#Now if only I could work less than 6am to 11 pm 5 days a week... money can't solve that one yet. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ikehorganics · 3 years

Text

HOW TO REDUCE BINGE

EATING OVEREATING,

AND BORED EATING:

disclaimer: i am aware that binge eating is an eating disorder, but not a lot of people have access to professionals to help them, and this guide could help a number of people struggling with binge eating, it could be successful to some binge eaters but not all. i hope this assists you, and this all comes from a place of good faith not malicious intent. i am also aware that binge eating does NOT equate to bored eating or overeating.

skip the preface if you want to skip straight to the tips!

PREFACE:

I have been in quarantine for nearly nine months, and I have struggled with multiple aspects of my everyday life that have had to be changed and adapted to the new rules of society. Since the beginning, I have always preached about staying in doors, social distancing, not going out to into open places without a mask etc because this is a direct reflection of the respect you have for yourself and the people around you. In this strong belief, I found myself struggling to juggle being a first year university student, my fitness, mental health, food and constantly being bored within my house.

Food was the hardest aspect, and with being surrounded by food 24/7, weight gain was inevitable. At first, I had not realised how I ate on a regular basis, I woke up at 6am, and would be at uni between 8am and 5pm from monday to thursday, where i would usually only eat one meal and a snack between that, whether it be left overs from dinner for lunch and an apple or piece of fruit for when i feel a bit peckish, and 2litres of water. My day consisted of four lectures ranging from 1 hour to two hours and walking around a lot because I hated sitting for a long time, and occasionally doing summaries or watching netflix between lectures. And when i got home, I had dinner and would go to bed. That was my routine and it was never truly surrounded by food constantly available at my every beck and call.

During quarantine, I was filled with procrastination and demotivation to attend lectures online or read my books. And all that extra time was filled with having an efficient workout routine and eating, but then that eating turned to eating quite frequently whether i was watching television, and mainly eating for the sakes of eating and in gross portion sizes because it was now available. Let's talk about how I broke out of that cycle of over eating and bored eating:

1. PLAN YOUR DAY PRODUCTIVELY.

I needed some direction in my life, I forced myself to plan every hour of my day so I can do something productive for myself. I planned the times from when I would wake up at 8am, to the time it took to fix my bed, brush my teeth, workout, stretch, eat my meals, nap, spend time outside, spend time on social media and more. Not only did my eating habits straighten out, but I got more done with my day.

2. SET EATING TIMES.

Setting eating times was the best thing I had ever done. Breakfast was always at 12 midday, lunch at 2 pm and dinner at 6pm, but these were my eating times, especially since i was intermittent fasting. These times helped me plan my day accordingly, between eating times I would usually fill my day with studying, and doing summaries, catching up with work I had missed. This helps especially if you have a restrictive diet or fast a lot! Restricting calories and fasting for extended periods of time only adds to the urge of falling into a binge cycle because your body feels the needs to refeed!

3. LISTEN TO YOUR CRAVINGS.

Listening to your body is so important. If you want to eat pizza for lunch, don't eat a salad, eat the pizza because it will be mor satiating than that salad or pasta that you might not want as much. Because that pizza might just pop into your mind late at night and you will have a little late night feast, this applies especially if you are counting calories. Having cravings are normal, and unless you are on a no bs diet that is extreme, you shouldn't deny yourself of something that you really want for something that won't leave your soul satiated.

4. DRINK WATER DURING MEALS.

I won't say much on this, but having water before, during and after your meal is so important. It aids in better digestion and adds to the feeling of being satiated when you are done eating, plus it's an easy way to get your water in. Replace that coca cola or soft drink with water, especially if you know you don't get enough glasses of water into your day.

5. LEMON WATER.

A cup of warm water and a wedge of lemon juice squeezed into it is super refreshing, sip on it throughout the morning before breakfast, to aid in digestion. Lemon water is a thing that is constantly brought up, and shut down for being "ineffective" but it works for me, and I believe that it is a phenomena of the mind. If you believe lemon water can help, it will definitely help you because you have manifested its impact on your health. Lemon water and warm water is one of those things that 'curb' hunger, and if you are one of those people who sometime wake up hungry but can't bring yourself to eat so early because it could make you nauseous, then water lemon water in a glass is the drink for you.

