I guess this is why your thread is upsetting to me. Honesty is the best policy...
She also stated that the card she is using to buy the snacks is through the meal plan. Going by what I did when I had a meal plan, you pay 1 fee for a specific meal plan per semester. She obviously just has extra "meals" or snacks ON HER MEAL PLAN that she's using at night. At least, that's what I'm gathering from it. It doesn't sound like she's wasting a lot of extra money on these snacks, and even if she were, this thread isn't about "How can I keep from wasting money"...it's about "How to stop eating at night".
Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and be supportive.
Outside of the great suggestions (and the push into seeing a doctor in case it's compulsive eating), This is what I started to do when I would get hungry or to stave off hunger.
I started to just drink my hunger away. You know how all nearly everyone says that you should have 8 glasses of water a day? It REALLY fills you up. The only problem I have is... I hate water. It's also hard to drink it when you really just want a cookie but I eventually discovered a method that worked for me.
Get a really awesome thermos and boil a bunch of water. Put the water in the thermos and make tea (or if you like coffee but that might be counterintuitive to your sleeping efforts). Get a cup or mug that you just LOOOVE (I'm serious, sometimes just having a mug you like helps you consume your liquids). Just keep drinking it until you go to bed. I started doing this and I am SO full from the water that I don't even think about food and if I'm still hungry I don't really eat as much of what I'm craving. The ritual of making the tea is soothing, pouring it into my stoneware cup, feeling the heat radiate into my fingers... It's calming and I can't get much in me after drinking an entire thermos (about 2.5 cups).
Maybe try just drinking 2 cups of liquid when you get a craving and see if you're even hungry after or if you can fit nearly as much in! Make it like a little game... "Ok... I'll get cheetos but first... I'll drink this bottle of water."
I guess this is why your thread is upsetting to me. Honesty is the best policy...
noooo nooo! i meant my tip money from my job and my hourly money from my job is never ever used to go to a convenience store or to drive through somewhere. and yes i'm paying for college myself, but the money i used to go downstairs to get chips or whatever, it's included in my meal plan- thats just how it works. so technically i have the money to buy it through my meal plan, but i'd never use my own cash to buy stuff outside of my dorm. does that make sense??
She also stated that the card she is using to buy the snacks is through the meal plan. Going by what I did when I had a meal plan, you pay 1 fee for a specific meal plan per semester. She obviously just has extra "meals" or snacks ON HER MEAL PLAN that she's using at night. .
It makes sense to me, I know how those swipey cards work, and I think they're a scam. I only lived in the dorms freshman year (and I certainly wasn't thinking about trying to lose weight at the time), but they pretty much force you to eat junk food.
If you lived in the dorm, you HAD to buy the meal plan/swipey card thing. And it's not cheap, I think ours was like $900/semester or something in addition to the dorm fee. You could get meals at the dining hall, at any food vendor on campus, and the campus convenience stores, etc. The dining hall food was junk, they had a crummy salad bar and that was it for healthy food. I think the only "healthy" food vendor we had on campus is Subway and a sushi place. AND, if you don't use all the money on your card by the end of the semester, you lose it. Not too many people were willing to drop the $900 and then spend extra money to buy groceries. (Not like it would help much anyways when all you had in the dorm was a mini fridge and a microwave).
The whole thing was a scam, and it truly did leave you stuck between a rock and a hard place if you were trying to eat healthy. I have no idea what I would do if I had to live in the dorm again.
You are wasting your parents' money on junk food that you don't even want. Stop it.
this is not even advice - that falls under the same comment as skinny people telling fat people to just stop eating. Not very practical.
I am a food addict and the behavior of going to the store and binging on snacks is part of the addiction (I am not saying you are a food addict, the behavior is similar to what I used to do) - constructive criticism may help and advice may help, but bottom line, like any other addiction, you have to crash and hit rock bottom before you will make the steps to change. College meal plans stink and do not encourage any type of healthy eating. Not an excuse just bump in the road to healthy eating. I don't want to sound redundant but lifestyle change isn't just changing what you eat it is also changing what you think and how you think about your feelings, your body, your goals, etc. about your relationship with food. It opens the doors to a lot and it can be scary but the reward is you start to feel good and your moods improve and your body feels better, it is a struggle, and at times it doesn't seem worth it but in the long run it is a good thing.
