How to change bad eating habits?

[MindlessEater]

I have put on a lot of weight over the last couple of years (15kg) due to stressful situations my BMI is now 32. I am a bit of a binge eater and overeater.
The stressful situations have now stopped but I'm stuck in the same patterns of eating too much.
I feel quite anxious thinking about losing weight which is maybe left over from before when I'd get the urge to binge eat when I was anxious.
How do I break the pattern of overeating and lose weight?
I'm at home (alone) for the next few weeks as I work in a school and am starting a new job in September which is not helping.

My weight loss journey started in January and I’m now 3 stone and a bit down and a small size 12 from an 18.

That was after years of failed attempts to diet. 2 things changed for me; I changed my job and was settled in a much less stressful job with better hours and I joined a gym.

My focus has become fitness and strength so that is my driver to make healthy choices. I’ve had 10 years of knee pain following an running injury and struggled with long walks, couldn’t squat down and stairs were tricky so losing the weight and working on my strength and flexibility has been life changing.

It’s not been easy but my god, I feel so much better for it.

I started slowly too with intermittent fasting 16:8 which stopped me snacking in the evening. Gradually I reduced crisps and chocolate and rarely eat either now.

Good luck, it’s not easy but it is worth it.

That's really interesting, it sounds like you've got lots of different flavours there. I might think about doing something like this when I've started my new job and I'm in a routine. I've added tofu to my shopping list so I can try it and the freedom chocolate spread looks interesting too!

Thank you for your post. Well done on your weight loss, amazing!
I've tried to diet and failed many times because of stress this past year. Hopefully my new job won't be so stressful.

Yes not having an off switch is one of my downfalls as well. I'm not sure I could give up snacks but maybe I need to.
I was thinking about preparing my food the day before including snacks, like a pack lunch, and only allowing myself to eat that. Maybe not dinner but the rest of the day so I don't eat straight from the cupboard.

I rotate different healthier snacks. Frozen fruit juice ice lollies are my current go-to.
I also really enjoy snacking on cucumbers and tomatoes. These trades are easy wins and stop me from heading for the biscuits or the crisps.

I also think about what ‘function’ a food item is serving within a meal, especially if it’s something I’m going cold-turkey with because I can’t moderate it - so for example, I realised if I was having a sandwich without crisps, what I actually missed from that meal was something of a different texture to contrast with the sandwich, rather than it being the crisps themselves, so now I add some cherry tomatoes to my plate.

While they can’t compete with Walkers cheese and onion, they make the meal feel more complete for me, as I’ve got some textural variation from the sandwich.

Along the texture theme, I realised a lot of my preferred snacks were crunchy, so I keep the large Snack a Jacks in, as they’re about 50 cals each, and because they’re quite dry they take a while to eat, so the max I ever have at once is about 3, which is less calorifically damaging than 3 bags of crisps would be.

Also if I feel really ‘snacky’, especially in an afternoon, I make myself a cup of tea and decide I’ll have a snack after I’ve had my tea, and more often than not the urge has gone off my by the time I’ve drunk it.

I hear you — breaking out of old habits can feel harder than dealing with the stressful situations themselves. It makes sense that your body and brain got used to coping with food, so even when the stress is gone the patterns stick.
What’s helped me in a similar spot was focusing on just one small change at a time instead of trying to overhaul everything. For example, I started with drinking more water and keeping healthier snacks ready, which made me less likely to grab the “binge” foods. Once that felt normal, I layered in other changes.
You might also find it useful to read about people who’ve worked through similar cycles of binge eating and stress. I came across lizzo website recently, and it has some helpful motivation around body confidence, healthier habits, and balancing mindset with food. Sometimes hearing different perspectives can take the pressure off and make changes feel more doable.
Be gentle with yourself — you’ve already handled the stressful situations, so you can handle reshaping your habits too.

What you said about old habits is so true, sometimes it feels impossible.
I have made a start making some new habits, though and hopefully they will stick.

• I am now having overnight oats with extra protein for breakfast which keeps me full up for ages and if I get hungry before lunch I eat an apple, that seems to work well.

• Like you I am also drinking more water, especially before meals, that seems to help.

-I'm starting to be able to pause before I reach for food and asking myself if I'm actually hungry or just want to eat, most of the time I'm not really hungry.

Next step is to sort out afternoon snacking, then dinner, then evening snacking. I'm taking my time and not putting too much pressure on myself.
I haven't lost any weight but I feel like I'm going in the right direction and am trying not to focus on how much I hate my body at the moment and be kind to myself.

It works sometimes but then like today I was passing a shop and for no particular reason went in and bought a big bar of chocolate. I didn't get into a spiral of negative thinking, so that's good.

Best wishes to anyone else going through the same thing and thank you to everyone for all the really helpful ideas.