Battling the 3pm hunger
 

It seems that no matter what course of diet I am following I can't side step the 3pm monster. In the late afternoon I get hit with such intense cravings that no matter how happy and fully I am until then nothing can stop me from devouring junk.

Anyone else? How do you combat this problem?

I hit that wall at about 2 pm. Its just long enough after lunch that I am hungry again. I keep a bag of nuts, seeds and dried cranberries or a yogurt on hand for munching. It will usually tide me over till dinner. Also have a giant drink of water. That should help too :)

That's my tea time. I always have a nice hot cup of my favorite tea. I've trained myself to believe that the tea hits the spot.

what are you eating for lunch? Maybe switching that around would help? Or can you switch when you eat lunch so that's later in the day?

Personally, I have found that I am falling into a habit of doing Intermittant Fasting on workdays. My breakfast is pretty light anyway but I've gotten in the habit of deferring it until about noon. So I eat that at noon, then have my regular lunch at about 1:30 and I'm usually ok until supper. I do keep snacks on hand - either greek yogurt or hardboiled eggs so I can eat something later afternoon if I need it but that's not too often. But by compressing my eating into fewer hours, I get fuller on fewer calories.

(btw, I didn't set out to do this, it just started happening when I had some very busy mornings and never got around to eating breakfast and then I realized I liked how it was working. It doesn't work for me on weekends though, so I don't do it then)

For me, I generally have 3 meals and 1 or 2 snacks. Generally one of my snacks will fall around 3pm. Can you fit a snack in there?

Hah that's awesome. I love the 'fake it till you make it" attitude.

I use green tea as well to trick myself into feeling okay until dinner time. I also like to snack before and after lunch because I know between lunch and dinner is the hardest for me.