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

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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.

Distraction. Take yourself away from the food, until the habit is broken. So go on a walk, have a bath, paint your nails (more difficult to eat), read watch a really gripping thing on TV whatever. Have a long phone conversation.

I have a couple of thoughts.

If you can stop the second dinner (the calories for that should be very easy to discover?) and shift your eating to a less disordered pattern you might find the craving for it stops.
Start having a small breakfast with the kids and two protein filled snacks.
When you have dinner then dish up a smaller portion and then go and brush your teeth, I call this "closing the kitchen". I can have water after that (I drink sparkling) but otherwise food is over for the day.

If you can get into a more "normal" pattern of three meals and two snacks you should have more even blood sugar etc and less cravings.

Loads of good ideas here. I am going to try a couple of these to address the second dinner issue first and hope the headspace trickery that is causing the issues sorts itself.

My cravings are - really - the mishmash of -

Salt
Garlic
Chilli
Salt

These determine the second dinners if you see there’s a pattern in them - chips with garlic mayonnaise, burger with hot sauce, spring rolls with soy dip, fiery hot chilli garlic ramen, burritos with extra hot salsa - do you see my point?

There’s something fairly specific around the salt-chilli-garlic-spice thing that’s driving the second dinners in an overpowering and intense way that’s finding expression in high calorie fast food

Sorry to carry on but thinking about the second dinner of chips - it’s almost as if the chips are irrelevant. What IS relevant is that I can dip them in garlic mayonnaise, that I can lay out an array of extra hot tabascos, that I can shower them in piri piri. THATS the pleasure. But it’s leading me to also then eat a pile of chips (which i am not very fussed about).

Thinking about the burrito. Do I like the gluten free wrap? Not really. Is it the meat that I fancy? If they forgot to put in guacamole sour cream with chives and their extra hot salsa would I eat it? No.

Gosh how do I resolve this?!

:/

(Ps thanks for reading!)

Like a couple of PP I've noticed you aren't eating enough during the day so when your appetite is stimulated you over eat in the evenings.

Also look into doing more resistance/weight work in the mornings or if you want to go running add in a session of interval/speed work or hill drills as they should make you hungrier in the morning/early afternoon so you feel like eating. If you do this don't be surprised if you don't lose any weight for up to 10 weeks but are losing inches before you then drop a lot of weight.

So have something that can be covered in those flavours without adding a load of carbs and calories.

Put some green beans or asparagus on a tray and roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes then dip those in garlic Mayo.

Ok the Mayo isn't great but you will have quartered the calories by cutting out the chips.

You need crudités instead of chips

2 suggestions, coming from different angles - if you do think you have delayed satiety, how about having a high-fibre snack and a glass of water half an hour before dinner - could be Fybogel, some soaked chia seeds or flax seeds mixed with low sugar fruit eg blueberries raspberries, poached rhubarb etc.
To tackle 'why" you need to overeat in the evenings, have a look at something like the 4 day win by Martha Beck www.abebooks.co.uk/4-Day-Win-Change-way-think-food/22853390419/bd?cm_mmc=ggl--UK_Shopp_Textbookstandard--product_id=COUK9780749928209USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjwx8iIBhBwEiwA2quaqypq1bUJzGtNo7sm1PZB-QjRj1j9RyauX9IBy8v6BC5YiMN5th_6uRoCjvEQAvD_BwE (sorry for long link but it's a ridiculously cheap price)

Bit of a curve ball, but have you had your blood pressure checked lately? I have mild hypotension and when my BP is dropping too much I crave crisps and salty food, whereas normally my cravings are for sweet stuff.

Popcorn! We airpop popcorn and eat it most evenings with a little butter and loads of seasonings. Garlic, chili, cumin, lime, peri-peri, sesame-soy, parmesan and black pepper... Endless options. I'm a seasoning freak too so this always hits the spot, is high fibre and fairly low Cal and doesn't make you feel 'stuffed'