6. EAT WHOLESOME AND NOURISHING FOODS.

Calories are a touchy subject, and they add up very quickly very surprisingly. A bowl of oatmeal will have a lot of volume, leave you satiated and keep you full longer than toast and nutella. No one is saying do not eat the nutella, but adapt it into a meal that will leave you full and satisfied for example, if you want something sweet, heave oatmeal with a tablespoon of peanut butter or nutella inside of your oatmeal! Eat foods that will nourish you and give you enough energy to go about your day.

7. PORTION CONTROL AND PHYSICAL FULLNESS.

Portion sizes are all up to you as an individual and how satiated a portion size leaves you. Eat portion sizes that leave you satiated, but remember that being satiated does not equal to being so physically full that you feel uncomfortable as a result of eating too much. Being satiated is very difficult because sometimes you eat food that tastes amazing, and even though you are physically full, you feel like you could eat more and that becomes problematic because you've eaten past your bodies physical limit. Eating what you are craving ( number 3 ) comes into play with this aspect, as you have to be able to know when enough is enough. If you feel as if your portion sizes are huge and want to reduce them, then reduce it gradually whether it means you want to go from eating 4 slices of pizza to 2 slices of pizza, then begin with eating 3 and a half slices or eating one less scoop of pasta than you usually eat. If you have no idea how to stop eating past your physical limit, eat until you feel like you're just about to be physically full, do this for a week, and see how you will become satiated with the portions you are eating, gradually lessen the portion sizes overtime until you are happy with the amounts you are eating! This won't happen immediately, it is a gradual process.

8. DON'T EAT TOO FAST. CHEW YOUR FOOD.

A lot of the time, we do not realise how fast we eat and how we don't thoroughly chew our food. The food isn't running away, take your time to enjoy your meal and chew it instead of swallowing after a few times of grinding your teeth. Take in the flavour of your food and really enjoy it in the moment.

9. IT IS OKAY TO FALL INTO OLD HABITS, BUT BREAK IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

Nothing in life happens in a linear manner, everything is gradual and has its ups, its downs, its regressions and just general moments we are not proud of. If you find yourself in a binge cycle or overeating cycle for a day or a week, it does not meal all progress is lost. It means you are human, you are not engineered to be perfect constantly. Have a mantra for yourself that you repeat to comfort yourself: “it is okay, tomorrow will be better.” or “it was just one day, i can go back to normally eating tomorrow.” or “I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, it happens to everyone.”

10. INCORPORATE HEALTHY FOOD GROUPS INTO YOUR MEALS.

Make your meals satisfying and as colourful as possible! Don’t just eat pasta or pizza, eat it with something healthy like a side salad or a side of fruits or a side of healthy carbs like roasted potatoes! Never just eat one thing especially if it doesn’t have any greens or vegetables!! It doesn’t have to even be a salad or anything fancy! It can be cut up tomatoes, or cucumbers or apples!

11. HEALTHIER ALTERNATIVES MEAN YOU CAN EAT MORE FOR LESS.

Your oven, grill or airfryer is your bestfriend. Fried food is delicious, but you feel insecure at times after eating something that was cooked in heaping amounts of oil. Remember an airfryer is just a small oven, and can do wonders too. If you want a burger and you have time, home made burgers are always amazing and tastier than their fast food counterparts! Make your burger at home so you can control what goes into it, or make your fries in the oven so you can have a much more healthy alternative for less calories, and have more of it! I’m not saying make your burger buns something like lettuce buns, but making your burger at home can significantly reduce the calories in comparison to ONE mcdonalds burger, and you can have two for less calories than once burger if you make it at home.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Hopefully these tips can assist you day to day, and you take them into consideration and even test it out! These tips worked for me, and I know they won’t work for everyone but some of them might be helpful to you!

#health and wellness #how to #bingeing #binging #binge eating #lifestyle #how to stop overeating #overeating #how to stop binging #how to stop overeating.

84 notes · View notes

webanalytics · 6 years

Text

6 Tips For Sending Your Email Newsletter At The Right Time

Have you ever noticed that it seems like every single company seems to send their email newsletter at the same time?

