OK,

I am wondering if any of you have any advice...

I wake up in the morning 9am or 10am and have breakfast (usually porridge or wholewheat cereal). I don't eat again usually until about 2pm or 3pm when I am feeling hungry. However, from then on in, I cannot eat enough!! I don't feel hungry EVER but I eat and eat and eat... I know if I cut down to 3 meals and (maybe) one snack, I will lose the weight I need to lose...

Does anyone have any advice to break this 'eating for the sake of eating' habit??

I try to fill the fridge with nice low-fat fruit yoghurts, grapes... and then I have snack-a-jacks.

I know I'm a snacker, so until I completely pull myself out of that habit, I just need to snack on better for me things.

At the risk of sounding cliche, drinking water all day is something for my hands and mouth to do, rather than eating. If you know what I mean?

Everytime you reach for the biscuit tin or whatever just stop and say to yourself 'do i really need/want this?' It'll make you think and more often than not the answer will be no. It worked for me.

I love snacking.. it just seems to be the way I like to eat. So I try to cut calories out of my meals and have mini meals (snacks) throughout the day.

It sounds like you need to find something else to do after 2pm to keep yourself occupied, what is it that you're doing in the morning that stops you snacking that you don't have to do in the afternoon and evenings?

I have a nothing on most mornings. I go to the gym when I get up for 2 hours. I go to uni around 3pm until 5pm then straight to work until 1030pm ...

That's a hard one

I'm totally the same. I don't know what it is that comes over me in the evenings, I just want to eat constantly. I drink water so I don't get bored, as has been suggested, but it's really difficult to not pick at things. I'm sorry that I don't have any advice for you

I think it's a particularly bad habit to break because it's something I've done my whole life. I associate evening time with eating. Booooooo.

Try a hobby that will keep your hands occupied, knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidery. Read a book. Talk to friends. Go for a walk. If eating is a habit, you need to make a new habit and that takes about a month. Another thing you can do is set a timer for 15 minutes when you want to eat. Do something else until the timer goes off. You will find that you get interested in something else and the urge to eat passes.

Did you know that your brain does NOT have separate messages for

I am hungry and
I am thirsty

So you can succesfully shut up the "I want..." message with a drink of water.

Also you need to wait for 20 minutes after eating drinking for your brain to register the fact.... so one bite of cchoocy cake and wait....


It works when someone wants to quit smoking too! It is one of the reasons some people gain weight... smoke = food = weight gain!



Oh there's lots more where those nuggets came from - I used to work in a GP surgery running Healthy Living clinics!

(That'd be do as I say........

Thanks for all your responses. I will try some of these ideas! I am planning to start a calorie controlled diet tomorrow as I've put on lots and lots of lbs over the Christmas/New Year period... Hoping I will manage more than a day with the calorie counting.. I normally cook something from scratch and it all goes out the window!

Hi CMC, I'm exactly the same. When I wake up in the morning I try to think positively and either eat healthy or not at all and then at 2/3pm i start eating and i cant stop, i hate myself for it. I've joined this site cause i feel completely out of control x

I LOVE that idea of the timer!! I'm going to try that with my egg timer.. problem is it's silent and only three minutes, but we'll see how it works for the time being.

Way to go girl, you win! And once again safe travel ... have fun!