Want a quick way to cut off junk food cravings? According to mental-health nutrition expert Dr. Leslie Korn, all you need to do is eat a raisin, really, really slowly. She claims that spending several minutes consuming a single dried fruit can help us short-circuit the munchies.
So you can’t just gobble down the raisin and instantly feel like you no longer want that doughnut in the break room. Here are the steps to Korn’s process:
- Pick up the raisin and pay attention to its wrinkles and lines.
- Smell the dried fruit and notice how your body feels. Is your mouth watering?
- Put the raisin in your mouth and spin it around, letting your tongue feel its surface.
- Then slowly chew it, while observing its texture and flavor.
- Swallow and stay still, thinking of the raisin making its way to your stomach
- Lastly, ask yourself: “What does my body really need?”
But why does this work? Korn says it uses our awareness and our ability to exert control over our “automatic” reactions. She explains that this style of raisin eating spurs a chemical relaxation response with a technical name: parasympathetic dominance.
The important part is that this technique should help override the impulse to eat a whole bag of chips when you’re stressed out. And Korn says it doesn’t even have to be a raisin, it could be a bite of almost anything. So there’s no reason that small bite can’t be chocolate, right?
Source: New York Post