Why is not eating so bloody hard??

[OuterSpaceGirl]

Trying to lose a couple of stone here but it’s just so hard.
I’m trying to do 16:8 and increasing my fruit and veg and reduce the amount of processed sugary food.
Since 12pm I’ve had a bowl of muesli with blueberries and a wrap with salad and feta and lentil curl crisp things. It’s plenty of food, I’m not hungry and I don’t want to eat until dinner but I just keep wanting to go to the kitchen and get a snack.
Tips for staying strong would be appreciated please.

The past few days for me have been

Breakfasts; 150g Full fat natural yogurt with 20g blueberries, 10g Chopped Walnuts and as much cinnamon as desired

Scrambled or poached eggs with bacon or heck sausage, mushrooms, spinach, cherry tomatoes

Pancakes made with 20g Oatbran, 1 egg, 1 tbsp Full Fat Greek Yogurt. More Greek Yogurt and a small amount of berries on the side.

Lunch; Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms (Cream cheese and garlic, spinach, onion, sundried tomatoes etc inside, cheddar cheese on top)

Lettuce cups stuffed with egg mayo or guacamole (or both)

Tuna salad with olives, sundried tomatoes etc and extra virgin olive oil on top. Sometimes crumble some feta in too.

That’s just this week though. Other weeks I do differently.

Read 'Gene Eating' by Dr Giles Yeo.
It's really hard to go against what your body is asking for.
I bet you're doing great OP. Don't be too hard on yourself.

As mentioned more protein.

Watch your fruit. Some are calorific and will raise blood sugar levels. Blueberries and blackberries are good.

Drink water.

Keep occupied.

Exercise.

Use my fitness pal.

Oh I sometimes have natural cottage cheese for breakfast in place of the yogurt and that’s really filling and lovely btw

Seconding the eggs and the crab sticks. Protein is your friend. I say this as somebody who got into terrible lockdown/working from home snacking habits and has managed to break them using both of the above.

If you've been used to eating a lot of carbs (crisps etc) then it will take a while for appetite correction to kick in. But it does happen with 16:8.
The poster who had headaches for the first 6 days was probably withdrawing from a carb/sugar heavy diet or not getting enough electrolytes.

Op that is nowhere near enough food! No protein for starters... please just eat 1500 cals a day in three meals and don't eat after 6pm.

I have same issue! Reading with interest. You are not alone x

Drink lots, up your protein levels, use a meal planner & plan in snacks, stay busy.x.

Agree with everyone else. Too high in carbs and not enough protein.

Carbs provide a quick high and a sugar crash...proteins sit longer and provide a more steady energy flow. A couple of slices of ham isn’t a terrible snack if eggs aren’t your thing.

I'm fasting from 4 in the afternoon till 6 in the morning.
If I feel like snacking I brush my teeth.
Loads of water.Im dining this for 4 weeks and I've lost 12 lbs.

Yeah headaches, exhaustion etc likely to be withdrawal symptoms. I’ve had fatigue initially but no headaches at all but I upped my water massively (three litres per day), took Himilayan Pink Salt for electrolytes and supplemented with magnesium. It’s really helped.

Don’t drink or eat anything that’s artificially sweetened (ie Diet Coke, low fat yogurts etc) as this makes your body think you’ve had sugar. Initially I had some stevia leaf extract (Purevia) which doesn’t cause blood sugar spikes the way aspartame and canderel etc do but I don’t need it now.

Unfortunately it’s Slimming World that got me in this mess of having to lose weight in the first place. It screwed up my portion control and my carb intake became ridiculous. I wish I’d never encountered it tbh so I definitely can’t recommend it.

As a side effect of the fast 800 my blood sugars are now perfect and my chronic health problems are getting better for the first time ever. Carbohydrate intakes should be kept low to reduce inflammation with certain illness, mine affects my endocrine system, and so this diet is really working for me in more ways than one! I’m losing a lb a day on average and unlike most diets, there is a plan for maintenance that actually seems to work based on long term follow up studies.

It’s probably obvious but I’m totally evangelical about this way of eating!

The struggle is real. You are not alone.

I’m a vegetarian and really need to cut the carbs and increase protein. Trouble is I don’t particularly like tofu, quorn or omelettes. I will eat a poached egg once a week and do enjoy boiled eggs but only with tons of salad cream which is no good when I’m trying to lose weight.

I eat reduced fat cheese and a variety of nuts and seeds every day as I love all of them but need to watch the calories. I eat lots of mixed beans and tons of fruit, veg, salad - there’s not much apart from radish and butternut squash that I do not eat.

I’m trying to stick to 1600 calories a day and am constantly hungry which I know is the lack of protein. The app I use shows my protein intake is between 9-12 grams per day.

I need to eat more lentils - I do like them but never seem to eat them. I need to a go to list of quick meal ideas.

