How do you stop snacking !

One of the easiest things to overlook is that your plan has enough food in it. If you try to create too much of a calorie deficit it can easily backfire. You mentioned you are active. Are you eating enough to fuel your activity? MFP is set up for you to eat back exercise calories. Also, have you chosen an appropriate rate of loss?



If you are eating enough then the answer either needs to be controlling what you eat as a snack (replace higher calorie items with lower calorie ones like vegetables, planning for the snacks in advance, or controlling your hunger better with meals and cutting out all snacking.

Whoa! Those are blasphemous words. Why would you ever want to quit snacking?

I was the Queen of Snacks. Many thousand calories a day of them.

I remain the Queen of Snacks. Many hundred calories a day of them, thoughtfully planned, scheduled, weighed, and eaten.

I couldn’t wrap my head around life without snacks. Nor would I want to. Self sacrifice and self punishment aren’t a long term plan for success.

There are so many yummy healthy low calorie snacks out there. My go-to snacks are jerky, cottage cheese and fruit with a splash of sweet fruit balsamic, Greek yogurt mixed with sugar free pudding, sugar free jello, Nugo bars, apples, hot air popcorn, cupcakes made with kefir (just those two ingredients), dill pickles, creamy chai lattes, fruit, chicken sausage on a peice of low cal white bread or a low cal tortilla, half a dark chocolate bar, a leftover buttermilk pancake with a swish of maple butter, and, right now, my new love: pumpkin pudding.

In addition to the above, think about why you snack. Hunger? Habit? Stress? Boredom?

If the reason isn't hunger, the answer isn't food.

If it's habit, the best way to break an undesired habit is not sheer force of will, it's replacing it with a new habit. Take a short walk, do some stretching, ideally some non-eating thing, but you could also drink a hot herbal tea or other zero-calorie beverage.

Stress? Consider other stress management strategies: Hot aromatherapy bubblebath, stretching, meditation, prayer, exercise, music - something you personally find soothing.

Boredom? Perfect time to take up a new hobby, or resume an old one. Particularly good are things that require clean hands (sketching, needlework, playing a musical instrument . . . ) or create dirty ones (painting, carpentry, gardening . . . ).

The task in hand is not to think of current habits - habits that don't support your goals and desires - as insurmountable obstacles, but rather as challenges to use the things you personally can control (or at least influence) to make a change in your life. The results from this, and the skills you build from doing it, can be huge life enhancers.

Best wishes!

As others have also said, I too am a snacker. . It was a very hard habit to change, because It has been a big part of me my entire life. When Id go anywhere with my mom, we would stop at the gas station and she would buy a large bag of chips, and together we would eat said bag of chips on our way home. Its actually amazing I never got real heavy, when me and my husband first started dating, he was astounded by my ability to down an entire bag of chips in one sitting. When I first started this, I had to quit buying chips all together, then when I started buying them again for my husband, they had to be flavors I didnt care for, like BBQ. Now I buy individual bags, and i dont eat them all that often.

I tried not snacking anymore and in turn I ATE ALL THE SNACKS. I just had to learn a new way to snack. So instead of chips, cheez itz, and anything loaded in sugar and carbs, I started snacking on things like pickles, light buttered popcorn, light and fit greek yogurt, jerky, flavored rice cakes, light cheese sticks, celery with a light laughing cow cheese wedge, pretzel sticks (also good with laughing cow cheese wedges), funyons (when Im craving chips, they are a little lower in calories) or even my old favorites on occasion, but individually packaged, so I dont accidentally over do it.