Everyday Systems

Here I am again. My downfall is snacks between meals. I am still searching for something to add to my willpower for that gnawing hunger 2-3 hours after breakfast and after lunch. Supper is my largest meal so that probably is why I have less trouble in the evening. I have tried everything suggested like larger meals with more protein and fat, milk, other liquids(H2Orange), coffee and others I can't remember. I am hoping somebody can suggest something I have not tried to deal with the hunger when it appears. I do not test as hypoglycemic or with any other measureable disorder. The timing of the hunger attacks is very predictable.

WHAT CAN I TRY TO SUBSTITUTE FOR SNACKING?????[/b]

What about a cup of miso soup?

Low cal, satisfying, good for you...

Have you tried having a glass of milk, fruit or vegetable juice? This works for me when those hunger attacks hit.
Many times, though, I'm not really hungry...just bored, feeling anxious or stressed, etc. and I really have to examine my feelings. Then, as the saying goes, if hunger's not the problem, food is not the answer and I get away from the kitchen and find something else to do. I am a piano player and that's a good tactic to keep my hands busy.

Mimi

I have had to remind myself that I will not die if I get hungry between meals, though I may die prematurely if I keep eating between them.

Make your other meals as big as supper.

I'm having the same problem. I'm experimenting with oatmeal and peanut butter at breakfast to last me till lunch and I've had some success. That and keeping busy.

But I'd like to know what others eat for breakfast to last them until lunch.

This might seem a bit counter-intuitive but have you tried skipping breakfast? I am hungrier in the mornings when I eat breakfast than when I don't and I know some others are the same.

I don't eat breakfast (largely for time reasons) and although I find myself getting hungry towards lunchtime, it's not usually a gnawing, uncontrollable hunger. Also it helps that work is busy so I'm not sat twiddling my thumbs and wondering whether 11am is too early for lunch!! I do sometimes have an afternoon meal between lunch and dinner instead of breakfast if there will be a very large gap between them otherwise.

If you have a long time between meals (5+ hours) or you do streneous work for a living (construction, landscaping, etc.), you may want to plan for a small meal in between your two distant meals. However 2-3 hours is not a long time between meals and doesn't need a snack or mini meal.

Something I noticed when I first started is that I feel hungry in between meals. This is a new sensation, which is kind of alarming, because that means I must have been feeding the urge every time it hit, because I didn't used to let myself feel this hungry. I think I was probably snacking more than I thought.

Pangs of hunger do not have to be fed. So don't feed them. If your stomach is growling, that's a pretty good sign you need to eat. Likewise if you feel shaky or weak, then you should eat. But when you're first starting out, most of your hunger will not be real. It will just be your body calling out for what it's conditioned to expect: food constantly.

The stomach stretches and it shrinks. That's why huge people can eat two supersized BigMac meals (or similar), when normal people might not could finish one. If you overeat or eat constantly, you can stretch your stomach too much. But if you eat less, it will eventually shrink. Then the hunger between meals will stop. So you just have to ride it out until your stomach shrinks.

When I went to England/Scotland a few years ago, I noticed I was hungry frequently--especially at night. I didn't have constant access to food when we were out and busy. We ate three square meals a day and didn't keep snacks in our room. But at the end of two weeks the baseless hunger had stopped, and when I came back to the U.S., all the portions in restaurants looked enormous; I ended up eating appetizers instead of full-size meals. (Eventually I lost that, though, and stretched the stomach back out.)

So I would estimate 2-3 weeks for your body to stop asking for food when it's not genuinely in need of it.

Many,many thanks to all of you. I have tried the milk and juice for hunger between meals without success. Your other responses gave me some new perspectives. I will try the instant oatmeal with peanut butter. If that does not help, I shall try skipping breakfast until midmorning.[/b]

john wrote:Many,many thanks to all of you. I have tried the milk and juice for hunger between meals without success. Your other responses gave me some new perspectives. I will try the instant oatmeal with peanut butter. If that does not help, I shall try skipping breakfast until midmorning.[/b]

Can I recommend that you try old-fashioned oatmeal instead of instant? In my experience, the "rougher" forms of oatmeal (steel-cut if you can get it, old-fashioned for readily available) stay with you longer than the powdery forms.

If you're still experiencing this, here are some of my thoughts:

1. One of the most helpful things I read on these boards is that often you will feel "hunger" about 3 hours after a meal, but once you know to expect it, and you hold out, you will notice that it goes away, and you can last a few more hours without hunger. When it has hit, which is rarely now after 3 months, I remind myself that it's normal, and I forget about it. It always goes away -- which means I did not need food.

2. I have found it extremely helpful between meals to 1) remind myself that a great meal is coming in a short time, and that I just had one. and 2) most importantly -- go find non-food solutions to my "hunger." I swear I get more done now that I'm not always thinking of what "little something" will "tide me over". It's almost embarassing.

3. I eat 2 fried eggs and 2 pieces of buttered rye toast around 10 a.m., and it keeps me pretty happy until a 2:30 or 3:00 lunch (my former guilty snack time, now transformed into my legitimate big lunch.

good luck and stay with it!

