breadbin

I am 108kgs and trying to get to 85kg over the next year. I want to lose the weight by doing more exercise and trying to cut out the sugary processed foods. Everyday though is the same problem. I do fantastically well up til about dinnertime and then it's like I can't stop myself eating. Anything I can get my hands on, toast, ice cream, crisps, chocolate etc on top of my dinner. I thought maybe it might be connected to maybe low blood sugar in the afternoon. According to my doctor my blood sugar is ok. Its a pain in the arse, after doing so well each day it really makes you feel crap after all that. I get on the bike then and try and work it off. If only I could stop myself in the first place. It's only in the evenings too. Does anyone else do this?

Hobartlemagne 

Stop keeping that food at home. If your only choice is healthy snacks, you are going to eat a bit better.

obelix67

Instead of that stuff take an apple, a pear, some brussel sprouts, a clump of spinach, some carrots

These wont make you feel full at first but will last longer

Natural brown rice not white

Only 2 spuds where you might have had 4 before

Cut out the bread - max 2 slices - brown bread n wholemeal, none of that brennans stuff

Cut down on the ice cream and chocolate etc, or force yourself if you are going out one particular night of the week then that is when you will eat that stuff

I find it is easier to stop eating crisps etc rather than try to cut down, it was the same with bulmers, one of these all or nothing situations. I cant do reduce the amount I have so I have to cut it out entirely.

PS the word I was looking for there was moderation - I just cant do it ....

PPS me spoiling myself nowadays is a bottle of ocean spreay cranberry, I have majorly cut down on the "diet", "zero" etc drinks. Sparkling mineral water, or flat mineral water, with .5lt of full fat milk per day. No coffee, green tea or lyons no sugar in those, sometimes a splash of milk in the lyons..... No other sugared drinks, no cartons of sugared fruit juice etc.

G60

diet soda is my savior.

how long have you been on this diet? at first it's very hard to stop eating and drinking sweet foods. but as you cut back, and especially maybe give yourself one week where you try your damn hardest not to eat anything at all sweet, 'blander' things will have much more flavor.

back when i was really disciplined about my diet, gatorade was a very sweet delicious treat to me! but as you put sweet foods back into your diet, healther less sweet foods taste worse and worse.

Tom Stormcrowe

Your body is craving the excessive carbs, and as you start a diet like that, you can feel like crap. Let me give you some motivation to stay on that diet. Before you feel like I am poking fun, this was me in March 2005, literally and Sept 2006.


There's a good reason to go through the feel like cr@p on toast period

Chris in WCVA

What are you eating at lunch? Here in the USA we are, of course, masters of overeating. I was raised to eat a light breakfast, light lunch, and a big supper, often with snacks afterwards, in the evening. I've found out that if I eat a larger lunch (Though not nearly as large as my large suppers are), I eat less in the evening. I also have more time to burn lunch calories including my evening bike ride.

Miguelangel

this is exactly my problem too. Its a big PITA....

obelix67

smaller portions of what you want to eat but 6 small meals a day, lets your body digest it utilise what it needs, only by cutting down what "OUR" big bellies want will those bellies get smaller, then you have to control yourself

I must be on some kind of downward slope as I am finding bran tasty these days........

When I am looking for motivation I do that cabbage, tomato and celery soup diet for a week, just to give me motivation on the weight loss side.

I will warn you that it makes you feel ill, but my first attempt took 6 kgs off me, the second attempt just after new year took 3kgs off me.

I dont think I would have any benefit in doing it now. maybe in 2 or 3 months time as a detox week or something.

I use it as it is intended fast weight loss, but I know it on its own wont do it for me, I have to exercise and exercise more afterwards, but when you are feeling that you want a bit of motivation and some weight to come off it helps.

It also engenders the discipline on only eating particular kinds of food stuffs.

Once you are complete in the 7 day diet then look at ways you can incorporate it into your regular lifestyle.

If you do it then go back to how you were before you will put on more weight.

krazygluon

+1 for inverting the size of your meals across the day. get a reasonable breakfast, and if you're going to have a big meal, make it lunch or breakfast, then you'll not be quite as hungry.

At my job there are TONS of snacks available (And I don't have the option to get rid of them there unlike at home) and so far the best solution I have to keep myself from eating them is to chew gum. Sure the sugar probably messes with my blood sugar, but to be honest a 40 calorie gumball once an hour versus 400 calories in 3 handfulls of crackers which I could eat in a matter of miutes seems like a good start to me.