Usually they’re sent very late at night or extra early in the morning.

Which is, funny enough, when most of their audience is sleeping, so we wake up with an overstuffed inbox each morning.

I am guessing that you have also run into this somewhat minor annoyance.

But it literally is one of my biggest pet peeves.

If you are like me, the deleting of most of these newsletters has become part of your morning ritual.

It is pretty refreshing to send them all to your trash folder and get back to inbox zero.

I mean I love reading about data driven marketing tips but not at 7 in the morning.

We are constantly plugged into our email accounts with those supercomputers we call phones.

The days when you would check your email once in the morning and once at night is over.

But, alas, some companies still seem to be sticking to that email schedule.

This strategy is as outdated as that jewel colored iMac or Gateway computer sitting in your basement.

And all the effort you put into great content will be wasted if you pick the wrong time to send.

So I set out to find when the best time to send an email newsletter is, in the most scientific way ever, by signing up for 100 different newsletters and recording all of their send times.

1. Send it from 11-12PM, 1-2PM, or 2-3PM

If you were looking for the best time to send an email I would recommend selecting a time where there is little competition.

Like a time when almost no emails are being sent.

I mean why would you want your newsletter competing for your audience’s attention with a bunch of other emails?

That is just a recipe for low open rates and a drop in subscribers.

So to avoid that I would shoot for a period when no other emails are sent.

In fact, from 11-12PM, 1-2PM and 2-3PM not a single email was sent in our study.

Like not a single one:

Now you may be asking what is the best chunk of time out of those three periods?

And I would have to say that 2-3PM has the most potential.

From 11-12PM and 1-2PM are too close to the lunch hour and could get lost in the shuffle.

Unless your newsletter deals with a fun topic that they would want to read about on that break, I would avoid those two.

Instead try from 2-3PM.

Your audience will most likely be back from lunch by then and feeling a bit recharged.

They have already cleared their emails from the morning and are maybe looking for a little procrastination opportunity.

And boom, your email newsletter is there to help them out.

2. Or from 10-11AM

Now if you don’t want to be the only one sending an email during a certain time period, I have a perfect time for you.

This is another period where almost zero email newsletters were sent out in our study. In fact there were only one email sent out in that whole time period.

And I think that your email can handle a little competition.

This period happens to be from 10-11AM.

As you can see in the graph above there were a few other periods when only a few emails were sent.

But I do not think that they will be as fruitful as from 10-11AM.

For example, from 9-10AM is when a lot of people’s workday starts and 4-5PM is when it usually ends.

That means you are going to be fighting a lot more for their attention than just a few emails.

So to avoid these outside distractions I would choose from 10-11AM.

By then your readers will be settled into their desk, the coffee has kicked in and they are probably at inbox zero.

It is almost a perfect time for an interesting newsletter to pop up in their mailbox.

Additionally, I do find it a little odd that from 10-11AM has been pushed by experts and thought leaders.

But exactly one email was sent.

It really does not make sense, but it does present a new opportunity for your email newsletter to shine.

3. Never between 6-7PM

After carefully counting on both of my hands I was able to determine the worst time to send an email.

This time period was so crowded that more than 10% of all the emails in the study were sent during this hour chunk each day.

That is almost triple what an average hour should have received.

If you have read the graphs above you saw that 6-7 PM got the most emails of any period.

As you can see in the graph above if you decide to send your newsletter in this time period you are going to have some competition.

So I would avoid sending your newsletters during this period based on the jump in competition.

When you compare it to the times we already highlighted above there are 50x more emails during this period.

Even some of the times that got 5x more emails are looking pretty good to me right now.

Unless you want your open rates to plummet from that increased competition I would avoid sending from 6-7PM.

It does kind of make sense why brands would decide to send their weekly email at this time.

Their audience has made it home from their jobs and starting to relax. They should be pretty open to receiving a newsletter about their hobby, interest or activity.

But again, you are brawling in their inbox with a ton of other well-crafted emails for their attention.

Or it will be ignored and rolled into the next morning’s inbox clearing.

4. And avoid after 9PM or before 7AM

One of the easiest ways to fall into that morning deleting spree is to send your email late at night.

