Snacking Is Killing Me

kidrow21 wrote: »

All have some good info and points., If anyone wants to take a look at my log and give me some pointers from there. Would be great.

Is evening (after dinner) when you tend to snack? Or does this happen throughout the day?

I agree that snacking is a habit and (for me) it stems from boredom. My snack danger time is after work just before dinner...so I've taken to just going ahead and eating dinner when I get home. Plus I don't buy them if I can keep from it...lol...I do love me some Doritos

sy_19440 wrote: »

Meal plan! On Saturdays I write out each meal throughout the day including snacks and only purchase foods on that week's plan. My snacks included yogurt, ham & cheese roll up, veggies. Snacks don't have to be unhealthy.

If that works for you, more power to you!

But know that a healthy weight loss plan CAN include what you would most likely consider 'unhealthy' snacks - you just have to plan for them in your overall daily calorie 'budget.'

Eliminating snack foods that are a trigger (like opening a bag of chips and then hoovering the whole thing) is a strategy that can work for some. But for others, limiting these items - instead of eliminating them - can be a better means to compliance because a feeling of being deprived of these items can lead a lot of people to binge eating the very things they're trying to avoid.

Different strokes and all...

SLLRunner wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

I wonder what you mean by snacks.. It they are small portions of fattening junk food.. all that will do is make you crave more.

So ditch those kind of snacks and go for healthy snacks that are good ..but not so good.. if you know what I mean.

For example.. i have some bird seed kind of protein bars in the trunk of my car for when I'm desperate for something before or after I work out. I don't crave the things at all. So, I only eat them when I must. If they were super tasty.. they'd be gone.

There is no such thing as fattening fooood, there is just food that is more calorie dense than others. Those foods are fine in moderation. I don't understand eating anything that you don't find tasty.

That is absolutely fine that you were able to get to goal and are able to eat this way. You might have a bigger deficit, perhaps, or other reasons that will allow for this . It is great when your method works.

I can eat most foods in moderation but have to stay away from the particular ones that have been problematic for me. Those tend to be salty, oily carbs or sweet, fatty carbs. I think that is why LCHF works for me for blunting hunger. Potato chips, ice cream, sugary cookies, chocolate things tend to make me hungrier and want more soon after even though I've had enough calories.

Foods that trigger an individual to want to overeat can be considered by them as "fattening". It is a figure of speech. Some people, as your are aware, are able to keep "fattening" foods like cookies or ice cream around and have only a little bit. Others are tempted just knowing that they are in the house. Calorie-dense snacks are fine in moderation if they can be consumed in moderation, obviously. But that is up to the individual dieter's discretion not anyone else's.

I think that having food around that I just want to eat to be healthy is a reasonable way to avoid unnecessary calories-- "Eat to live not live to eat" motto. I'm much less likely to overeat on carrots or green beans than I would on Cheetos or chocolate. So I eat Cheetos maybe twice a year and have dark chocolate every so often. I can eat a little square or two and stop. I do not feel sorry for myself and don't miss the classic what people refer to as "fattening" snacks when they are not in my cupboard. I agree that people need to define what they mean by the word snack.

Snacks and candy are free at my workplace. At the beginning of this weight loss journey, I planned my food each day to allow one snack from the candy bowl. After a month of having one Hershey Kiss each day, I got to where I just didn't want the candy any longer. So, I quit planning for it and was ok.

Snacking is what sent me to morbidly obese in the first place. I feel your pain. What has worked for me during dieting and now during maintenance is eating more than 3 meals a day. Granted, I do a LOT of exercise six days a week, so I earn up to 1000 extra calories so it's not like I don't have the calories to eat. My meals generally look like this:

Pre-Workout: Just what it says, I drink a pre-workout right before working out first thing in the AM (very early)
Breakfast: Around 500 cals, Usually bran cereal with half a banana (I freeze them in slices and put them in the cereal) and a 60g protein shake for after my workout.
Lunch: Usually 500ish calories, high protein if I can do it. Chicken/Tuna/Eggs/Egg Salad whatever I can come up with that is low in calories but high in protein, and I eat it with multi-grain bread usually for the extra fiber.
Dinner: Up to 1000 cals, I try for 750ish but you know how it goes. High protein again, good fiber, good veggies if possible. Almost always have a potato or sweet potato with dinner or baked/steamed veggies or both.
Late Snack: 3-400 calories usually For me it's no sugar added ice cream. Good source of fiber, less sugar, and yes, I'm addicted.

Splitting things up like that helps me to not snack.

To agree with some of the above posters, if I feel like I want to snack on something I pop a strong minted gum in my mouth (mentos has a good one). I'd rather have 5 calories from that then whatever snack I was searching for

Snacking is the devil.
I just keep telling me that.
It's so hard to say no to snack. I try to eat roasted edamame, yogurt, or cucumbers when I need a snack.