Boredom Eating

Keep your calories high enough to include some wiggle room, or have planned snacks.

I bring veggies, sugar-free pudding, a can of diet soda, and milk (for chai) to work. That way I have no excuses to raid the vending machine.

When I get home from work, I can have a cookie or a piece of fruit.

When sitting in front of the TV - no eating allowed. I have ice water, maybe throw in a lemon slice. I keep a little distracted to keep my mind off snacks. Distractions could be solitaire, crosswords, adult coloring book, crochet, anything to keep your hand busy.

Before I go to bed I typically have some popcorn. I use a microwave popping bowl, only a teaspoon of oil is needed. I find a little oil helps the toppings stick. Kernel Season's has many flavors.

Kind of like TeaBea, I try to set myself up for success particularly at work...bringing a variety of stuff like raw veggies, single portion fruit, tea and calorie-free sparkling water...the occasional kombucha (sugary but only like 30-60 cals).

Sometimes when a coworker brings in donuts and I'm tempted I will tell myself if I finish my celery or sugar snap peas and still want a donut, I'll have one. But most of the time I don't. I guarantee if I didn't have those healthier snacks on hand I'd just go for the donuts especially when it's cold and grey outside.

Don’t keep things in the house that are conducive to spontaneous boredom eating. Also keep my hands busy - I have been learning the piano, sewing, yoga, gardening.

find something else to do.

Idle hands are the devil’s tool. Or in my case, the devil’s fork. Keep em busy.

I schedule small snacks throughout the day. Chai, coffe, candy cane (addicted to Oreo candy canes @ 45 calories a large cane, spanglercandy.com) or single hard piece of candy to suck on, a Fiorucci brand individually packed mozarella stick rolled in prosciutto. Making the chai is a small, almost meditative private “ceremony” or habit. Just doing that helps.

If I run out of snacks, I put on my shoes and do the 2.84 mile “dog park” loop, which is a pleasant walk. That usually holds me til it’s time to start dinner. I know I’m in the home stretch at that point.

I realised that most of what I thought was boredom eating was actually looking for sensory stimulation. So now when I want food but I don't feel hungry I have chewing gum. Feels similar enough to scratch the itch.

I've struggled my whole life with boredom eating. I started seriously dieting almost 2 years ago and had absolutely no problem staying fully engaged with my diet and exercise program when I was busy and had a full life of stuff going on. Then ... covid. It's really been challenging. For various stretches over the past year, maintenance was the best I could do. I don't really feel like it's been a success, although it hasn't been a failure either. My recent insight is that not failing is kind of a success on a weight loss journey - nothing wrong with treading water; it's better than gaining weight. But anyway, couple of suggestions from my n=1 experience.

Replace high calorie snacky junky foods with lower calorie stuff, and optimally, get the high calorie junk out of the house. You can only eat so many carrots and you can only do so much damage when the food is low-calorie.

For me, intermittent fasting, that is to say, no food before noon or after 8 pm, has helped a lot. I am in a pretty good habit of just not eating ANYTHING after dinner, ever, and that is the core time when the boredom binging used to happen. I don't think IF works for everyone, but definitely works for some people. Like any other weight loss tool, it only works if you actually do it, which is a bit of an adjustment, but the payoff for me has been huge.

It's hard to boredom-eat when you're exercising, so I pack as much exercise into each day as I can tolerate.

Those three things have helped this boredom-eater, or really boredom-binger, not give back any significant amount of hard-won weight loss, even in times of stress and extreme boredom.