Help me understand this food related where-to-go please?!

[NavigationCentral]

So. I’ve got about 1.5 stone to lose to get into normal BMI range and feel better. Currently a size 12, and have two DC 5 years and 18 months.

I’ve got a really busy career which involves intricate balancing to get all goals reached with two in schools/nursery and spouse and I are usually exhausted by 8 pm. Needless to say there’s very little time for myself.

After much effort - and doing this that or the other approach here is where I am:

1. I exercise for 45 mins each morning 6 am. I’ve got an Apple Watch and religiously do a variety of gym/video/run outdoors and close my target goals on the watch for exercise and movement. I know FULL well that this isn’t going to shift the weight - diet will. I do this for my own well being and I love it. It helps me feel I’ve done something for myself despite awfully busy days.

1. Here is the catch: I love cooking and I love food. I dislike sweet tastes (so hate chocolates cakes etc). However savoury food is my main weakness and particularly the evenings.

Put simply - I know why I can’t lose the 1.5. It’s because I am eating more than I am burning.

I also know that I have low carbed in the past and quickly lost but I’ve found it really hard to sustain with family/work meal times etc. Most of the stuff I love cooking doesn’t taste the same with cauli rice. That’s just one example.

I could flip this. Simply by not eating post dinner snacks, and not eating a mini second dinner. By reducing portions. I know this. Savoury, fast food as an additional extra on homemade lovely food of high quantities is causing this.

It feels emotional. If I’m exhausted (which my work and kids leave me feeling regularly) - just eat feels a natural go to. Doesn’t help that spouse is the same.

Things are fine till 7 pm. Then 7-10 pm something occurs. And that something is mental. You could stand me in front of a large cake and I wouldn’t flinch. But savoury fast food and large amounts of homemade savoury meals is my undoing.

I just need to eat less.

Is there any way to do this? I am truly stuck and I don’t know what to do :/

PS: I am gluten intolerant so cannot abide by pizza pasta bread etc - not sure relevant.

Is it a "you know what? I AM goimg to treat myself" thing? If yes, find other treats. I used to have issue in the evenings but now i do routines like a 5 min face massage with a massager, have pre planned snack in the middle of the evening which is cal counted (i count) and timed so I know it's there.
"Oh shush, you get snack in an hour you greedy bastard😂"
After "oooh shush, you are going to bed soon and just eat fgs"😂

You just need to find something instead as a treat

Also, this is why i couldn't have crisps at home for months🙄

I hate cauli rice too 😂

I cut carbs by massively increasing green veg and replacing all my carbs with that.

• Steamed green beans, babycorn and asparagus with a tsp of butter and lots of salt and pepper. Cook it in the microwave for 3 minutes and add a little cooked chicken breast or wafer thin ham for a quick warm salad for lunch.
• Roasted broccoli with olive oil and garlic.
• Pan fried asparagus with chilli oil or dunked in runny egg yolk
• burger with huge field mushrooms as the 'bun'
• Mediterranean style roasted veg

Last night we had spaghetti bolognaise, I cooked up the meat and sauce, did pasta for DH and DD, then dry fried some mushrooms, green beans and sugar snap peas (add a drizzle of water to the pan for the last minute just to soften the peas) and stirred those into the meat and sauce for me instead of pasta.

Would 16:8/intermittent fasting help? So after dinner it's a psychological shutdown and no more eating for 16 hours?

Ps I was the same size wise, I've dropped 12lbs in about six weeks and almost back in my 10s now. Im calorie counting (yawn, 1500 a day and don't add my exercise), run/horse ride a fair bit and throw in one or two intermittent fasts a week (skip dinner). And I had a day of norovirus to kickstart

All fab ideas thanks. Part of my undoing is also that I really love cooking and am if I might say - a very good and innovative cook. I find cooking relaxing after stressful work days and this doesn’t help me :/

The evenings are my ruin. Here’s a standard day (food wise) to show you what I mean -

530 wake up naturally, coffee
6-7 : Exercise and shower
7-830: kids etc
830-1300: work with various movement breaks (still not hungry and can’t stomach food)

1300-1430: mini cravings. Some form of lunch. Usually nothing crazy. Today was salad with salmon etc.

1430-2000: work, kids, beginning to think about food

2000-2130: PROBLEM zone. Cue chicken curry with rice (large portions), still hungry (chicken nuggets, chips), still hungry (am I? Or am I tired? Stressed?) - crisps.

See the problem: it literally occurs in a narrow window whilst I have unconsciously fasted 16:8 style. But that window is my undoing.

Sometimes I wish I had a sweet tooth. I wish I craved puddings and could do with artificial sweetener fixes. There’s no fix for craving fried savoury fast food :/

If the problem might be delayed satiety (i.e. you still feel hungry after eating a meal) I find the rule of 30 helpful.

I tell myself I can have what I want in 30 minutes' time if I still want it. 8/10 times I don't.

That’s a good point @SquirryTheSquirrel - can I give you the example of yesterday - is this what you mean by delayed satiety?

