I have been calorie counting for only one week now. I am working hard to stop the sweet cravings, so have been avoiding, for now, all sweets including fruits.

Yesterday at 8 pm I was wandering around my kitchen trying to figure out what to have for a 150 to 200 calorie snack so I would be closer to 1500 for the day when my eyes fell on the brown rice chips bag. Oh those little crispies are good. And my good fortune that there was only one serving left in the bag! YES! That and a glass of skim milk was perfect. Just perfect.

I keep my food diary on fatsecret dot com, and Fatsecret says my RDI is 1900, but if I ate that much I might lose 5 pounds a year. So I aim at 1500 but have been falling in around 1100 more or less. I know that less than 1200 will put my body into starvation mode but I'm afraid to eat anything too starchy and I am a little tired of veggie strips and laughing cow cheese.

I have to work this all out somehow. To me a perfect snack should have protein and something else, but I had already done nuts and lowfat cheese as part of lunch. Normally I wouldn't snack at night but because I hadn't eaten much for dinner I was hungry.

I'm afraid I may let go and go wild.

I love cottage cheese: it's almost pure protein, and it takes a variety of flavors--if you are avoiding all sweets, try hot sauce or seasoned salt or pretty much an herb/spice mix. I find it is MUCH better if you get the type that is at least 2% fat, and even the 4% fat stuff isn't too caloric.

Popcorn is a great late night snack.

The thing that keeps me going is Options hot chocolate. It's a little chocolatey hit at only 40-50 calories; and they do loads of flavours. Not sure if they do them in the US, but I'm sure there's an equivalent.

Funny, I went to eat cottage cheese for lunch yesterday and it had gone BAD. Seriously I buy in the little 8oz containers so it will stay fresher. I love the 4% cottage cheese. Popcorn usually makes me hungrier.

I've never heard of Options hot chocolate, but we have sugar free Swiss Miss here. But it is made with aspertame (yuck). I know what I should do is make hot chocolate with coco, skim milk and truvia. I do suffer from laziness sometimes.

I was really hungry last night too. I would have wanted 16 oz of it, minimum.

why not try roasted veggies or a really filling legume or veggie (broth based) soup at dinner? i'm never hungry after lentils or other types of beans. hours and hours of feeling satisfied.

I'm not sure what's in them, but I just make them with a tiny amount of milk and hot water.

I'm not really bothered about things like aspartame, I take all those "such-and-such is carcinogenic" with a pinch of salt. We'd all get cancer if we lived long enough!

I've just recently decided I don't like the taste of aspartame. That's all.

Yeah I should have eaten more at dinner. I made baked chicken strips and they were done before the brown rice. I ended up eating in shifts, not eating any veggies at dinner. Horrors. But I am kind of lazy that way. Planning ahead is not my strongest point. I gotta work on that.

One thing you can do is hard boiled eggs. You can make them in advanced and keep them in the fridge. One filled me up for a midnight snack. I put a little salt on it. Only eat the white

I think you see that planning helps tremendously. By which I mean, I couldn't do this if I didn't plan ahead. Which isn't to say it takes tons of time to plan my day - I just need to put about 5-10 minutes of thought into every day. Actually, it's usually less because I do well by rotating the same meals in and out of my plan.

As others have said: veggies, veggies, veggies! If you're getting 5-7 servings of various veggies a day, it's really easy to fill up and stay satisfied for a long time, especially when teamed with some good lean protein and good fat (olive oil, nuts, avocado).

At the risk of sounding completely cliche, there is something to be said for this old chestnut, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." I've found that very true for me!

Evening is a dangerous time for me. I keep tall glass of water at hand and have lowfat cheese sticks, dried apricots and 200 calorie bags of nuts if I must eat: things that take no measuring or bargaining with myself. The most significant thing I'm learning to do is push myself away from sofa/tv and go to bed earlier. Getting to bed without a late night pigout is my daily challenge. I love lying there feeling virtuous and looking forward to next morning weigh-in.

Regardless of how full I am I ALWAYS have to budget for a small snack at night. Someone already mentioned, but skim milk + 1 tsp of coco powder + 1 tsp of sugar + 1/2 tsp of vanilla is a great sweet treat.

The other thing I do is let bananas go super ripe, then throw them in the blender with just a splash of milk until they are creamy and then freeze them. It tastes almost like ice cream! I keep a quart in my freezer at all time so I have a low-fat, high-nutrient sweet when hanging around the house or watching a movie on the weekends.