There are a lot of “No” in November things that go on, I like to shave the sides of my face so I’m not doing “noSHAVEmber”, and I think that one of my biggest obstacles is snacking. So I’m doing No Snack November. That means if I’m going to eat something, it has to be during a meal. No after dinner treats, mid-day stuff, etc…

There’s a popular belief that “we need lots of small meals throughout the day to keep our energy and metabolism up.” The biggest issue with that is there’s no science to back it up. So far as we can tell, it’s actually a marketing campaign by grain-based snack food companies trying to make us feel good about buying their products. It’s a “Factoid” which is defined as “an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.” To the contrary, every time you eat, there’s an insulin response and that keeps your body from using stored energy in the form of fat. The IDM Program has a great article that discusses the perils of snacking.

What you really need to do is limit the number of times you eat in a day. Even better is to go for a period of time without eating anything and then follow that up with eating. This is often referred to as “Intermittent Fasting” but is more properly known as “Time-Restricted Feeding”. You can read more about the benefits and methodology of IF/TRF on this excellent site. IDM has an article on TRF too.

So, the challenge is to go all of November without any snacking. Who’s with me?!