Wogster

Well, I would agree with others, ice cream, crisps and chocolate, can easily be avoided. If it's not in the house, then you will not eat it. Second, get rid of the idiot box, see television is actually boring, so people need something else to do while watching it, so they stuff their faces with all the processed and refined stuff -- the only thing that refining does is remove anything that might be of actual nutritional value -- that is advertised on the TV. If you can't get rid of the TV, get rid of cable, when there are only 3 stations that come in, sort of fuzzy like, then you watch a lot less then when there are 65,536 channels.

So what do you do after supper, well, riding your bike is a good option, especially when the days are longer, play games, go for a walk, bike over to the local playing field and watch a local league ball game, read a book, do some gardening, talk to your neighbours, rediscover tennis or take your clubs to the driving range and hit some balls. Check into that funny noise the bike was making the other day, give it a wash and lube while your at it, fix that broken sun visor in the car, walk the dog, spend an hour in "serious" play with the cat. These are all activities that are hard to do, with food, so you forget to eat more then you should. Having said that, I need to go get some cable ties to better secure the computer to the bike, and fix the sun visior in the car

Retem

eat more protiens and calorie dense foods also ride harder it helps I have the worst eating habits ever and have no problem withmanaging my weight
I drink way too much
I eat nothing but junk food
I ride a hard 50+ miles a day and push my self harder and harder every day
liek everyone else said keep the junk food at the store not at home

breadbin

Thanks for the encouragement everybody. It really is appreciated. I will knuckle down and try harder. A typical day would be porridge and a slice of toast in the morning, good sandwich at lunch and then a normal dinner maybe rice or pasta etc. I have a rule too that I try to stick to that if I want to eat between meals it has to be either fruit or veg. Easier said than done. I don't have a tv but I saw a program called halfton hospital that scared the bejaysus out of me. Thanks again. This time next week I hope to have better news.

shog

You've gotten some good suggestions what has worked for me

1. Water, water, water - It helps to make you feel full
2. Up the protien, fish, chicken, and lean red meat. Watch the fat but more protien will make you feel fuller
3. Get the junk food out of the house
4. Carbs with lots of fiber are better. Shreaded wheat with a bit of splenda can make a good snack

Of course I have all the same problems and need to follow my own advice ;-)


Shog

FIVE ONE SIX

there are a few things you can do...

the first is eat more in the morning and less in the evening, it's not what you eat it's when you eat it. with that said, that doesn't mean you should eat the same sugary snacks that you eat now for breakfast, it means that your breakfast should be your biggest meal and your dinner should be your smallest meal. also, don't eat after 7:00pm, period!

you should eat 5 or 6 smaller meals over the course of the day, not 3 big meals like everyone's been told ever since they were born, it helps balance your metabolism...

drink nothing but water, period, end of story! try to work your way up to a gallon a day, since your muscles are 75% water, and you can build something if you don't feed it properly. i know that after a while, it will start to taste bland and you will want something with flavor, when that happens you can just add powder to the water to add flavor without adding anything else. you can go to any Target or a similar store, and get either Crystal Lite or Propel flavor packs, and they will be fine. and that's not just my opinion, that's doctor recommended, especially for diabetics with high blood sugar...

if you're hungry and it's not time to eat, drink something, instead of eating something. most people have a need to ingest something to fill themselves up, and a liquid will do that just as good as a solid food...

watch your sodium intake! the number one thing that most people eat an overabundance of is salt, and the reason they do that is because:
1. they don't know how much is too much. the average person should take in no more than 2400mg of sodium per day.
2. they don't know how much is actually in the food they're eating. the only way you would know is if you read labels, and if you eat out, research how much is in the food you're eating. for example, if you go to Taco Bell for a Beef Grilled Stuffed Burrito, know that it contains about 2150mg of sodium, so that only allows you to eat another 350mg of sodium over the course of the entire day! is that feasible? of course not, but most people don't know that because they never look at the nutritional information of the food they eat when they eat out. on top of that, a high sodium intake will cause you to retain water, so cut that down and you will at least loose some water weight. just because they make it, doesn't mean you should eat it. and if you think i'm joking about the nutritional contents, look here:

https://www.yum.com/nutrition/documents/tb_nutrition.pdf

and those are just for starters...

and even the best diet won't do any good without some type of exercise, every day. and i don't mean anything over the top, even if it's just 10 minutes a day, and you will start to notice a difference in how you look and more importantly how you feel. start off slow, say touch the floor 10 times to get the blood flowing through your muscles, then 10 sit-ups, 10 leg lifts, 10 push-ups, and run in place for 5 minutes...

