How to stop snacking!!!

The "eat in moderation" is the most difficult part of this IMO. For me personally, I know that I have a very hard time snacking in moderation and will overeat when it comes to snacking. So I just straight up don't keep snacks in my apartment with an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality.

If you can truly snack in moderation, it's definitely possible to reach your goals without completely cutting snacks out. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal is "calories in < calories out" if you're looking to lose weight. But you'll have to do some planning ahead to account for snacking and make it fit in.

It is difficult for people who have eaten whatever they want, whenever they want to moderate their junk food intake. You kind of have 2 choices about how you want to approach it
1. give up junk food completely and find substitutes
2. make it fit within your budget (portion control usually required)

I haven't had much success with substitutes. When I want chocolate, there isn't much I can do to replace it.

I have learned that certain foods trigger me, and I end up overdoing so I completely eliminated them from my diet for the most part. While other foods I am very good at controlling.

Salt triggers me so I really have to avoid potato chips and salty carb snacks. Once I get started I can't stop. I really do not have a choice about this if I want to be successful, I just have to give them up. There are also some other foods that have been placed on my 'never' list, simply because they just don't provide enough satisfaction for the caloric hit they provide (donuts, cookies, muffins-store bought...im ok with homemade, creamy pastas as a few examples)

Sugar or frozen treats(Dessert, chocolate, ice cream) on the other hand I have gotten real good at having smallish portions, just enough to taste or satisfy a craving. It is pretty easy for me to have 1/4 of a chocolate bar, or to have a very small serving of a blizzard from DQ and to freeze the rest for 2 or 3 more snacks, I just can't do that with salty things!

Keep at it, you will find a happy medium or the right way for you. You may even discover you can reintroduce foods that were once banned by fine tuning other parts of your budget, I did that with bacon and I am glad I did

I allow myself snacks within the calorie allotment. But I have to admit some days can be frustrating. Yesterday was one of them. I had the munchies all day and tried to keep them at bay with things like baby carrots and hummus, chewing gum, etc., but I did go over calories by maybe 200 or so. Nothing major but I don't want many days like that.

Just count the calories and stop when you get to your daily goal. If that is a bag of pretzels, sad for you.

There are some great comments and tips from people here which I want to consider. In the past I've completely banned ALL junk food. I tried not to eat any sugar at all and was successful long enough to loose the weight I wanted. BUT....then I felt I deserved a treat. So after loosing weight I started eating junk again only to regain the weight I'd lost. This type of yo-yo dieting has been going on for a few years for me. So, now I'm feeling that I need to consider eating a few treats along my weight-loss journey.

livbelcher3466 wrote: »

I am new to MFP but I am already eating better and being more AWARE of calories. Who knew you can manage to get through so many without even realizing!!!

What I find super hard is giving up snacking on chocolate, crisps etc. How do you come to terms with giving up junk food? Is there a way to eat it in moderation and still reach your goals?? What is your experience with this??

Yes you can eat them in moderation. You can plan for them and everything. One trick is calorie cycling. However, for me, I found it's just much better to not have most junk food and try to substitute a more nutritionally balanced snack like air popped popcorn for chips and fruit for dessert. Side bonus. Sometimes when you go without you don't crave it anymore. Other times, for me, I have sugar after not eating it for a while and go crazy.

I still sometimes eat that stuff but for me it's much easier to lose weight with it not in my house.

Some good strategies above.

Just one more option to consider, because "best strategies" differ by individual:

Consider whether you can find similar snacks - similar in tastiness and satisfaction - that have better nutritional values. That can be a help in reaching reasonable overall nutrition, while still getting a treat-y feeling, on reasonable calories. It can take a little experimenting, at first.

