The Urge Jar

So what’s an urge jar, and how does it work to help you stop snacking when you aren’t hungry?

Well, here’s the idea behind it.  If you aren’t hungry and still want a snack, that feeling of wanting the snack is an urge.

If you remember the story of Pavlov’s dogs, the dogs were trained to anticipate being fed and to drool every time a bell was rung.  The way they untrained the dogs was to ring the bell but not feed them, so eventually their brains were reprogrammed to not associate the bell with food any more.

You can do the same thing with your own brain.

Right now you are trained to eat every time you feel an urge, which strengthens the neural pathway of urge to snack.

The next time you feel the urge, instead of rewarding the urge, you just want to allow that urge to be there for 1 minute.  If you do that, you’ll learn that an urge is just a feeling, and feelings usually pass after 60-90 seconds if you can stay with them in your body.

Not rewarding the urge with a snack over time will weaken the neural pathway, and over time the urge will stop coming up for you.

Once you’ve sat with the urge, give yourself the reward of moving a bead to the jar.  It seems silly, but you are actually using the primitive brain against itself.  The primitive brain loves to watch those beads fill up the jar.  So instead of rewarding the urge to eat, you are rewarding the practice of allowing the urge.