8 pm: nice satisfying generous portioned home cooked meal of chicken and rice jamabalaya.

830 pm: I need more food. I must have spring rolls and Wagamama squid rings. Deliveroo order.

Order delayed. Arrives at 920. I open it. I no longer fancy it. I am stuffed. But it’s here now. It smells good. I eat it. I don’t like eating it, I really am full.

Is this a delayed satiety thing?

So... I have not tried this BUT have you looked at NOOM? It keeps getting advertised to me and it's all about tackling the emotional and psychological side of dieting/losing weight.

After a bumper crop of courgettes I got a spiralizer. It works well and if you substitute spiralized courgette for spaghetti you eat so much veg it fills you for quite a while.

It also tastes remarkably good and if cooked just right the texture is like al dente.

Another suggestion, what about miso soup? Could that help with the savory cravings? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Or some kind of very low cal veggie soup. I think you need to set an actual goal and also calorie count using something like my fitness pal. I put all my cals in the app after meal planning. I can adjust as needed but makes you think twice about having to input extra food above what you've planned for.

I tried noom and couldn't get on with the app at all, the psychology stuff was quite interesting but also common sense for a lot of it. MFP's tracker is better but still not great! There's a gap in the market...

I like the miso soup idea as I love those flavours. In fact Asian cuisine is whereupon patronage of Deliveroo is occurring.

The issue with calorie counting is that I found it entirely incompatible with my mainly home cooked rather intricate and often impromptu meals and recipes. I often look at ingredients and think up recipes and cuisines which I found very hard to process into calories. Often saving a recipe doesn’t help as ill cook it differently another time.

Hence was thinking of controlling some other way - by not eating a second dinner, or by using smaller portion sizes or upping (savoury) vegetable ideas might help

I know it's super hard, but you just need to say no to the after dinner food. You will do ok twice, succumb to it once, do ok 3x, succumb once and so on until it gets better

@NavigationCentral

That’s a good point *@SquirryTheSquirrel* - can I give you the example of yesterday - is this what you mean by delayed satiety?

8 pm: nice satisfying generous portioned home cooked meal of chicken and rice jamabalaya.

830 pm: I need more food. I must have spring rolls and Wagamama squid rings. Deliveroo order.

Order delayed. Arrives at 920. I open it. I no longer fancy it. I am stuffed. But it’s here now. It smells good. I eat it. I don’t like eating it, I really am full.

Is this a delayed satiety thing?

Yes, that's 100% delayed satiety.

My layperson's understanding is that your stomach secretes a hormone that makes you hungry. It should stop doing this once you've eaten but, often in overweight people, the response is delayed so you go on feeling as if you need food.

If, like me, you've given into this, you'll often find an hour or so later you feel uncomfortably full, even nauseated because you've over-eaten but your stomach didn't warn you in time to stop.

That's why the 30 min rule works (you may need to adjust 30 mins to your own body's timings) - you are waiting for your stomach to catch up and let you know that, actually, you don't need any more to eat.

The post dinner snack I think is needed. Spouse eats chocolate and milk after dinner which I do not in any way shape or form crave but my undoing is Deliveroo at 9 pm. So I need replacements which tick the savoury box and tasty box. I like strong savoury tastes like smoked salmon, guacamole, sour cream and chive, chilli and garlic, miso, soy - that sort of thing. It’s ending up becoming second dinners of spring rolls and ramen :/

You could block the app

Okay I think I’ll try the cold turkey on after dinner food for a week and see how it goes.

Then I might add another change - of reducing portion size in general

And then a third change could be to intro more vegetables in the innovative ways as in this thread.

If I do all at once I think I’ll end up failing and giving up

Clicked too early. Block it for some evenings. No going back.
It probs sounds like i work for them because i keep recommending it, but Stay focused app is amazing for this.
You can block apps only for certain time and there is really no going back in a strict mode. To make it even better you can also block deliveroo website at the same time 😁
They are bastards anyway

I’m going off to find this app

Cannot find the stay focused app!

How about a low cal but filling savoury snack in the fridge? I'm just like you but things like chavroux goat cheese on sourdough crackers with radishes on the side hit that craving. Salted popcorn? Big salad of tomatoes, peppers, grain like couscous or bulgar wheat, yoghurt based dressing, lots of herbs. Keep it in the fridge and dip in when needed?

Calorie counting with home cooked foods is super easy, that's your excuse brain talking (happens to all of us!)

Sit down after dinner and work out its calories, that'll take time that stops you from diving straight into more food, and it'll help you see where the problems are.

From the Deliveroo story it sounds like you get as much pleasure from allowing yourself to have more food as you do from eating it? In which case that's more about finding new 'treats' or splurges than the actual food.

This on android. If you have apple, I am not sure they have for it, but there will be similar. Make sure it has a strict mode you can't get out of - also blocking entry to settings

I remember years ago reading in a magazine, if you craved chocolate, use some chocolate flavoured lip balm(flavoured lip balm big in the mid nineties!) , which would kind of dull the craving as its so intense.
Could the same work with your craving by having a lick of neat soy sauce. Might remove the craving.