Cant stop eating and i work with food 😥

strongerbytheday wrote: »

When I was a server I would pack a lunchbox with my own food and snacks. I made work food off limits.

This. Just prepare and take your own meals and feel confident in the fact that you planned ahead and over time you will begin to see the results from doing that.

Packing and prelogging can help you. A lot. But first, do you log everything? Maybe start there. Just focus on logging EVERYTHING. It's a habit that needs to be built and it's a habit that, anytime you have an issue with weight loss or building muscle or food in general, gives you a place to start.

This has honestly been the most helpful to me. Logging and being very honest with yourself. Also, not assigning foods a label of good or bad. You should never feel bad about logging something. You may be tough on yourself for choosing to eat something that doesn't help you get to your goals or doesn't taste the way you want, but that food isn't inherently bad. Give yourself 3 minutes to log that food, feel bad, get tough with yourself, and then move on. You aren't a bad person, you just got distracted by something sparkly. It happens to everyone.

Logging keeps me accountable for what I ate, and on a more basic level, logging helps me because I'm lazy. Not really (except I've got an inner lazy girl), but I love finding efficient way to do things. There are many times where a lot of us are faced with eating a bunch of smaller things (samples at Costco or Sam's, lick off your finger while cooking, the bite off of your kids plate, etc.). Quite frankly, I'm too lazy to look up each of those things, find the correct entry, figure out how to measure how much I ate, and then log it. It's inefficient and I would rather just not have those things than have to do all that. I would rather log three full meals and one snack because, odds are, that's going to be fewer things overall to log. It's also going to be easier because there are so many things you eat routinely that you look up once, and you have it for every time you eat it (at least on the app, when you search for a food, if you've previously logged it, it comes up in the list).

It can be difficult to get to the point where you don't reach for all the food at work. I would suggest not making it harder on yourself. Trying to create to many new habits at one time can lead you to failure because it's too much all at once. Start small, like logging everything regardless of what it is, and pack a lunch. You don't necessarily have to pick your packed food, but it's there for you if you want it. Then, once you feel like that is becoming second nature, start choosing your packed food over the food at work at least half the time and work up to the point where you are choosing packed stuff most of the time. You can still treat yourself, but it should be on your terms.

You need to take a hard look at your mental state and identify where you're restricting, physically/mentally/emotionally. Any kind of overeating is your body's reaction to being restricted. If desserts are the trigger, try incorporating a dessert into every day, not cutting out all desserts. Deprivation will always lead to compensatory behavior. I recommend checking out Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size.