Why can't I just stop eating when I'm full?

double post

I love ice cream. and cake.....etc. So I eat it. It's much easier to make sure you can get what you want when you plan ahead, though. I generally plug in my planned exercise for the day as well as my usual breakfast, lunch and dinner and see what I have left available and plug in my snacks and whatnot after that. then I'll know beforehand if I'm going to need to add an extra 5km to my run to get as much ice cream as I want or not. lol

I'm the same way and there is a big difference between being hunger and just craving something. I've learned that it's simply a habit with me. For a long time I would think about what I'd have for dessert after dinner. It didn't matter if I was still hungry or not and sometimes I didn't even crave a sweet but I'd have it anyway. Have to learn to make a new habit, take your mind off of it until you break the old and learn the new.

KathleenHope2015 wrote: »

It doesn't matter how delicious and satisfying that lunch or dinner was, I ALWAYS feel the urge to eat "dessert" within 5-45 minutes of eating. Even if I should be full, I feel like I just need to have dessert! It adds ~200-300 additional calories to my meal.

Unfortunately, in my family I have grown up this way, I've watched my parents eat this way. I'm in university and am still living at my parents, so it's not like I can just decide what we keep in the house. I've been a little overweight since my childhood, and although I'm just on the edge of the "healthy for weight/height range", I haven't reached my fitness goals.

I don't know how some people can do dessert one day a week!
I also can eat like 700-800 calories in one meal and not feel sick, and still eat 3 or 4 hours later. Why can't I just eat normal portions?

Does anyone else have the experience of finding it hard to eliminate sweets or have tips??

Not feeling sick after 700-800 calories and being able to eat 3-4 hours later DOES sound pretty normal to me. I think most people can do that.

As for dessert, I eat ice cream every single night. It's not about being hungry - I don't think one needs to be "hungry" to eat ice cream. I eat it because it's delicious and I want it, so I fit it into my macros each day and it's not a problem. My dinners are 450-500ish calories and my dessert is typically around 300.

I'm almost never "full" after a meal. I can put away some serious calories. Eating 3000-5000 calories in a day is easy and I do it every so often. However, that doesn't mean I have to do it every day just because I can. I make the decision to stick to my goals the majority of the time in order to obtain/maintain the body I want. I'd say most of us could easily eat more than we do, but we simply don't because we know what needs to be done in order for us to reach our goals.

So, the short answer as to why you can't stop eating is this: poor self control. Sorry, but that's what it comes down to. You are the one that chooses what you put into your body. There's nothing wrong with eating dessert every night, especially when you can fit it into your calorie and/or macro goals - which is totally possible. However, if you can't manage to fit dessert into your calories, I suggest to pick a lower calorie dessert, eat smaller meals/snacks earlier in the day to save calories for a bigger dessert, or skip it altogether. The choice is yours, but there's no magic trick to make you not want dessert after dinner.

1.) Eat less dinner.
2.) Eat a smaller dessert.



Over time, you can decrease the dessert, if you desire.