mindless grazing

cheekydeeky · October 2011

i feel like a cow. i'm not even hungry yet i continue to eat. and not even meals, just random things. just to eat. i'll have some calories left over at the end of the day and they are like that proverbial quarter in my pocket burning a hole. i don't want to eat them, i want to burn them. but i sit there and eat and eat until i feel ill. i've actually forced myself to vomit for the first time in my life. that's something i don't want to continue. i'm new here but i'm not new to this. how do you eat to live instead of live to eat? i've lost some weight, approximately 20 pounds so far, had surgery on my shoulder and put a few back on. i'm back in the saddle and ready to go yet i continue to sabotage my good efforts. any advice? thoughts?

thanks in advance - melanie

bprague · October 2011

First of all, there is no reason to purge after a bad day. It's over, done with, let it go, do better tomorrow. If it comes down to it, go for a jog to make yourself feel better. I'm a student on a budget so throwing up food is a bloody waste of money.

And second- once you are done for the day- that's it. You need to put down the snacks and only you can do that. You can try to trick yourself by filling out your calories at the end of the day and regardless of if you have 20 or 200 to spend- quick add them all at once so you aren't sure. You might be less inclined to snack if you don't know how much you CAN snack. (or you might not care enough)

I have no snacks in my kitchen but raw veggies and fruit. Try that too. If you are snacking for taste... it's pretty hard to eat too many calories of broccoli.

slender_sunshine · October 2011

Try this: Everytime you go to eat, before you allow yourself to eat ANYTHING - dinner, breakfast, snack- write down in a little book the time, the date, how you feel, and why you want to eat. Be honest with yourself. If you want food because you're bored or scared or nervous or tired, write that down. Sometimes, it won't stop you from eating, but sometimes it will, and it will help you begin thinking about why you eat and eventually understand why you eat this way. Once you understand something, then you can begin to change it.

Make sure the book is pocket sized, so you can always keep it with you. I just started doing this and it's helped me a lot with mindless eating.

Another idea is, in addition to a food/emotion diary in the little book, you can also add in any motivation you find along the way, whether it's quotes or pictures or whatever.

SueInAz · October 2011

I'd suggest not having anything in your house which will trigger or enable your need to snack. I'll sometimes get that snacking urge and if there's nothing to snack on, I close the pantry door and go back to what I'm doing. I'm not happy at the time, but I am when I see the number on the scale. This is actually one of the reasons I really like avoiding sugar and processed junk food altogether. My husband and son still have junk food in the house, and when I want to snack I don't want to throw my carb count over, so I just won't eat their junk. Problem solved. :laugh:

Only other thing I can suggest is to keep foods you can munch but keep them really low calorie: carrots, sugar snap peas, celery, unsweetened breakfast cereal that you can eat dry, air-popped popcorn (no oil or butter). You can't do much damage even overeating any of those things.

allysutherland · October 2011

Melanie I can relate to your 'grazing' problem, sounds to me like boredom is pushing you to eat, watching tv, sitting about just generally being bored so the food is being used to alleviate this hence why you continue to eat even when you don't want to. try a new hobbie or something to break up your evenings so as too not just be sitting and eating. ( for me getting rid of the PS3 has let me re focus on what is important to me

good luck, your half way there by realising it needs to change..

mindless grazing

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