I wish you much luck in addressing this and it is incredibly hard but it is soo worth the fight.
there are a lot of good tips in this thread but everyone is right, it is up to you to decide that you have had enough and jump on in there and change. you CAN do it!!
Last edited by WillsAngel; 09-24-2010 at 05:41 PM.
I also don't know how the swipey cards work, do you really have to buy it? With so many people becoming health conscious I can't imagine them only offering junk food. Even the First Lady is out there trying to help the obesity problem. Almost all fast food joints are offering up salads because they know people want something healthier. Maybe you should speak up to someone at your school if all they are offering is junk food.
Bottom line, even though there were some tough love comments, if you want to lose the weight bad enough you will find a way to stop eating the junk at night.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MadameZombie
Outside of the great suggestions (and the push into seeing a doctor in case it's compulsive eating), This is what I started to do when I would get hungry or to stave off hunger.
I started to just drink my hunger away. You know how all nearly everyone says that you should have 8 glasses of water a day? It REALLY fills you up. The only problem I have is... I hate water. It's also hard to drink it when you really just want a cookie but I eventually discovered a method that worked for me.
Get a really awesome thermos and boil a bunch of water. Put the water in the thermos and make tea (or if you like coffee but that might be counterintuitive to your sleeping efforts). Get a cup or mug that you just LOOOVE (I'm serious, sometimes just having a mug you like helps you consume your liquids). Just keep drinking it until you go to bed. I started doing this and I am SO full from the water that I don't even think about food and if I'm still hungry I don't really eat as much of what I'm craving. The ritual of making the tea is soothing, pouring it into my stoneware cup, feeling the heat radiate into my fingers... It's calming and I can't get much in me after drinking an entire thermos (about 2.5 cups).
Maybe try just drinking 2 cups of liquid when you get a craving and see if you're even hungry after or if you can fit nearly as much in! Make it like a little game... "Ok... I'll get cheetos but first... I'll drink this bottle of water."
this is what I do. I even get the cute little thermos mugs from Starbucks. There's so many yummy teas, it really can hold you over.
Last edited by ringmaster; 09-24-2010 at 05:41 PM.
I definitely think eating extra food at night is somewhat addictive behavior. I used to have a stomach that felt SO empty at night - I thought I just WOULD not be able to sleep without feeding it.
I always wanted to change this aspect of my eating behaviors. When I was living at home, I would hear my mother at 11pm raiding the fridge for a bit of anything and everything. I thought it was disgusting. Ha- then I found I was doing it too.
Food in the belly before sleeping can be so comforting - it is a feeling that you need as a baby to sleep.... and then, as we grow older, this habit we learned as a baby becomes seemingly impossible to break.
I started to do a lot of reading on the topic - namely how the body works after the sun goes down and if eating interferes with the process. The answer I found was quite simple: when the sun goes down, our bodies naturally release the hormone melatonin and prepares for a short hibernation. When you eat food late at night, the digestive hormones such as Gastrin, Motilin, etc. are called to aid in the food you just ate. This confuses your body and disrupts sleep and has other harmful effects on your body and its ability to rejuvenate cells.
Well, with this rational knowledge in mind, alongside my own personal want to stop eating at night, I decided I had to stop. It just so happened I had to go away for work and stay in a hotel for two weeks - far away from the comfort of food at hand in my own fridge. I decided this was the PERFECT time to stop eating at night.
The first night was ****! I had a nice salad and bread roll for dinner around 6pm. Then 9pm rolled around. I thought I wasn't going to make it. But there was no where that I could buy food. I had to face the evil demon. I eventually fell asleep. I did awake one time in the middle of the night thinking about food. When I woke up in the morning, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed and ravenous for breakfast! Previously, I always thought I wasn't a breakfast person, but really, I am - I was just eating too much at night, offsetting in hunger for breakfast. When we sleep, the body almost stops digesting, which means the food sits there until morning, then the body will proceed in the digestion process.