Like when your audience is sleeping, so they will see it in the morning.

I never really got the idea behind this practice.

Other than that brands think we want to read about the newest social media marketing tip at 6am.

I know that is the last thing on my mind at that time.

Now if it was an email about coffee being delivered to my bed that would be a different story.

But alas, I saw a ton of companies using this somewhat outdated topic.

We can access our emails at literally any time, the novelty of waking up to news or a newsletter no longer exists.

Or it is so far down the list in their inbox, they will never even see it.

Between 9PM and 7PM more than 60% of all emails in the study were sent.

With nearly 40% of them were sent between 9PM and 2AM. Or about double of what should have been sent if all things were equal.

That is a lot of emails your newsletter is going to be fighting.

Plus your audience is most likely not even awake, and the people who are up at that time probably don’t want to read your newsletter at that moment.

That means, you guessed it, that it will be put off until the next morning.

From there it goes right into the morning delete spree or simply forgotten about.

And all your hard work on the newsletter goes ignored.

Do not let your content be wasted because you chose the wrong time to send a great email.

5. Wednesdays & Saturdays Have Potential

Just like in the previous sections you are going to want to pick a day that has the least competition.

By sending your email on a day like this it is going to stand out like a beacon of good content.

The best day to send your email is Wednesday, with Saturday coming in at a close second.

As you can see they were some of the days to receive the least emails overall.

In our own tests we have seen Wednesday perform well, with some newsletters getting double the open rate of previous days.

I think that Wednesday is the perfect day to send your email newsletter.

Especially if your newsletter is related to their job or work.

They will feel a lot less guilty about losing themselves in your content for a few minutes.

Plus if it is really amazing they will want to share it with their coworkers!

And that means that if your topic deals with a fun hobby or interest I would send it on a Saturday.

Your audience will a lot more receptive to reading about something they could do later that day.

Or they will have a lot more time to absorb all of your fantastic content.

Either way both of these days are a great point to start testing to find what your own best day!

Before we go on I think it is important to highlight why I did not select Sunday as the best day.

I really think that it is too much of a wildcard day and the email could be lost in the shuffle of that day.

Then it gets pushed into the Monday morning mass inbox cleaning.

And although you may have loved to read the content you just don’t have time to.

This has happened to me too many times to count and I am guessing many people can relate.

6. Thursdays are the Worst Day to Send

Finding the best day to send an email was a little difficult and not very straightforward.

Thankfully the worst day was a lot easier to find.

And that day was Thursday.

It received more than double the amount of emails when compared to Wednesday and Saturday.

Exactly 25% of all the emails were sent on a Thursday, with no other days really coming close.

That put it well above the 70 or so emails I received per day on average.

Some experts proclaiming that Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to send a newsletter probably cause this.

I am guessing that people have been blindly following this advice for the past few years.

And now we are in a situation where the best day to send an email has actually become the worst day.

Conclusion

So there you have it, the best and worst times for you to send an email newsletter!

I now need to go click unsubscribe on about 100 different emails.

Or I may just cut my losses with that email address from now on.

But that sacrifice of an email address was definitely worth it because I was able to get some interesting findings.

Those findings will hopefully keep you from sending an email newsletter at the wrong time or day.

Just remember:

Send newsletters during these time blocks: 11-12 PM, 1-2 PM & 2-3 PM.

Between 9 and 11 AM is another great block of time.

If your newsletter is related to their job, send it during the workday.

Do not send newsletters at peak work movement hours, like 8 AM and 5 PM.

Emails sent during the night or early mornings are a bad idea.

Thursday is the worst day to send an email.

Mondays and Fridays should be avoided as well.

But the best day to send a newsletter is on Wednesday.

And finally, it is important to remember to test all of these findings with your audience first. These tips should always be used a testing points for your new emails, not set in stone facts.

About Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.

About the Author: Ryan McCready went to the University of Arkansas and graduated with a degree in economics and international business. Now instead of studying the economy he writes about everything and enjoys stirring the pot.

from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2jJHMq9 #Digital #Analytics #Website

#Analytics #Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog

0 notes

samiam03x · 6 years