Sugar Cravings? Try Tetris

Health magazine has a really interesting article this month about sugar cravings.  Apparently, when you get the urge to eat something sweet, you should play Tetris.

Tetris, for you millennials, is a classic video game where different shaped blocks fall and you have to arrange them so they fit into each other like a puzzle.  The higher up you go in levels the faster the blocks fall, until you start making dumb mistakes.

Why this game?  Because according to the study’s author, when you are hungry you visualize what you want to eat, and playing Tetris prevents you from visualizing that cupcake.  It worked for 24% of the participants – after the game they weren’t hungry.

(You know I had to try this out.)  Sadly, I am not in the lucky the 24% of the population who benefited from this technique.  But on the up side, brownies are just as delicious as I remembered them to be, and I made it to Level 12 after playing on my phone until it ran out of power.  (I’m not proud; just acknowledging.)

Right now it feels like my life is a giant game of Tetris.  I’m trying to make all the pieces of my life work so my mom, kids, husband and business are taken care of, even though life keeps throwing stuff our way at an ever increasing pace.  But unlike the video game, where you have to juggle everything solo, I’m blessed to have so much support.

The prayers, emails, phone calls, posts, tweets and texts you have all sent my way with tips for getting my mom through chemo, and shares of encouraging stories about friends and family surviving and thriving after cancer, have been overwhelmingly wonderful, and I want to thank all of you for it.   It is truly appreciated.

I will try to get my blog back on some sort of a schedule again (and my comfort food sugar cravings in check), but for now I’m just living day-to-day.

And playing Tetris.

How about you?  If you had to play a game to take your mind off sugar cravings, which game would it be?  (The game can be newer than one from 1985.)

Lisa 

• @sheslosingitnet
• http://www.facebook.com/ShesLosingItnet

ShesLosingIt.com (c) 2014 Lisa Traugott. All rights reserved. No portion of this blog, including any text, photographs, and artwork, may be reproduced or copied without written permission.