Bad Eating Habits

What is it you eat when you snack? I have always found it's essential to keep a good stock pile of cut up cucumber and baby carrots around. Vary low cal, super healthy and chewing on a carrot uses much more effort than chomping on a chocolate bar!! I also keep homemade hummus around to dip into. If you want my recipe, give me a shout, I will post.

As for the water thing you are absolutely right. I regularly have a mug of warm water with a quarter fresh lemon squeezed into it to start my day. It is supposed to help detox you ready for the day and I have to say it does help my energy levels and I'm not good with mornings!! You should aim to drink a glass of water when you feel hungry and wait 10 minutes. if the craving passes then your body is simply thirsty so drink another glass! 8 glasses a day or upwards of 1.5 litres is recommended. I also drink decaffienated green tea through the day which adds some variation. Green tea is also known to boost your metabolism which can only be a good thing for weightloss!

Good luck!!!!

for the water, you could try this.
drink what you drink now. and try a glass more the next day. then try drinking again the same amount for another day then increase it the next day. so every other day increase it by one.
hope that helps
and as for eating even when not hungry. i say go work out. that usually ease the feeling of wanting to eat more.
hope that helps

For upping your water intake: Pick a few things through out your day to be "water triggers"

When you get up, have a glass, have a glass before and during every meal, and when you go to bed have a glass. Tada! that's eight glasses!

Snacking is not a problem... but making sure that you PLAN your snacks is really important. I eat every 2 hours... so I'm pretty much snacking all day. Granola Bars can be high in calories, sodium and sugar... so be careful... the sugar alone will set you up for cravings. Here are snacks that I keep on hand:
String Cheese
Apples
Bananas
Cauliflower (break it up small - spray it with I can't believe it's not butter and sprinkle with a touch of salt substitute and you'll think you're eating crunchy popcorn)
Flavored mini rice cakes
Broccoli
Carrots
Celery
100 calorie Almond packs
Yogurt
Coleslaw - (I buy the bagged slaw mix then mix with balsamic vinegar and fat free plain yogurt)

If you're planning meals and snacks every 2 hours... you won't be hungry.

Water....
A couple things... for some reason I find it much easier to drink water out of a bottle... so I buy bottled water and refill my bottles for about a week - then recycle them and get new ones.
I sometimes like some flavor - lemons, cucumbers, mint, ginger... all help to add flavor. Occasionally I'll add part of a packet of crystal light if I'm really craving something sweet.
I agree with finding drinking triggers throughout the day. I drink a full bottle of water before I drink my coffee. Everytime I take my dogs out I drink a bottle of water. When I'm watching tv - I drink for every commercial. We play "drinking games" when we watch tv... with water... everyone picks a character on the show and when that character speaks - you have to drink. Eventually you WILL feel thirsty and you'll be able to recognize that feeling for what it is.

Buy a really big bottle/jug/cup for water. A liter size bottle holds just over 3 cups of water. I can go through 3 of those a day, easy. The bigger container I drink out of the more I feel the need to drink. Weird I know, but it works for me.

I've actually noticed over the last few weeks that if I don't have access to water for 30-45 minutes I feel partched and my throat starts hurting. I think I'm addicted!

The trick I used for getting more water was to make sure that every other beverage I drank was a glass of water. And that glass had to be as big as whatever I drank previously. So if I drank a bottle of soda, I had to drink a bottle's worth of water before I could move on to another soda or other beverage. If it wasn't plain water, it was considered "other". Eventually I worked my way up to two glasses of water between other beverages. It wasn't long before my body craved just water. I would see the sodas in the fridge, but didn't want them anymore. I do have one on occasion (maybe once a week), but otherwise it's just water because that's all I want anymore.

The snacking isn't a big deal as long as it's healthy. You already mentioned not buying so much junk, so that's a good start. Make sure you read the labels and ingredients lists of everything you buy. I was shocked at how junk-filled many of these "healthy" foods actually are. Also be careful with low fat, low sugar, low calorie, whatever foods. I've found they're often worse than eating the original version because of all the additives they need to keep the flavor while providing less fat/sugar/calories/etc. Not everything, of course, just read the labels carefully, do some comparisons, etc so that you can make the best choices possible before the food even gets to your pantry. We all know once it's there, we're going to eat it no matter what because we spend our hard-earned money on it. Make sure it's worth your money, worth the calorie count, and worth the nutritional value.