Grazing instead of eating meals

For me, forcing myself to sit down to eat has been part of my recovery process.

That being said, I still have lots of small meals and snacks, I just plan them out and sit down to eat them.

typical snacks are:
Fage total yogurt
fruit and nuts or nut butter
1 serving of sweets
hard boiled eggs and V8
cheese and V8
tuna fish salad scooped up with celery (I usually call this "lunch)
roasted seaweed
one serving tortilla chips with no fat refried beans, salsa and cheddar cheese (OK, that is more of a meal)

Probably my most common breakfast is just a cup of milk warmed up with instant coffee, but then I have fruit and nuts before lunch. I love oatmeal with raisins and almonds or on the weekends I might make french toast with whole grain bread, served with turkey sausage and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I try to like an omelette made with one egg and one egg white, veggies and cheese, but I can't seem to swallow more than once every week or two.

Pre-log your day and it won't matter how you get those calories in. So long as you're in a caloric deficit, you'll lose.

I think the problem with grazing is that you're within sight of any junk/easy-to-binge-on foods in the house. Can you get opaque containers for those? Even peanut butter or cereal--a tablespoon of peanut butter is not as large as you probably think it is

Measure/weigh and don't go in the kitchen without a plan!

RebeccaMaunder wrote: »

I am getting used to measuring and weighing. The planning I am still having a hard time with. I am working on not buying any junk to bring in the house. Not helpful on the days you would kill for chocolate lol.

I have chocolate everyday!

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me 2 I have chocolate everyday!! I am maintaining so not trying to lose anymore am a massive grazer / snacker!! my breakfast is my largest meal of the day lunch and dinner tend not to be over 400 calories eat alot of snacks little and often works for me to maintain my weight!!

I'm not a grazer per say, I usually eat 5-6 times a day so that I never go more than 4 hours without eating something. When I was calorie restricting I would eat 300-400 calories for a meal, and 100-200 calories for a snack.

I liked to prelog for the day and adjust it later if anything changed. I like to weigh and pre-portion snacks in advance for a few days and try to keep a few individual portions of freezable meals on hand for when I am short on time so I'm not tempted to eat something out of convenience. Even though I'm not tracking at the moment I still break down any large containers of things (like chips, carrot sticks, berries, nuts) into single servings before I put them away.

It works well for breakfast too, you can put one serving of quick oats, dried berries and ground flax seeds in a sandwich bag and keep those in the fridge. Then just dump them in a bowl with hot water in the mornings.

I used to not eat all day to save up for a big dinner with the hubs but now that I work out in the mornings I graze as I get hungry. However I only have a few healthy things available to graze on, greek yogurt, cheese, fruit, beef Jerkey etc.

I prelog the next day with the max portions/ calories I want to give to the snacks according to what I want to save for dinner and how macros work out with dinner.

Logging is not hard even for lots of things when you are eating the on the same things everyday. I just do multi add from frequent foods.

Then I eat them as I get hungry. I don't eat more than I have logged but if I am not hungry then I will eat less and have more cals for dinner and after dinner snacks.

I've only been doing this for a few weeks but I am really liking it. The method fuels my workouts well, keeps me from being hungry during the day, allows me to adjust macros, and still gives me enough calories for dinner.

Meal timing or grouping of food eaten doesn't really matter at all. Just log everything you eat. When you eat it isn't important.