How to Punctuate Your Meals & Discourage Winter Munchies

The Secret to Decreasing Your Comfort Food Cravings

Winter time can be hard on our health habits for a variety of reasons. Chilly temperatures make us want to hibernate—to stay inside, stay warm, and comfort ourselves with our favorite foods. Living in the Boston area, I’m no stranger to the impact cold weather can have on our routines and our cravings. Every year, I look for new inspiring recipes, tips, and tricks to help keep myself motivated and on-task through the long winter season. 

Most recently, this search for new information brought me to a really fun, delightful, and insightful course on flavors. Even as a lifelong foodie and nutrition expert, I have to admit: What I learned from this course was really fascinating and exciting for me! I learned a lot about the functional uses of different flavors and how they can interact with each other, but I think the most interesting and applicable takeaway I had was around using flavors to combat cravings. (If you're interested in learning more about Sherry Hess' amazing Flavor Remedy course, connect with her here.)

Simply put, we can use bitter flavors to punctuate our meals and discourage cravings.

How does this work? Basically, bitter flavors coordinate the messages between our belly and our brain.  We may have eaten enough, but our brain hasn’t gotten the message yet. They act as a cue that we can move on from our meal rather than mindlessly munching. 

In practice, the easiest way for me to make this happen is to have a couple of ounces of a bitter liquor like an amaro.  I’ve tried a couple of different ones recently and really enjoy the Averna. The bitterness of the herbal base in the liquor really does wrap up the meal nicely, and I’ve found that on nights when I have my Averna, I don’t continue snacking throughout the evening.

During the day time, of course, I’m far less likely to have a liquor at the end of my meal. If you’re looking for good lunchtime (or generally non-alcoholic options) to punctuate your meals, some great options include:

• Arugula

• Apples (don’t slice off the peel!)

• Brussels sprouts

• Coffee

• Kale

If you struggle with snacking and comfort food cravings, I encourage you to give this a try! And if you do, I’d love to hear how it goes for you. Comment below or send me an email at dawn@dawnmcgee.guru to let me know which bitter foods you tried and whether you felt like they made a difference for you.