Having a snack once or twice is not something that I would consider a bad habit. It’s customary for me to have a snack each time I come back home before taking a shower. Since school lunch portions aren’t enough to stave off hunger for long, I started resorting to snacking after coming home. I snack at night usually because I have nothing else to do which is a problem itself. It’s a huge problem for me as it drains money quickly but also influences my weight a lot since I also snack before bed which is bad for my health as it results in sleep problems. So I decided to break this bad habit of mine by not snacking at all as my 7-Day Challenge.
The first day was easy. Since it was the first day that I was starting this challenge, I was quite conscious of what I was eating. Since it was a school day, I just had time to eat lunch and went on the day like normal. Instead of having a snack before I shower, I skipped the snack and went straight to the shower to keep my mind off. After the shower, I went to my desk to do the day’s homework and waited for when it was time to eat dinner. An hour after dinner, I did the dishes, then went back to my desk to do the remaining homework I had left. After that, I was free to do whatever I wished. There were occasions when my mind did wander off to the snacks, but that was easy to brush off since I had something entertaining that I was watching.
The second day went with a slight hiccup. I was not used to not snacking before showering since I often went hungry when I came back from school. While I did eat lunch, the portion wasn’t big enough to stave off hunger for the remainder of the school day, so I resorted to eating a snack when I came home every time. So I had a snack every day after school for the rest of the challenge. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I broke the challenge since it was out of necessity.
The harder challenge was yet to come: the night. I managed to keep myself from snacking intentionally for the first two days because I had something entertaining to watch. It keeps my mind from reaching the side of my desk to reach for something to eat. But by the end of the second day, I had already finished everything that I wanted to watch on my list. I had nothing to watch. I don’t have social media, so I didn’t go scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat, and YouTube has nothing recommended to me that I wanted to watch. I was bored, and that was a BIG problem.
The third, fourth, and fifth days were like going through withdrawal. I had nothing to watch, do, or read since all of my homework was done. I was bored, and usually the root cause of all my snacking was linked somewhat to boredom. Whenever I’m bored, I snack to compensate for my boredom. If I’m just doing anything that I don’t have a particular interest in but to pass the time, I snack. It is a vicious cycle that some people compensate for by mindlessly scrolling through social media or by doing endless rounds in video games. I compensated by eating, and it was hard to just not snack. Since my snacks were just to the side of my desk, it was incredibly easy to just reach over and pull one out to eat. So I put them in the living room instead, so if I do want to snack, then I would have to get up to go grab some. It works but would often backfire since I would find myself countless times reaching over an empty area to grab something. And since I had nothing to watch or do, my mind would constantly be thinking about the snacks that I put in the living room. But somehow I was able to succeed despite all the temptations I faced.
The sixth and last day was tough but it was easier than the prior 3 days. I devised a solution to prevent myself from snacking; drinking water. I snack because I’m bored and since I need to do something to ease my boredom, I replace food with water. It sort of helps since I merely replaced eating with drinking. Water doesn’t completely stave off the boredom, unlike food, so I do occasionally think of eating. But it does its job just enough so that I don’t have to think about food nearly the entire time. The only issue is that I frequently have to go to the restroom in the middle of the night multiple times which greatly impedes my biological alarm clock.
Overall, I see the challenge as a success. Before the challenge began, I assumed that I would fail the challenge since I’m not good at the gradual change I was trying to make, it’s immediate. Since I developed this habit when I was young, it was very challenging to change the habit that has been with me for a long time.
But I guess what made me succeed in this challenge was how I wanted to see if I did succeed in this challenge, and how my life would change. I did try to break this snacking habit multiple times in the past but failed every time since I don’t have the motivation to actually complete it seriously. Now with this being an assignment, I finally have the opportunity to try and break this bad habit properly.
