Prince

The thing that seems to be most problematic for me in my futile attempts at losing weight is snacking. If I don't snack on something, even if I'm not hungry, I get really anxious and irritable, and sooner or later trying to fight it just leads to a binge-a-rama. Isn't there anything that one can snack on to their heart's content and not have to feel guilty about?

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Plan9Senior

That is called Gluttony, and it is something that is not healthy no matter what food you are binging on.

If you feel you have to snack all the time, chances are that you are not eating at the correct intervals or not enough during your meals to sustain you or most likely crap that is high GI which makes you hungry an hour later. Your nutritional habits need to change otherwise you will find yourself always wanting to snack.

Prince

I don't think it has to do with hunger. I can be violently full and still want to eat something. In a word, I feel like shit most of the time, and eating is like...it's addictive because I only feel better emotionally when I eat. Which I guess is why it is so hard not to do it.

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Plan9Senior

Sounds like you need some counseling. There are some emotional disorders that cause people to overindulge in food.

Prince

Yeah, well... I've been like this for the past 8 years, in and out of therapy, but now that I'm in the States and not covered by socialized healthcare, counseling isn't an option.

Thanks anyway.

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Plan9Senior

Then I guess I can only give you one answer: Vegetables

jizzmasterp

Baby carrots, cucumber, and water. Seriously it helps.

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Prince

Carrots...now that's a pretty damn good idea. I used to eat them a lot some time ago, I was nuts about 'em and they can make you pretty full. Thanks!

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jokeR`afk

To fill my snacking urge I've started drinking water. It's come to the point where I don't even like Coke or any of the other soft drinks. I used to snack just for the hell of it, if it was there I'd eat it, now I just go down and grab two bottles of water from the garage or fridge or wherever it happens to be, and I'm set for an hour. Of course after a while I have to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes with a ferocity of just having woken up.

Rodney

Water is good. Somebody told me that a lot of times when people feel hungry and snack, they're actually reacting to a lack of water. So I tried drinking water instead, and it often erases the need to eat, especially at night.

Apples are also good. Low glycemic index, from what I'm told, and it takes practically as much energy to digest the damn things as the body can liberate from them. I know a gentleman who went on an (expensive) dietitian-supervised diet program, very regimented as to what he could eat and when, and the only thing they would let him eat at any time and in any quantities was apples (and also steamed vegetables, which he hates). Anyway, he ate a lot of apples, and still achieved his target weight right on schedule. Pretty much kept it off, too.

greyeyes

when I first started going healthy I started out on baby carrots, moved to gorgeing myself on water (Nalgene bottles are the shit). I just recently have found chopped dates to be lifesavers they are so fucking awesome! but they can't be covered in anything like flour (WTF?? I just recently bought some chopped dates covered in what I thought was their own natural sugars and it ended up being wheat flour, gross). Snacking on natrual things like fruits or soynuts (haven't tried them yet but I have heard they are great) is much better than snacking on chips or greasy fatty crap. Also, last but definately not least, try the water thing (it's cheap and it works) buy a Nalgene Bottle (you can buy them at any outdoors place or you can buy cool yet overpriced ones at http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/). The trick is just carrying a filled bottle around with you and drink till you can't whenever you feel the urge to eat. Go at it, and good luck!!

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Skettios

If you're hungry all the time, you're probably eating too many carbs. Try cutting back on empty calories like processed foods and sodas.

If you want something you can eat anytime, guilt-free, I suggest Sugar Free Jello, there's nothing too it, it's basically water, but it has form so it makes you full.

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Prince

Yeah, I like Jell-o, and we recently bought muchos of it. Other than that I currently really like Great Value's canned soup, it seems to have relatively little calories considering how full I get from it. Of course, since it IS soup, it doesn't keep me full very long.

I'm also nuts about Wyler's Light, which I drink all the time. It's sugar-free Kool Aid-type stuff... I don't know the word for it. It's the only way I can consume enough liquid during the day as well, since I can't stand plain water.

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Plan9Senior

Ok, here it comes.

Suck it up and start drinking water and suck it up and stop snacking. If you continue to eat jello, kool-aid, and (insert other crap here), then don't complain about having a tough time losing weight. Do you think that it is easy for some people? No, they are all in the same boat as you, they just have something you dont have... that is willpower. I suggest you take control of your eating habits before they take control of you...which it already seems is the case.

Your problem lies in your poor diet. Change that and you will feel fuller than you do with all the non nutritional crap you seem to load into your body.