What works will be *very individual*, but here are a couple of things that have worked *for me*, just as examples:

* I like tortilla chips. For home use (usually in single-portion nachos or something), I buy Beanitos chips, which I find very tasty. They have about the same number of calories as regular tortilla chips, but more protein, which is a thing I work at to get enough of (I'm vegetarian). So, same calories, better nutrition, similar enjoyment. (Still need to keep portions reasonable!)

* One of my huge weaknesses, one of the few things I still have trouble moderating, is old-school taco flavor Doritos. (This, even though I rarely eat so-called junk foods or fast foods, and really never have, by taste preference. Weird.) I found a brand of crispy broad beans that comes in single-serve (100 calorie) packs, in mesquite BBQ flavor, so similar flavor profile, salty, crunchy, and decent protein contribution. I don't buy the Doritos very often (danger! danger!) but have the crispy broad beans around all the time.

Other people might find these specific things horrible foods, or poor substitutes. I don't care. They work for me. The point was just to give subjective examples of "similar happiness, better nutrition".

livbelcher3466 wrote: »

I am new to MFP but I am already eating better and being more AWARE of calories. Who knew you can manage to get through so many without even realizing!!!

What I find super hard is giving up snacking on chocolate, crisps etc. How do you come to terms with giving up junk food? Is there a way to eat it in moderation and still reach your goals?? What is your experience with this??

A lot of this depends on what your calorie targets are as well as what you consider to be "moderation". The stuff that you describe are things that I generally consider "sometimes foods"...they're treats, not regular everyday snacks really...save for I usually have some Ghirardelli dark chocolate morsels most nights for my desert. A serving (on the label) is 80 calories and I usually have two for my desert...160 calories for me is nowhere close to being a game changer in any way, so no biggie for me. It's also desert after my evening meal and not something I snack on throughout the day. Other snacky "junk food" type of things like chips and whatnot I typically reserve for things like camping trips or when we are having guests I'll break out the chips and salsa or if we're spending an afternoon hanging out by the pool or something I'll get them out...but they aren't daily snacks.

I'm not a particularly big snacker...just not a habit I've ever really had. I usually have something in the afternoon to hold me off until dinner as my wife and I tend to eat a bit later in the evening, but it's usually an apple or something or maybe a bowl of popcorn or slice of cheese or something like that.

As an observation, I think a lot of people have just grown habitually used to putting something in their mouth all day long. Often, hunger isn't even really involved...it's just habit, or if it is hunger, it's the slightest bit and people are just used to staving off any kind of discomfort. Really, it's pretty normal to be a little hungry come meal time...people just don't let themselves get there, so they constantly snack...which obviously is going to ultimately be an issue, especially if you have a fairly low calorie target to lose weight.

I don't know that "junk foods" need to be given up entirely (I certainly haven't)...but the compulsion to constantly snack on these things throughout a given day needs to be addressed. For myself, it's not that hard to moderate these things because I've never really had the snack habit and even growing up, foods like these were treats and not routine eats...for someone who is accustomed to eating these things whenever and wherever and in whatever quantity they want, it's likely best to just not have them in the house for awhile to help break that habit. Breaking bad habits and creating new one's sucks, but I believe it is also an integral part of the overall process here.

Some people have the control to avoid overeating unhealthy foods and only eat them in moderation, but its difficult for me. I do better when I simply don't buy things that I struggle to stay out of. If I do buy something as a treat, I try to buy a single portion so once its gone, its gone and can't tempt me.

I have replaced a lot of my unhealthier choices with better alternatives, such as string cheese, pickles, sugar-free werthers hard candies and Snap Pea Crisps. Its okay to have high calorie "junk" foods occassionally, but you should try to cut back or find healthier alternatives that you enjoy.

I replaced my available junk food snacks with baby carrots. I really like baby carrots, so I just get a bag and snack away. You cannot eat so many as to mess up your goals.

So replace what’s there. If you leave junk food around, you’ll snack on it. Also focus on your meals being more filling. I eat big spinach salads..you get full but don’t really eat that much (unless you go nuts with dressing or add ins).