Messed up diet- advice?

[Penguinbars]

I am not overweight, my BMI is only 20 and I hover between around 8st 12 and 9st 1.
It's more what I eat- i have a serious sugar addiction, it's 1:15pm and I've already eaten 1700 calories today.
I work in an office and tend to eat out of boredom, plus there are endless sugary snacks around for staff.
I tend to eat a lot around this time, try to not go over 2100 ish calories a day and the result is that I have to eat a very light dinner which means I'm hungry most of the evening

I bring a packed lunch, but end up eating it all by 11:30 latest. We're allowed to take our lunch anytime between 11-2, I wish I could wait longer. I do eat fruit, porridge, salads and so on but I love cookies, chocolate, cakes, milkshakes etc

Would just be interested to see if there's any advice, I'd love to eat 3 proper meals a day but it feels impossible. Another thing is I'm currently in a houseshare so it's difficult to have access to the kitchen for long periods of time.

Why are you counting calories if you’re a healthy weight? Are you eating enough protein? You don’t mention any. If you haven’t had enough calories your body will tell you that your hungry no matter bow many calories you’ve eaten.

My weight does go up if I don't count calories, I tend to eat protein for dinner in the form of meat, and cheese at lunchtime.

If you're hungry by 11.30 I'd make your first step tackling breakfast. What is your breakfast atm?

How about something with oats, protein and fat? Should keep you going!
Eg

• overnight oats with full fat milk and full fat greek yoghurt and berries
• porridge with peanut butter and banana
• pancakes made with 1 banana, 2 eggs and a handful of oats, topped with yoghurt/berries

Counting calories to maintain a healthy weight is fine imo and if you're maintaining weight at 2100 calories then that's the right amount of calories for you by the sound of it. But it sounds like you're having sugar crashes from all the sugary snacks you're eating - maybe instead of eating the sugary thing try eating a low sugar snack? Nuts or something like that could be a good substitute - they are high in calories but you'll be less likely to crash and feel super hungry.

plus there are endless sugary snacks around for staff

Do you mean the company provides them or are people bringing them in? The 'endless' bit just seems rather unusual.

There are endless sugary snacks at my office too I think it's just one of those things - people always bring in cakes, cookies, sweets etc and it's nice but it is hard if you're trying to not eat too much sugar!

It sounds to me like you may have a blood sugar issue.

The more sugary food you eat the more insulin is realeased then when your blood sugar level drops you crave more sugar.

You may do well with intermittent fasting where you delay having your breakfast by a few hours. Your first meal of the day should contain protein and fat. In fact eating protein at every meal is a great way to feel fuller and stop the temptation to snack on sugary treats. If you do need to snack whether that is through hunger, boredom or to fit in, then go for nuts, cheese, dark chocolate.

IF is not just for weight loss.

So, it sounds like the problem is primarily with sugar addiction and self control than what you eat. I say this because I absolutely recognise myself in what you are saying!
so im going to let other posters talk about the nutrition bit and il share whats worked for me on the habit/cravings bit.
This is what I did:

• Went cold turkey on the sugar. You will have plenty of people who go 'trying to go cold turkey makes it worse, best to restrict yourself to a couple of squares of dark chocolate a day' and if that works for them, fantastic- I'm very jealous. If that ends up working for you, great.

Doesn't work for me! If I eat it every day, my body craves it, and when I was in an office surrounded by sweet stuff, I found myself mindlessly going back in for another biscuit. I can't stick to just one, especially if they are then sat in front of me for hours, so I just put a blanket ban on myself. No sugar/chocolate/cake/sweets, I'd have one sugar in a cup of tea and that was that. The first couple of weeks were so hard, but I kept going 'if I can get to the end of this week, il feel good' to myself. And I kicked it. So now, I can have a biscuit on a Tuesday, and a cake on a Friday, and I get a treat, but I dont CRAVE it like I did before. I still to this day have to be careful - if I have sugary stuff 3 days in a row, I can feel the addition kicking back in and I have to go cold turkey again for a bit. Because id been eating it every day, my body was 'expecting' the sugar every day. So no routine where I have some every works for me, it's just training my body to crave it. What really helped with this is that after a month my skin looked much better - I know people say chocolate doesn't cause spots, but it definitely does for me.

• hunger cues - are you hungry, or are you thirsty? Is it just the time of day you normally snack? Have a glass of water when you want to reach for the sweets, it gives your hands and mouth something to do, it's good for you, and it will help establish if you are hungry or just dehydrated (a lot of what I thought was hunger was actually dehydration, which became abundantly clear after a few weeks of upping my water intake.

• keeping your mouth busy! Again, it might not necessarily be that you are actually hungry, it's just as you say, boredom - so I chewed gum a lot, as going to take the gum out would be a trigger for my brain to go 'are you taking it out to eat something you really could do with not eating?'

• why do you eat

Examine this in more detail - if it's boredom, is there something else you could do instead, either work related or something else acceptable, fidget toy etc?

Again, this is just based on my experience of what worked for me in relation to the addiction/habit

Up your protein at all 3 meals. This will help keep you satiated and less likely to reach for the snacks. Fill up on fruit, hummus and veg sticks, nuts, yogurt etc as snacks in between. And drink at least 2 litres of water. You don't need to lose weight at all so it's about reducing the urge for the sugary stuff.

Thank you everyone, I'm determined to start tomorrow :)