How do you avoid binge snacking?

gnfpzzpshs

I have been doing pretty well since February and I don’t think this one day of over eating would throw everything off but I do struggle with my intermittent urges of binge snacking.

My goal is usually to stay in between the weight-loss calorie and maintenance calorie to give myself a little slack and sustainability. Yesterday I blindly ate the double of my goal and this happened only once since February but I know this is my biggest weakness and want to prevent it from happening again. I wonder if there is a good trick to control this habits.

AnnPT77

With something like this, I would be thinking about why it happened - what the triggers were, and that sort of thing. I'd want to think about the root cause.

I'm not saying these necessarily apply to you but some things I can think of that I or others have found can trigger binges include

• Over-restricting calories or food choices in the first place (leading to deprivation-triggered over-eating)
• Eating foods that spike appetite
• Having foods in the house that are things we personally have trouble moderating
• Having treat foods out in the open where we have to resist them every time we see them, and that eventually breaks down
• High stress
• Other emotions
• Fatigue, like from over-exercise or over-work or poor sleep quality/quantity
• Social situations where "everyone is binging snacks" or where I'd historically usually snack
• Boredom
• New medications that spike appetite
• Non-satiating food in other parts of the day or recent days
• Sub-ideal nutrition

There can be more, but that's some possibilities.

The key idea I'm proposing is to figure out the underlying cause, and change the plan about how to deal with it next time it arises, i.e., deal with it directly rather than re-directing to over-eating snacks.

Clearly, what helps for one trigger won't help with all the others, though some of them may interact (and stack up to cumulatively push us over the edge). Sometimes it's opposites, though: Over-restricting treats can trigger over-eating, but so can having treat (trigger) foods on hand and starting in on eating them. It's tempting to think "can't win" and give up, but that's no answer at all.

For any one of those, there are multiple possible solutions to experiment with, see if they help. I'm not going to try to go through the whole list, but if you can mention one or two things that might be triggering that over-eating for you, I or others here might have some ideas for you to try.

Because many of us go through this kind of problem-solving and eventually succeed, I'm betting you can, too. Hang in there, keep thinking, keep improving your plan, don't let the occasional oopsies get you down, keep going - you'll succeed long term.

Best wishes!

TheRoseRoss

Easy to say but not to implement: “it’s better to eliminate temptation than it is to attempt to resist it.” If you can, don’t keep “snack food” around. I’m assuming we’re talking about “junk food” because no one says “I ate nothing but salads and ended up doubling my calories.”

Boredom and stress cause me to “want to snack” but “snack foods” themselves are literally designed to not be filling + make you crave them. That way you eat a lot of them without getting full which allows you to eat more. You buy more and the companies make more money. That’s all it is. They’re designed to get you to eat/buy as much as possible. It sometimes helps me to think of it in those nefarious terms: “this is a trap.”

Also, if you’re “doing it right,” you are going to be hungry. You lose weight by consuming less calories than your body needs. Because you’re getting less calories than you need your body is going to panic and say “something is wrong! I don’t have enough calories! I’d better ring the alarms bells to let this person know they need to eat.” The alarm bell is you feeling hungry. You’ve got to learn to recognize that and overcome it. Think of it this way (gross oversimplification): you have calories in your stomach and calories in your body (body fat). If you continue to fill your stomach with calories your body will never use your body fat for fuel because it doesn’t have to. Getting the fuel from your stomach is a lot easier and our bodies are “lazy.” Deprive your stomach of calories and your body says “the stomach is empty. Send more food, please. I don’t want to have to tap into the fat reserves. Those are for emergencies and I don’t like going there.” Your body is not going to allow you to starve so once it realizes that you’re not sending food to the stomach it will give up and get what it needs from your fat reserves. Before then though, it will throw a tantrum (hunger pangs) telling you that you need to feed it.

Then there are the psychological aspects of certain foods/tastes simply making us feel better. When you’re stressed you eat chocolate. No one says “I am so stressed. What I need is an entire head of iceberg lettuce right now. That would make me feel so much better.”

gnfpzzpshs

Thank you both so much! Thinking about root cause is definitely the important step for me! Among the list, I think that particular incident happened due to excessive calorie restriction in prior days. Although I know boredom, watching Tv, and night shift work is probably the constant trigger for me.

I recently found drinking sparkling water definitely helps when I am hungry working overnight. Also I get hungry faster if I eat carb-packed diet. I am going to try to be more conscious about these two. I think I still can pull this.

Thank you guys again! This helps me keep going!

yakkystuff

Tv ads and seeing people on tv eating - especially gushing over food deliciousness like on cooking shows - sometimes triggers urges for me that can last for days - and may be for a specific food such as the actual burger that was advertised.

Other times, if it is actual hunger, any food in the house calls my name.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48621409#Comment_48621409

The classic advice here for boredom eating is to learn an absorbing new hobby, or resume an old one. Particularly good are things that require clean hands (like needlework, sketching, playing a musical instrument, etc.) or create dirty ones (like painting, carpentry, gardening, etc.). Some of those can be done while watching TV, even.

For the TV watching, some people find it helpful to get up and stretch or march in place during commercials or every X minutes. Usually the best way to break an old habit is to replace it with a new one, but if the habit is truly mindless eating, powering through that for a couple of weeks may break the association between TV and eating. That's also a case where some zero-calorie drink might be a reasonable substitute choice, even though personally I'd avoid anything food/drink like if trying to break that particular habit.

Night shift work isn't something I've done, so I don't really have suggestions to try for that, beyond trying to establish a schedule where you're getting enough good-quality sleep consistently, if that's possible. That can help most anyone, if it's not already in place.

BTW, I don't agree with a PP's ". . . if you’re “doing it right,” you are going to be hungry.".

I think experience varies, and I'd hate for you (OP) to think misery is inherently and universally essential for weight loss. I didn't feel extremely hungry while losing, at least not after an initial period where habit-induced cravings settled down and my body settled into a new routine.

While I agree with "no one got fat eating too many salads" (assuming they skipped rich dressings and crispy chicken 😆), people do get fat eating predominantly the whole and less refined foods. I did.

I also agree with "it’s better to eliminate temptation than it is to attempt to resist it." as a generality. But I also feel like the definition of "temptation" is a little squishy, and somewhat individual.

I do think some people are as a personality type more moderators when it comes to treat foods as a category, while others need to be abstainers entirely, at least for a while. (There have been discussions about that here where people categorized themselves in one or the other of those camps.) For me, and some others, there's a middle answer: Some treats can be moderated, while others need to be eliminated. I don't see the point in eliminating what can be moderated, since making the path unnecessarily harder makes failure more likely. YMMV.