I may be missing something, but why didn’t you just have lunch instead of holding out and eating chocolate-covered almonds? The goal is not to stop eating, but to make better choices (and take ownership of your weight and your eating habits). 
Oh, but I did have lunch prior to giving in to the call of the chocolate-covered almonds. Finished my tuna salad and vegetables at 11:30 am. (I start work earlier than most, so eat lunch a bit earlier as well).
The chocolate-covered almonds were after lunch.
Can you list what you ate and when? It might help people tinker with your intake and figure out how to kill the snacking.
You really need to make a conscious decision to quit it, though. It’s hard. I used to have either three small cookies or a packet of Peanut Butter M&M’s almost every afternoon at work. Now, I don’t even remotely want that.
Here was today’s intake for me:
Breakfast: 2 egg muffin cups–I made these with spinach, bacon, and feta.
Lunch: about 1.5 cups of lettuce, topped with taco meat, cheddar cheese, sour cream, salsa, and black olives
Dinner: 1 slice of Meatza, about 2 cups of broccoli with homemade cultured butter, 2 glasses of red wine.
Total is approximately 1800 calories, which runs me the calorie deficit I need to lose about a pound a week without exercising at all. And no snacking.
Wow, I can’t imagine surviving on such a small amount of food as what you ate. But you’re right, I just need to decide to not snack.
Here’s today’s menu:
7:00 am
Three egg whites, one yolk, cooked with no oil or butter. One-half whole wheat Weight Watchers flat roll (50 cals., 0.5 gm fat, 12 carbs, 1.5 gm fiber)
8:00 am
1/2 cup raw celery pieces
9:30 am
3-4 oz cheddar cheese
10 rice crackers (84 cals., 1.1 fat, 0 gm fiber, 2 gm protein)
10:30 am
1/2 cup cucumber slices
1/2 cup raw celery pieces
11:30 am
1 cup stir-fry veggies
1/3 cup tuna salad (tuna, few tbs mayo, chopped celery, lettuce)
1:30 pm
Ridiculously large box of chocolate covered almonds (575 calories, 37.5 gms fat, 47.5 carbs, 5 gms fiber)
2:00 pm
Fiber One bar (100 cals., 2.5 gm fat, 19 carbs and 5 gm fiber)
3:30 pm
3 large egg whites
1 Weight Watchers whole wheat flat roll (100 cals., 1 gm fat, 25 carbs, 3 gm fiber)
2 tbs. Hazelnut butter
1 Fiber One bar
4:30 pm
1/3 cup tuna salad (tuna, few tbs mayo, chopped celery, lettuce)
1 Weight Watchers whole wheat flat roll (100 cals., 1 gm fat, 25 carbs, 3 gm fiber)
Cooked veggies
6:30 pm
1 cup whole grain rice pasta
1/4 cream cheese
1/2 cup misc. veggies (frozen mix of broccoli, carrot, green bean, etc.)
7:30 pm
Small chocolate-covered ice cream bar (100 cals., 6 gm fat, 12 carbs, 1 gm protein)
8:00 pm
Calorie-reduced chocolate mousse dessert (100 cals., 4 gm fat, 8 carbs, 1 gm protein)
Herbal tea and water all day and evening
If the hungriness is mainly a growly feeling, you may want to try some fiber filling tablets and such. And as so many have suggested, definitely drink as much water as you can (especially with the fiber-y things :D).
Good luck and yay you for quitting smoking.
What’s striking me here is how frequently you’re having something to eat. Often every hour, no break of longer than 2 hours. I’m no nutritionist, but you definitely need to have some help on convincing your body that you don’t need to eat again every hour on the hour.
(Forgive me, I haven’t read the whole thread!)
Part of what’s so hard about quitting smoking is that it’s an oral fixation. Human beings are very prone to oral fixations, I think it’s coded somewhere deep in our DNA! When people talk about smoking they tend to focus on the addictive and harmful evil that is nicotine. Rightly so, but hiding behind it is oral fixation. Think of nail biters, it’s not that fingernails are an addictive drug, but once you flip that switch on an oral fixation, it’s hard to turn off. Smoking, nailbiting, even drinking all have the same thing hiding behind them. That’s why so many quitters gain weight when they quit smoking, it’s something to do with their mouth, so it feels real good.
Armed with this information you need to find a couple of snack foods that you can munch to keep your lips happy and not gain weight. Something that takes time to crack open like a sunflower seed or pumpkin seed, might be best. But you could use switch it up with celery or carrot sticks, chop 'em up like matchsticks, if you can.
