Snackaholics Anonymous

[KihoBebiluPute]

I have realised that my downfall is between-meals snacks. I have healthy meals and excellent planning for a controlled but sensible amount of nutrition that will keep me well fed with just enough of a calorie deficit to gradually lose a bit of weight (BMI currently about 25.8, want to get down to 23ish). But the plan all falls apart when I am standing in the kitchen and just fancy a snack. It is a lot worse on days like yesterday when I had slept really badly and was so tired, and I seemed to be seeking what snack I could eat that would make me not tired. For reference the following snacks did not work for this: Handful of dried apricots, bag of low-cal popchips, small piece of chocolate tiffin, 2 corncakes with light houmous, an apple, a dark chocolate rice cake, a handful of salted popcorn.

Well I did sleep better last night and today so far I have not had any snacks but the larder door is beginning to call to me. So to help me resist that I thought I could start a thread for daily accountability along the lines of the 12-step AA type programme, taking it one day at a time, or even one hour at a time, to report in how I am doing. No idea if anyone else wants to join me but it would be great if some people do. For each post:

Introduce Yourself
Say how long it has been since your last (unscheduled) snack
Share how you are feeling about your own struggles to leave uncontrolled snacking behind.

I'll start:

My name is @KihoBebiluPute and I am a snackaholic

It has been 15 hours and 14 minutes since my last inappropriate snack.

I am just trying to take it one day at a time at the moment. Let's see how this goes.

It’s the evening for me , any the moment hubbie goes to watch TV upstairs at 9 so I can watch love island and that’s my trigger to snack.

I’ve had crohns for 20 years so eating small snacks often is ingrained in me plus high calories for energy but now I have a stoma and I eat normal meals and still snack attack often.

Welcome to the thread @mrsbyers and thank you for joining me.

Yes what you say about having small snacks often ingrained resonates for me too. Last year I did a really successful diet which helped me lose a huge amount of weight by helping to reduce my overall appetite by only having tiny mini-meals spaced throughout the day. Which was great but means that eating with friends and family is complicated so wouldn't want to do that permanently. I gradually transitioned from that to a more normal meal plan but yes my stomach is used to really not having long to wait for the next 'little something'

I'd like to declare that the following do not count as 'inappropriate snacks':
An occasional raw mushroom (these are literally only about 5 calories each so really don't count do long as you don't scoff them by the punnet-ful)
Licking the spoon after having done cookery, or the tiny tastes you need to have to check the seasoning balance.
A single planned 100 calorie max snack mid-afternoon if and only if there are more than 7 hours between lunch and dinner.

The following would count though:
Having an extra supplementary something immediately after any normal meal that was a controlled number of calories, due to still being a bit hungry. I need to drink water and wait half an hour and the urge will pass.
Hoovering up leftover kids dinner that they didn't eat. I don't need it.

Under these definitions I have so far made it to 18.5 hours since my last inappropriate snack. Hoping to make it to 24 hours at least.