Vespa

I do a modified zone diet where you are eating protien, carbs, and fat in a suitable ratio at every sitting. To up my protien I use whey powder as it is low carb/low fat. I was exercising on no breakfast and by 1400 was starving and eating. The aim is not be hungry. Here are some good basic ideas.

https://www.thewellweigh.com/page11.html

bigmallard

Here is a little tip, before dinner, say 15-20 minutes eat something with a good amount of poly or monounsaturated fats. Olive oil and whole wheat bread, Salmon or Lox, Tuna. This will stimulate the release of Leptin, which is the compound that tells you that you are full. This way by the time you finish dinner, you will be full enough, to where the treats, won't seem as appealing

boscatman

X3
I try to eat a big breakfast, even if its in steps...break it into 2 meals split between a couple of hours. The I try to have a nice sized lunch a little later than usual...say 1:30 or 2:00. Then when dinner comes around you only have room for something sensible. Yeah, and get rid of the crap in the pantry <cupboard>
Cheers,

guybierhaus

I have same problem. Maybe 1 hour after supper I'm looking to snack, and do so all night long. I'm in front of computer and TV is on, and many times recording another show for viewing later. I've managed to keep some snacks out of house, but wife can't seem to survive without lunch meat and cheese, which I routinely peal off 5 or 7 slices to eat. I really don't know how her LA Weight Lost diet works, she routinely eats at 10 pm. (it doesn't). If no snack foods in house I'm stuck, but may still butter bread and eat, even dig into soup cracker bucket and eat plain white crackers. The beast must be fed. I know it must stop. Believe it's a matter of will power, which apparantly disappears after 7pm. Maybe I'll try apples again for evening snack.

bdinger

Aha! I have cured this problem (I think..).

It's all about two things. First, have a insanely attractive and supportive wife-type person. That helps keep me honest

Second, this past week I've been experimenting with a new type of diet. Eating 1200-1500 calories, but spacing them out over the course of the day. Yesterday I only had 1000, and aside from some hunger right when I got home I was "OK". Shakes and hunger in the morning, though, made me realize I need more than that.

Today I've had about 700 calories so far, and it's 5pm Central US Time. I'm not hungry at all, in fact I just finished a snack of a blueberry NutriGrain bar. Basically, when I get hungry I eat, but not a lot. A healthy energy-filled snack. Other snacks today have been granola bars, with a lunch of a ham sandwich (ham + cheese + bread) with a side of three rice cakes.

It's boring, but hell, I've lost 5 lbs since Friday or Saturday (can't rememebr which ) so it's working! I learned this all from a diet that helped me lose about 160 lbs in 6 months....

bdinger

Oh, and I forgot to add, last night I found that having a ham sandwich right around 6pm (~250 calories), then having some Healthy Choice soup + rice cakes around 9pm worked awesome. The latter seemed like a "midnight snack" but really was an extension of dinner, for a dinner total of ~500 cals. Tonight I'm going to try to do similar with a little more, and try to keep the day around 1300 cals.

breadbin

It's all about will power and it's sad that I can't do it for myself but I have no problem losing weight to impress a girl. It's started again and have not touched any crap the last week or so. I don't even want to. I hope I can keep it up.

Vespa

If its all about willpower then we would all fail.

Its about finding a way not to be hungry and to feel full.

breadbin

I am not so sure it is just about feeling full. Like I said I would have a good hearty dinner, lets say 7 o'clock and would be full but then within 2 hours I would be snacking on sugary foods, I would eat until I was bursting. It's a horrible feeling. I would agree it is habitual though. I'd say it is 100% psychological in my case anyway. Boredom and comfort eating.

milhaus

What worked for me when I first started losing weight was completely cutting out all soda and switching to water and some fresh juice in the morning. That drastically cut my daily sugar intake and I felt like crap.. for a little while. But surprisingly soon I realized that I had a lot more energy and my mood was generally improved. Extra energy and a good mood made it much easier to start hitting the gym. I firmly believe that there's a lot of stuff in soda that just doesn't sit well in my body, and its amazing to me now that I used to equate satisfying my thirst with having a soda.

I decided to try cleansing my body some more and tackle my food intake. I started by fasting for 3 (more like 2.5) days. I drank lots of water the whole time and was taking a multivitamin. In fact whenever I felt any hunger I would drink at least a glass of water. I found that after fasting I was much more in tune with how food made my body feel. After my fast I was careful to start with a blank slate as to my eating habits and aim for portion control as well as some healthy choices. Too much dairy has upset my stomach in the past so I cut dairy out completely. I also decided to avoid processed foods as much as possible.

I think the important thing is to recognize your patterns and make changes to break free of them. A short fast helped me with this because it really disrupted my daily routine and made me realize how much of my day I spend dealing with food. I was never really aware of that before. Of course I still have to deal with food but its more conscious now and less out of (bad) habit.