My personal difficulty when dieting isn’t hunger (that starts to go away after a few weeks as you get used to it, plus it’s easy to fill yourself up with craploads of vegetable) - it’s cravings for the things I’m not eating much of. The heavy carbs and sugar, mainly - I start craving big-ass sandwiches, chocolate cake, and so on. I deal with it by making sure there’s none of it in the house so I can’t have any (at least not without enough effort that my guilt would have time to stop me).
And alcohol. Damn that’s hard to cut down on without cutting down on your social life when your social life is primarily centered around pubs. I suspect a change in friends would help that, but I like my friends.
Holy hell - eating frequent small meals works well for a lot of people, but … wow, that’s, like, *constant *snacking! Still seems real carb-heavy, though: pasta, rolls, crackers …
Forgive me if it’s been brought up, but: do you sweeten your tea? It just occurred to me that even a 1/2 tsp. sugar here and there will add up fast if you’re drinking as much tea as you say you are.
I really think you’re hungry because you’re eating too much sugar and not enough fat. Fat, when it’s not eaten in conjunction with sugar, is not your enemy. It sates you and, furthermore, does not have an impact on your insulin or blood sugar levels, which keeps you feeling sated.
A half cup of plain celery is like eating air. Of course you’re still going to be hungry and want to eat two hours later.
Instead of eating Fiber One bars and Weight Watchers bread, try using large low-carb tortillas. The large size(on the right) has 12 grams of fiber per tortilla and only 1g of sugar. Those Fiber One bars have 10g of sugar each.
(BTW, I’ve lost 25 pounds since cutting out sugar and eating more fat. It’s not crazy talk. :))
I’m going to +1 gallows fodder again, which I did for his/her last post, which had the same content, which you seemed to have ignored. Because your second menu here contains more carbs than the first one.
Seriously…stop counting calories for a second and start eating calorie-dense food. Nuts, full-fat cheese, lean meats. You will be more full and you will EAT LESS.
Stop eating rice crackers. Stop eating Fiber One bars. Why are you eating Fiber One bars when you are eating veggies which are high in fiber? Because you’ve told yourself they are “healthy” and now you can eat two in a day! No.
Your diet looks like you pulled it from a Weight Watchers menu “As seen in Us magazine!” circa 1982. It’s been discovered that just eating a bunch of “low fat” foods doesn’t help. It just MAKES YOU HUNGRY because all of the foods have replaced the fat with sugar.
When Dr. Atkins came out with his theories on weight loss everyone said he was a crock. Now he’s dead and almost every diet plan that comes out stresses proteins and fats over carbs. Cut out carbs. You don’t have to go down to 5g of carbs a day, but don’t get all your calories from carbs. If you’re peckish don’t eat carbs. And ESPECIALLY do not couple high-fat items with carbs.
You’re wondering why you’re so hungry. It’s because you’re eating so many carbs. Even if you are eating some chicken on a Weight Watchers roll, you’re eating carbs.
Eat all the egg yolks with your eggs, don’t have a roll. Have a tomato. Put natural peanut butter (regular peanut butter is loaded with sugar) on your celery. Dip your cucumber in full-fat ranch dressing. Use olive oil in your stir-fry. Try some avocado or sardines in oil. If you need sweet have tea with Splenda or a Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. Or go for a walk. Just don’t negate all of that “good fat” with stupid shit like Fiber One and Weight Watchers Rolls.
Or don’t, whatever. Be hungry.
I’m just going to echo what ZipperJJ said. Seriously, lose the extraneous carbs, especially the rice crackers. Those things are worse than potato chips. Fats and proteins are not your enemy, they’re you’re friend. I’m not a nutritionist, but I am an insulin dependent diabetic, so I do understand the effect that certain foods have on a human body, and unlike a non-diabetic, I have to control my own insulin, so I do understand how to stop having to have insulin spikes, reactive lows, which make you hungry, and things like that.
Carbs make you hungry. Its as simple as that. Your body uses carbohydrates as its primary fuel source, and utilizes carbs by pumping out insulin. Once those carbs are gone, i.e. digested and used, your body signals that its fuel is low, i.e. you’re hungry. So you eat more carbs, and so on and so forth. It becomes a cycle that’s really hard to break.
Like ZipperJJ says, you don’t have to go really low-carb to do this; I certainly don’t – I eat about 80-100g of carbs per day (sometimes a little more, but nothing like the Atkins 5g/day), and the bulk of my caloric intake comes from fats and protein. I’m losing weight, I don’t see blood sugar spikes and dips, and I don’t get hungry. To snack on, there’s always a handful of raw nuts, maybe a cheesestick, but nothing that involves carbs. It keeps me full for longer and means I’m not scarfing down carbs every five minutes or so.
Seriously, try it. You’ll be surprised at how easily things come together.