Prince

Well...that was honest, at least.

My willpower aside, I'm sure even you will agree that one has to eat SOMETHING. Some people say eat all the carbs you want, but cut the fatty foods. Look at the fat content, not the calories. No, cut the carbs and only eat food that's loaded with fat. Atkins? No, that doesn't work. Eat fruit.

At the end of the day, I don't know what I am supposed to eat and what not. They say Jell-O is almost nothing but water. Wyler's Light has 40 calories to each 2 quarts of juice. But no, that's crap as well. Great Value's Vegetable soup is less than 80 cents a can, and has less than 200 calories to it, and I'm eating two of those per day. But no...that's crap as well.

I can only spend approximately 2 dollars for food each single day. All the damn "Eat This Lose Weight" recephies I've read include having a wallet the size of a book. Healthy eating and cheap eating don't seem to go hand to hand, so considering my budget I thought I was doing the best I could. But as always, I stand corrected.

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JStrider

perhaps you should try more like instead of 3 main meals a day have 6 small meals a day... more like 6 fist size portions spread out throughout the day... an apple for one... handful of carrots for the other... a bowl of soup for another... might be easier for you to do that as opposed to snacking all the time...

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SparklingDot

JS has the right idea. Eating several smaller meals throughout the course of the day will help you feel full and keep you from snacking unnecessarily. Water is a must. If your Wyler's Lite is anything like Crystal Light, then you are also on the right track (sugar free, low calorie content, powdered drink mixed with a lot of water). The trick is to keep yourself hydrated. Cut back on soda and other empty calories. If you must have soda, try switching to diet varieties. Nothing replaces water though.

I understand eating on a limited budget. As far as food goes, cook for yourself. You said that you can afford $2 a day, right? That $2 transfers to about $60 a month. For $60 you can certainly afford whole grain cereal (for breakfast or snacking, it takes me a month or so to eat a whole 16 oz box of cereal), rice, chicken or turkey, vegetables (for a filling lunch or dinner bowl / plate), tea (for when you are hungry and / or tired of water. A warm beverage will help fill you up and keep you hydrated), etc. No, this will not feed you the entire month long, but it will help you eat healthier, which is just as important. You can pre-package cereal or veggies for convenient snacking, and you can make the rice/chicken/veggies in bulk and dish out a bit when you want it. Salads are also easy to make in large quantites. And salad / rice/veggies / chicken / turkey are easy to tastily modify to keep you interested in them.

Keep an eye on the amount of what you eat and the serving sizes. Portion control is important, but so is the quality of what you eat. Don't deprive yourself of the things you like, but keep the portions under control. If you feel deprived, you will binge, no matter what. Try having a glass of milk once or twice a day. If you feel that you must chew something, but aren't hungry, try sugarless gum. If I recall correctly, chewing gum is supposed to relieve stress. If you find that you still want to eat when you know you don't need to, then drink a glass of water and go for a walk, or call a friend to go out for a while. Remove the temptation.

Anything else, you can PM me.

Remember, it takes 30 days to break a habit, and 30 more to make it stick.

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magua

If you have serious hunger control issues, you may have something physically wrong with you. See a doctor.

That aside: your goal here is to eat as much as you can, to feel the fullest, while consuming the least number of calories.

The first thing is, don't have a lot of food around you. Don't keep the pantry well stocked. If you're watching TV or using the computer, leave the food in the kitchen, and everytime you want another handful, go and get it and come back. If the food is easy accessible or nearby, you'll eat more.

Related to this is portion control. Take a little bit of food, go off, and eat it. If you make, for instance, spaghetti, and load your plate up, you make it very easy to eat a lot (or all of it) before your body decides its not hungry. Take a little, leave the area, eat it, and then return. Taking longer will give your body more time to decide its full.

The second point is, don't starve yourself. You'll just gorge more in the end.

The third thing is, drink lots of water. It's cheap -- cheaper than any other liquid. Use Crystal Light if you want a change in taste.

But, anyways, avoid sugar. Don't act like it'll kill you, but avoid it nonetheless. It's empty calories, and it won't make you feel any fuller. A 12 oz can of soda is 140 calories, and you'll feel just as hungry twenty minutes later. Better to sit down and eat a chocolate bar than drink a soda or eat sugar cereal -- both are bad, but at least the chocolate bar will have you feeling fuller longer.