Night 2: It was still ****. But, again, I had to endure it. I had no option. The week became easier towards the end. I have just completed my second week of not eating at night! I must say, I could only do this because I was in an environment where I had no way of gathering food that late.
Last night I had another big triumph, it was my first night back in my own apartment and I had to test the skills I learned. I succeeded! I was even sitting with my boyfriend as he ate. He kept asking me if I wanted any food. He was confused. I said no, and kept thinking about the wonderful feeling of waking up rejuvenated and hungry and ready for a new day.
My advice to you is that it is worth it to break your habit. If I were you (and you are a uni student, with access to a great library), I would do tons of reading on the matter. You could even go see a professor that works on biology or such during his/her office hours to help get you started on proper reading material. Inform your rational mind. Make it strong.
Then, if I were you, I would "dare" myself to make it through one night without late night eating. I would probably enlist a good friend to come over and help. Tell your friend that you need strength to make it through. Not being alone and isolated will make it easier for you to avoid it.
After you make it through the first night, you can start planning for the second night. It really is worth it, you just need to take baby steps. In reality, you do not need to eat after eating dinner - it is simply repetitive behavior.
She also stated that the card she is using to buy the snacks is through the meal plan. Going by what I did when I had a meal plan, you pay 1 fee for a specific meal plan per semester. She obviously just has extra "meals" or snacks ON HER MEAL PLAN that she's using at night. At least, that's what I'm gathering from it. It doesn't sound like she's wasting a lot of extra money on these snacks, and even if she were, this thread isn't about "How can I keep from wasting money"...it's about "How to stop eating at night".
Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and be supportive.
The OP has written questions similar to this in the past. She has gotten similar advice. Sometimes when "eating" logic doesn't help, then looking at the problem in dollars and cents will.
"Sometimes" thinking about the amount of money wasted on totally unhealthy nasty processed JUNK will help the light bulb go on. Know what I mean?
Q: How do I stop eating at night?
A: Stop wasting hard earned money on crap.
If it's a use it or lose it situation, then lower your swipy card amount, or buy the healthiest non-perishable things you can find and take them to the food bank.
If it's a use it or lose it situation, then lower your swipy card amount, or buy the healthiest non-perishable things you can find and take them to the food bank.
At the end of the college year, my daughter would come home with all sorts of non-food items. Having extra money or her swipey card (as this seems to be the term that has stuck), and since they don't refund - she'd come home with deodorant, tampons, soap, etc. She even got a blow dryer one year.
No, you don't have to spend the money on junk food or food at all for that matter.
I don't think playing the money card is going to help the OP. But really, you never know what will hit home and be a light bulb moment. You just gotta toss things out there and hopefully, they will catch one of them.
I don't see anywhere that the OP lied. I knew exactly what she meant by "I don't spend my hard earned money on it..." At many universities dorm-living students are required to buy a meal plan and generally even the lowest level meal plan includes "extra" for snacks, etc. If we really want to get into a cat fight over money, not using the swipey card's full value in any given semester would be wasting money. It's not just about not spending.
To the OP, while it's hard to hear I do agree with the people who have told you the truth -- you have to make the decision to stop this, the problem will not solve itself. You're making bad decisions, you know it, we know it, and because this has been ongoing and you want it to stop sometimes the best thing to do is just stop skirting the issue and get down to the blatant honesty. It's time to make a change.
I too like to eat at night and I find what works for me is mkendrick's strategy. I aim to end my "day" after dinner on 800-1000 calories. That way if I want to snack while I watch TV, surf the web, whatever, I can. I keep relatively healthy snacks on hand and I allow myself to have them if I want. For me lots of nights just having that many calories left at the end of the day does something in my head and I end up not even wanting to snack.
