparkcoaching.com and sign up to receive your FREE weekly self-care tip.