I did a thing where I ate five meals a day, every two hours (9A, 11A, 1P, 3P, 5P, approximately). I was never hungry, and I lost 20 lbs. before I strayed.
My biggest problem, and yours too, it seems, is overeating in the evening and at night. I resolved to never eat a thing after 7 p.m. Here is a great tip that helped me: floss and brush your teeth every evening after your last scheduled meal. I never wanted to mess up my daisy-fresh breath, so it did prevent late night snacking.
Good luck,
mmm
MMM, care to give an example or two of what those five meals contained? Never hungry + lose 20 lbs. sounds like exactly what the OP is looking for!
Well, not speaking for MMM, but I have lost 25 pounds on a low-GI/low-carb diet (meaning, I am not strictly low-carb as I eat legumes and sweet potatoes on occasion), and have not been hungry. Probably everyone in this thread advocating a drop in carbs will tell you the same thing.
Here’s what I ate or will eat today:
Breakfast:
3 pork breakfast sausage links
2/3 cup full-fat cottage cheese
tea with ~1 TB heavy cream and 1 packet splenda
Snack:
1 oz Blue Diamond salt-n-vinegar almonds (AWESOME)
Lunch:
Low-carb tortilla
3 oz. turkey breast
4 strips bacon
~1 cup mixed sprouts
~1 cup baby spinach
6 oz. plain Greek yogurt, 2%
1 packet splenda
1 packet Truvia
Diet soda
Snack:
Babybel cheese round
Dinner:
6 oz. sirloin steak
Sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter and splash marsala
~2 cup steamed broccoli with butter
Diet soda
If I want something sweet afterwards, I’ll have a sugar-free fudgsicle. Maybe a cup of decaf tea with cream and splenda close to bedtime.
I’ve eaten like this since late September and have lost 25 pounds, and have not felt hungry or deprived doing it. I will admit to feeling bored with the lack of variety of foods I can eat, but that’s my fault for not bothering to learn new recipes.
At this point, you’ve had 166 calories. Now, I’m not sure how much you weigh, but at this point in my day, I’ve had 367, and much more filling protein and fat. I’m sure your body’s craving for fats gets you to where you are at 9:30. Two eggs, rather than two whites and one whole egg, will get you about the same amount of calories and protein and bulk, but will add fat that will make you feel fuller. Ditch the roll and add some veggies to your eggs to get some fiber, or add some nut butter to your celery if you need to keep that snack.
You mentioned earlier that this is lowfat cheese…so you end up eating 3-4 ounces of it, when I’d imagine 1 ounce of the regular stuff would make you feel much more full with fewer calories. 3.5 ounces of lowfat cheese adds 172 calories–more than you’ve eaten to this point all day. The rice crackers are nothing but a cheese delivery vehicle–they do nothing to help your overall nutritional level or satiety. A medium raw apple gets you 72 calories, a cup of blueberries gets you 83. Same calories as the rice crackers, more bulk, and both go very well with cheese and satisfy cravings for sweets as well.
The cucumber slices add all of 7 calories. The celery is 10. You’re snacking on water, which is why you eat and eat and you’re still hungry. This snack gets you up to 435 calories, and the vast majority of your day to this point is cheese and crackers.
I am assuming your tuna is water packed. I counted 1/4 cup of tuna, two tablespoons of full-fat mayonnaise, a diced 4-inch strip of celery, and a cup and a half of lettuce. I made the veggies an even mix of broccoli, snow peas, and bok choy–let me know what you actually had and I can be more precise. Also, if you used low-fat mayonnaise, your numbers will be much different. Honestly, this isn’t a terrible meal. I’d add more tuna–it doesn’t kill you on calories and will help with your protein. Right now, you’re at 774 calories. 200 of them are mayonnaise, and 172 of them are cheese.
To compare this to my day, where you said you couldn’t imagine eating such a small amount of food–after lunch, I’m at 1081 calories. You’re eating more food but fewer calories. Your food doesn’t stick around as long.
At this point, you’re just eating because you’re used to having something in your mouth. There’s not much of a reason (except for maybe the massive sugar crash) that you would need something in your stomach 30 minutes after eating the giant box of almonds. This is where you need to get past the psychological hump. I can’t help with that, but hopefully making smarter food choices earlier in the day will make the psychological hunger easier to deal with.
I snipped the rest of the day, because it’s just more of the same. You need to focus on eating larger meals so you don’t feel the need to snack all the time. I’m sure part of it is just wanting something in your mouth because you’re not smoking, but a good part of it is due to the fact that your actual meals are not satisfying you, so you make up for it with constant snacking.