Salads are your friends. Grocery stores sell packaged salads, and it's something like 240 calories if you eat _the entire bag_. Jello-O comes in sugar free pudding varieties -- I believe an entire box is 380 calories -- and 180 of those come from the skim milk that you use. Light popcorn is also pretty nice -- Healthy Pop's light popcorn is something on the order of 250 calories for an entire bag (plus lots of fiber).

In general, no matter what you eat, there's some version of it that's better for you. But if you feel you must eat constantly, and can't stop, you're not going to lose weight -- 3000 calories a day is 3000 calories a day, even if it's all salad and vegetables.

Willy

Carrots are pretty high in sugar as far as vegetables go. Broccoli, Celery, Cauliflower, cucumbers etc. are probably a better choice, especially if you're going to be eating a lot. Those sugar-free jello cups are great, 10 calories, no fat, no carbs. Carrots are better than chips or candy bars by a long shout of course.

Personally, I was never able to cut out sugar until I cut out (most) carbs as well. If you can get the sugar out of your system, it will really reduce your cravings for it.

I find foods with some fat and protien much more filling than sugar/carbs as well. Something like a hard-boiled egg has some fat in it, but it will stick with you much longer than something like a muffin or a doughnut and has less calories as well.

Drink the water. Seriously. Just do it.

kulrblind

I'll chime in and agree with the "drink water" crowd. I think that's really key, here. The only other things I would add are to beware of Crystal Light; it's high in aspartame, which is not overly good in high quantities, and canned soups are often high in sodium (same goes for ramen noodles and other things with flavour packets). Campbell's has a Healthy Request line of soups that are lower in sodium, and only cost $1.75 Cdn per can (probably cheaper in the U.S.).

Good luck!

skysooner

Your diet can play a large part in your emotions. The times I feel depressed about life are when I'm hungry or sleepy. I can eat something and my body still screams for food. It all depends on what you eat, etc. Yes, there are things that you can snack on that have very few calories and can provide a temporary sense of fullness. I generally keep fat free jello around the house. I'll snack on this, low fat ice cream bars, etc. Just be aware that virtually everything has a cost to it even if it has no calories. For example, diet cokes will make you retain water a bit which leads to your weight being higher for a period of time. Everbody has a different food cycle. I'm generally not hungry early in the morning, so I'll eat a 50 calorie snack (varies). Lunch is my big meal of the day. I'll eat 1200-1400 calories at lunch. I may have a mid-afternoon to late afternoon 50 cal snack. Dinner is generally 500 calories early in the evening. If I need to snack, I'll have a 50 cal snack in the later evening and then go to bed. This works for me, and my body is satisfied. I'm hungry in the evening but not to the point it has an effect on my mood. Of course, I'm in weight loss mode at the moment, so that hungry feeling is a good thing. It means my body is using fat stores to take care of itself.

Plan9Senior

Not to be anal, but your diet needs some heavy tweaking. Your body feeling hungry is not an indicator of it using fat, it is an indicator of you starving it. 1200-1400 calories for lunch is extremely high and your 50 calorie snacks are extremely low. You are making this harder on your body then need be. Your results will be better if you fix your nutrition, and best of all you have to deal with that "hungry" feeling.

skysooner

Well, I'm trying to stick to 1900 to 2000 calories per day. Sometimes my lunches are less, sometimes more. My wife will generally fix a 250 to 400 calorie dinner. Like I said, I generally eat a low-cal biscuit (50 calories) in the morning. My body is just not hungry then. This leaves me eating one large meal during the day (which is my lunch). I go home and work out and then am ready for dinner. When I say I'm hungry, it doesn't mean the body craving something necessarily. Many times my hunger is a mental thing. This was very pronounced when I first started cutting my food intake (when I was taking in 3000 cals plus a day). After I started losing weight, I would eat a more than sufficient meal and my mind was trying to tell me the body was hungry when it really couldn't be. This was part of the reason I was so overweight (249 lbs vs. 174 lbs upper end BMI). I have hypoglycemia, so I'm very well aware of having to snack a bit at different times, and I really know what hunger is since my blood sugar was dropping. I'm now 184 lbs with about 10 more to lose and then my diet will adjust back to a heavier food intake. My hypoglycemia has basically gone away, my cholesterol is way down, and my energy/health is way up.

Any suggestions you make would be appreciated. I have been kind of winging this. It has worked, but I know it may not necessarily be the best way.

BigBlueWrecking

I find apples or carrots and celery help me. I also eat a power bar for breakfast (extra Protein) and it fills me up for hours. Water helps too for sure.