Are you at home today OP? For me I have to get out the house for a long walk or something else so I won't be bored as I boredom eat. Evenings are my worst time for cravings. I exercise now (didn't used to) not to lose weight, but for a combination of mental health reasons and also to break the cycle of wandering to the kitchen and looking at the food in the fridge. I'm a recovering addict though so have had to do a LOT of replacing bad habits with good ones. Other than that I thought the "keeping cooked chicken breasts" or similar in the fridge person who posted above is a good idea - something protein-based that you've pre-prepared. Eating fruit doesn't work for me as I just end up eating the fruit followed by eventually eating whatever it was I was trying to avoid by having the fruit! It is hard though. I do think that changing habits is incredibly important (one of mine was snacking binge watching stuff).

9-12% not grams

For me I have to get out the house for a long walk or something else so I won't be bored as I boredom eat... I exercise now (didn't used to) not to lose weight, but...to break the cycle of wandering to the kitchen and looking at the food in the fridge.

This is truly excellent advice. If you are out walking, or doing whatever else outside, you can’t be snacking.

Unfortunately it’s Slimming World that got me in this mess of having to lose weight in the first place. It screwed up my portion control and my carb intake became ridiculous.

A few friends who have done Slimming World have said this to me. I think that SW sells itself on the premise that you don’t have to calorie count and there is always something you can eat etc etc but I thought that it sounded a bit bogus.

It probably does work for weight loss if you can eat a whole roast chicken in one go but without anything nice to go with it. However, you’re substituting another set of bad habits - constant grazing and large portions - for the bad habits that did the damage in the first place. Everyone I know who has lost weight with SW has put it back on when they go off the plan.

There was a YouTube video in which a woman was complaining that SW had given her mixed messages because she thought that she could eat unlimited fruit every day and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t losing weight on 20 bananas a day on top of her SW meals. She was presenting it as if SW had deceived her, but you don’t have to think about it too hard to see where the problem with that approach was. Loads of carbs, as the PP notes, and no education on portion control.

Every week I lose 3 to 4lb. Every weekend I put it back on again. Some weekends I gain 5lb, which means a steady gain overall. I need to lose at least 1 stone.

Currently trying to not snack. Drinking tea, cleaning teeth and playing games on my phone that need 2 hands. Anything to stop me putting food in my mouth.

I drink herbal tea and tell myself that I am the sort of person who has control over what she eats (because the converse of being someone who isn't in control of what she eats doesn't sound great). It works at least half the time!

tell myself that I am the sort of person who has control over what she eats

I love that idea. When faced with lovely calorific food, I do sometimes thing 'what would Victoria (Beckham) do'?

Lol at what would VB do. I don’t think I’d like the answer to that.

I do get out of the house a lot. I go for a brisk walk by myself in the mornings and then take the dcs out somewhere for fresh air in the afternoon.
Tomorrow, I’ll start to include more protein. I wish I liked eggs because they seem so easy and convenient but I just really dislike them. They need to be disguised in things like cake.
Sorry that others struggle too. We’ll get there!

If you fancy a snack go and have a spoonful of peanut butter

Me and my daughter are convinced it's hormones.

Certain times of the month never satisfied, always craving food. Other times not as bothered and it's easy to miss a meal.

Hiya, I'm doing a similar thing to you OP, only I decided 14:10 would be more sustainable in the long term. So I've cut out snacks and sugary food, and just having three healthy meals as big as I want.

I'm having plenty of food and I'm not really hungry but I also keep finding myself heading for the snack cupboard. I reckon it's a combination of habit, boredom, and sugar withdrawal.

If it's any help, I quit sugar for about a year a while back and after a few weeks I stopped craving food in that way. And I lost a ton of weight. So I reckon the tough part will pass soon.

I had to get rid of the snacks altogether. I do the hugh jackman thing of eating within a certain timeframe - I've found I get ravenous more often if I eat breakfast, but If I wait until lunchtime it's now fine now my stomach has shrunk.

In breaking a sugar/carb addiction you can easily self sabotage by giving into cravings with a strong physiological base and then beat yourself up because your will power is not strong enough - which leads to comfort eating.

For a couple of weeks get rid of all carbs and fruit that you can snack on - whilst telling yourself they are healthy - and give yourself permission to eat as much as you want of proteins and fat.

If you have denied yourself butter, full fat milk, cream etc (I have a cheese phobia so don't know if that is ok) you will feel you are treating yourself. So have chicken, salmon, tuna, steak, lamb, duck etc (twice as much as you normally have) in a creamy sauce with green salad with full fat mayo and balsamic vinegar but no chips/potatoes etc. Snack on precooked protein, ham, chicken or even peanuts. I took a multi vitamin and mineral supplement to be on the safe side.

My whole metabolism and hormone profile changed in a matter of weeks and the addictive cycle was broken. I was in control and could experiment with adding things I wanted to one at a time. Turns out that starches are not that great so I choose not to eat bread, potatoes, rice, pasta etc.

I won't pretend this was my first option because it seemed so extreme but I had been diagnosed with PCOS and wanted to see if a blood sugar controlled diet could work as well as Metformin with less side effects when not overweight. It worked and I have followed these principles for the last 20+ years. It not only restored fertility but enabled me to maintain weight, despite menopause.