Today I’ve eaten my 2 egg cups, and lunch was a steak fajita plate with extra guacamole, no tortillas, beans, or rice. I just ate the meat and grilled onions and peppers with some pico de gallo and guacamole and lettuce. And no chips and salsa either! I’ll stay full until dinner–not sure what I’m having yet. No snacking involved, because I eat things that keep me full at my meals.
No, I don’t sweeten my tea at all.
Makes sense. Clearly, I have to work out a new snack line-up.
I actually haven’t been counting calories. The only reason I posted the calorie counts was because somebody said asked about an app to count calories and then somebody else posted an estimation of the calories.
To be honest, because I don’t know what else to eat. Because that is what is in the cupboard and I’m quite lost as to what else I can grab when I’m so hungry. I stand in the kitchen and open the fridge and sort of freeze, unsure of what I should have, until finally I just grab those (That’s why I came here in the first place — to find out what else I can eat!)
The higher carbs — the ice cream, the pasta, etc. — that is the result of my becoming so hungry that I’d eat a bale of hay if I could choke it down. Obviously, I need to figure out what to eat, plan ahead and have those foods on hand.
I do plan to stop at a grocery store after work and see what I can find that might work. I won’t have any time to cook meat tonight (and can’t eat deli meat due to the sodium content), but should be able to find some raw nuts and cheese.
Yes, it IS exactly what I’m looking for. My original OP was asking for some menus and recipes (not asking to have my current eating habits trashed, thank you, as I already knew they were not great) and it would be a big help to have some specifics.
If your grocery store is anything like the ones around here, they’ll have pre-roasted rotisserie chickens, hot and ready to go, probably near the door. They’re a friggin’ godsend for people who want protein but don’t have time/energy/inclination to cook.
If you don’t know how to take apart a cooked chicken (remove drumsticks, remove thighs, remove each separate breast) you can just hack into it with a fork, or your fingers! 
Leftover chicken = easy snacking.
Calokin, I posted this link earlier in the thread, but this is a good overview of the nutritional breakdown of how I eat. The links on this page get you to the hows and the whys. If you want recipes, I can hook you up with a TON. Just let me know what foods you like.
OK, this is what I do, and tend to have in the house/at work for meals. Maybe it’ll help?
Breakfast: Fruit such as pineapple, or berries and Greek yoghurt. Sometimes an apple with peanut butter and cheese. Some of those egg cups that Drain Bead provided the recipe for. I mix it up each day so that I don’t get bored, and use reduced-sugar vanilla soy milk in my coffee, but breakfast always has more protein than anything else. Heck, sometimes I do two slices of Nature’s Own bread (10g of carb each), stick some meat on them and a slice of cheese. No hunger that can’t be sated with a handful of nuts until lunchtime.
Snacks: raw nuts, full fat cheese sticks, some veggies I can eat with natural (no sugar) peanut butter, and that’s really about it. Even though I have an insulin pump now, my one rule with snacks was “if I have to inject myself with more insulin, its just not worth it”. Probably won’t work for you, but that’s what helped me.
Lunch: Lean meat such as chicken or lean beef. Lots of leafy or fibrous veggies, no potatoes or bread. Sometimes a huge salad, or a fajita plate without the carb options from my local Mexican place. If I don’t have time to go out for lunch, either a takeout salad, or interestingly, one of the crackers, meat and cheese “lunchables” combos – I like the Oscar Mayer ones as there’s enough meat and cheese to balance the crackers, and a little chocolate (a Milka miniature) to satisfy my sweet craving. No hunger again till about 4pm, when I can hold it off with some nuts or something.
Dinner: scrambled eggs with onions and turkey bacon. Sometimes I’ll do a shepherd’s pie and pick out the potato. Or make a meaty pasta sauce, and eat the sauce whilst the SO eats the pasta and sauce. Salads and meat are involved. Sometimes, if its been a long day, a low carb pitta bread, hummus, meat and cheese. A low carb yoghurt (the ones from Kroger are particularly good) if I crave something sweet. One of those rotisserie chickens that purplehorseshoe describes makes a good protein selection for a salad, particularly with some cheese. If I have time to really cook, I might doctor up a steak. Make some fries for the SO, and eat mine with a salad and a slice of sweet potato.
I had to change my eating habits drastically about a year ago because of the diabetes, and a diet like the one I describe above, and exercising every single day (I either dance for two hours a night, or if I don’t dance, I swim for 25-30 minutes) really made sure that I’ve lost weight and kept it off. Its hard work, really hard work, but it does pay off, and I hope that what I’ve written does help in some way. Getting over the carb cravings will be the worse, but in time, after a couple of weeks in fact, it’ll get easier and better.