So keep on using your swipey. Just use it to stock up on good snacks and then focus on making the rest of your day fit your night plans.
Snacks I Sometimes Have at Nigh:
- Crackers & Hummus
- Fruit
- Veggies
- Popcorn
- Pretzels
- Dark Chocolate (I keep a few bars in the house, less than 100 cal of dark chocolate and I'm happy!)
, not using the swipey card's full value in any given semester would be wasting money.
If you ask me, buying junk food is REALLY wasting one's money. If given the choice to throw the card away or buy junk food to eat, I think it would be a much wiser choice to throw it away. There are other things to buy, I think we can all agree with that. As we can all agree that the swipey card is not truly the issue here.
If you ask me, buying junk food is REALLY wasting one's money. If given the choice to throw the card away or buy junk food to eat, I think it would be a much wiser choice to throw it away. There are other things to buy, I think we can all agree with that. As we can all agree that the swipey card is not truly the issue here.
Which is precisely what I just said.
Quote:
So keep on using your swipey. Just use it to stock up on good snacks...
If you ask me, buying junk food is REALLY wasting one's money. If given the choice to throw the card away or buy junk food to eat, I think it would be a much wiser choice to throw it away. There are other things to buy, I think we can all agree with that. As we can all agree that the swipey card is not truly the issue here.
I hate to keep beating the issue, but (speaking as a college kid) this swipey thing can't really be a black and white thing. Yes, junk food is a waste of money. But as I said earlier, sometimes you're really stuck between a rock and a hard place with these. If you're FORCED to spend upwards of $1,000 on a meal plan which includes a swipey thing (and yes, it is forced at many universities), you pretty much have to spend that money. There is no option of throwing it away to avoid buying junk food. I'm sure a lot of you have been in the position of poor college kid, but after scraping enough money together to pay for the meal plan, you can't just throw it away to buy real food. Simply not a financial option, at least it wasn't for me.
And I know at my university, options were very limited. The healthy snacks are nutrigrain bars and the like. Which, yes, are an improvement over Cheetohs or something, but not exactly great either. This is one situation where a person truly is forced to buy junk. I speak from experience, unless somebody offered to sponsor my healthy efforts, I financially had no other choice than to eat junk. This was back when I didn't care about what I was eating and I naturally love junk food, but at the time, I was so deprived of healthy food that I craved salads and fruit and lean protein...simply because it was a very limited resource. It wasn't available to me anywhere on my meal plan that I was required to buy and I didn't have the money to buy it after spending all my food money on the meal plan. So yes, I ate junk, and even if I had been trying to lose weight at the time, throwing away my meal plan simply wouldn't have been an option unless I planned on starving.
I guess I keep blabbing about this because this thread has gotten sort of nitpicky on the OP. I'm just trying to share some insight on how difficult these college meal plan situations can be if one is trying to eat healthy. Add that challenge on top of somebody who already has an admitted problem with temptations of night time junk snacking, and it is a very tough situation.
I think we have all been at the point in our journey where we wanted to change, we knew we needed to change, we knew what we were doing wrong, and yet we always found excuses to justify ourselves. And yes, sometimes we need some tough love of somebody to lay it out for us without being sugarcoated. But compassion goes a long way too, you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We have all been at low spots in our journey, and 3FC is a place to find support, advice, and understanding from people who have gone through what we have. I'm seeing some of the necessary tough love no-nonsense truth in this thread, but the OP has also had her honesty questioned, had her spending habits under a microscope, and her past threads brought up and critiqued. That's not the understanding compassionate (yet with a dose of slap-in-the-face truth) 3FC that I know and love...I guess I'm not understanding why this particular thread is being nitpicked so much.
I agree with you, this thread has seen to have gotten off base a little bit.
I'm not sure why everyone is still stuck on the swipey card as it's really not *to blame* here.
As far as being wasteful, at my daughters college, there was toiletries and other items available for purchase. I don't know what is or isn't available at other establishments.
I think this topic has been exhausted.
Hopefully the OP got some tips, will take them to heart and turn this around.
