**Disclaimer- I am not advocating consuming alcohol.**

Normally, I am the king of the grazers. Walk past an open bag of trail mix, and I will take a handful again and again. A mid-morning snack was a must at school, or my stomach would disrupt my teaching. While I did my best to make sure that my snacks were on the healthy side, the habit of eating constantly is not a good one. I have now found a way to beat that habit…drink more water.

This year, two factors forced me to adjust my eating habits. The first was my work schedule – no longer get a morning break. Normally, I would eat my favorite calorie-bomb cookies when my students had snack, but the second factor put an end to that. I have a treenut-free classroom this year, and my cookies have coconut in them.

Not having my typical snack time worried me a bit. When I workout in the mornings, I usually had a very noisy stomach by mid-morning. How would I ever survive from breakfast to lunch? Drink more water, of course. I still get a grumbly stomach, but then I take a drink and continue on with my morning. The noise goes away and I stay hydrated at the same time. Problem solved.

I know that my snacks were “healthy,” but eating that much was not. I have found that most of my grazing came out of boredom. Talk about an awful reason to eat! I have shifted my mindset to drinking when I feel the urge to grab something to eat. That has made a huge difference. I have done away with two feelings because of this shift. The first is that overly full feeling I would have after eating supper and then snacking while I did the dishes. The other is the feeling of guilt after consuming an entire bag of trail mix in a couple of days.

This post is not about weight loss. Yes, drinking more has been proven to help with weight loss. I did not do this to drop a few pounds. My weight, I am sure, has stayed about the same throughout the school year. The purpose of this post is to help people see that there is a way to combat grazing and eating when bored. Having this healthier habit also helps me follow Michael Pollen’s Food Rules statement: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Finding that glass of water instead of the handful of trail mix helps start a healthier habit…speaking from experience.