I find sheer bl**dymindedness helps.

I say to myself.

'You did this yesterday, you felt hungry like this at 10am and you were still alive at 12pm, without resorting to snacking. It didn't kill you yesterday it won't kill you today!'

You just need one vanilla day to kick it off, remember it is psychological and that feeling of hunger does NOT signal imminent death!

I'm not saying I find it easy to ignore feeling hungry, but it is easier on NO S because I can remind myself that for my next meal I will have a lovely plate full of whatever I want and like, not a tiny portion of something I'm told I should have like with some diets.

SkyKitty wrote:I find sheer bl**dymindedness helps.

I say to myself.

'You did this yesterday, you felt hungry like this at 10am and you were still alive at 12pm, without resorting to snacking. It didn't kill you yesterday it won't kill you today!'

You just need one vanilla day to kick it off, remember it is psychological and that feeling of hunger does NOT signal imminent death!

I'm not saying I find it easy to ignore feeling hungry, but it is easier on NO S because I can remind myself that for my next meal I will have a lovely plate full of whatever I want and like, not a tiny portion of something I'm told I should have like with some diets.

I do this at work - I mostly don't eat breakfast, and bring enough for lunch with me or plan to go out and get lunch. I know that if I ate my 'lunch' food early then I'd just be hungry later, and I don't have anything to snack on in work, so I just don't eat. I get hungry, but it's ok!

I'm British, so: cups of tea. Huge cups of tea. Topped up repeatedly with hot water.

The prospect of a green HabilCal square can be very motivating.

Good luck with this - I struggle with hunger, too.

I don't mean to minimize what you're experiencing. I do know that my urges to eat came typically 2-3 hours after a meal. However, I did not have stomach hunger and getting past that time makes it easier. I do have milky coffee between meals as needed, as I've probably told you before.

SkyKitty wrote: 'You did this yesterday, you felt hungry like this at 10am and you were still alive at 12pm, without resorting to snacking. It didn't kill you yesterday it won't kill you today!'

I LOVE that! I feel like cross-stitching it on a pillow! I'll probably just copy it and put it at eye-level on my fridge though.

Thanks!
janie

What about breaking lunch into two meals, one late morning, one early afternoon? Same amount of food--lay out a plate and divide it in two, if that helps--but spread out more evenly over time.

I hope this bit of mumbo jumbo from my dieting days is not out of place here, but when you eat your body stores some calories in your liver. It's a little reserve tank for when your blood sugar drops. So a couple of hours after eating, there is a little hunger alarm but if you ride it out, the liver should release its store and keep you okay for a couple more hours. At least, this is how it seems to work for me. It's how the body is able to make it through the night without eating, I believe.

john wrote:WHAT CAN I TRY TO SUBSTITUTE FOR SNACKING????

The smart-aleck answer, of course, is: Not snacking.

More seriously, that feeling of being hungry before your next meal is something that you can grow accustomed to. Maybe try reframing "being hungry" as "having an appetite", and see if that helps you view it positively rather than negatively. If you can hang in there for the first few weeks, you may find that it becomes less and less of a struggle, to deal with this sensation of anticipating your next meal.

You might find that you need to work up to it, and there have been suggestions on how to do that. The idea of drinking rather than eating is the "canonical" suggestion: if you have a glass of milk or cocoa or whatever, at least it's in a separate category from eating, and that helps establish the habit of only *eating* at meal times. You can use the drinks to help you bridge the gaps, at first, but after a while I bet you'll find that you don't need them. Two years in to NoS, I feel no impulse to drink anything other than water, between meals. It really does get easier! (This can be hard to believe, at first, but please hang in there, you'll get there!)

For a very long time I saved the fruit from my lunch until mid-afternoon mostly for this reason. You might consider something like that.

It eventually, and only somewhat recently, fell away. Sometimes due to the time constraints (I don't work in an environment where I generally take actual lunch breaks) it still happens that I eat the fruit later, but mostly not. My brain sometimes still gets nervous as I'm eating it at 12:30-1, but I'm usually fine in reality. Often I feel hungry by 4, but I'm not dying and can push through, which I've found to almost always actually feel better than eating these days.

Julie

The NOS book allows you to have four meals if that's what you need - they just need to be smaller. I have a hard time between lunch and dinner - it's a six and a half hour stretch - and have been thinking about having four small meals instead of three larger. I think that might fix it for me. And it's allowed. Reinhard just says: "use very small plates".

john wrote:He

WHAT CAN I TRY TO SUBSTITUTE FOR SNACKING?????[/b]

Uhm... sex?

In time for some reason it just got easier for me going without eating between meals. I would feel so hungry around 4 and would somtimes just cave, now I may get a little twinge, but it is no problem to wait for dinner. Don't be afraid to feel hungry, it really won't hurt you. I even wait now for a tummy grumble before eating and I find It helps with know when to stop eating and know when my tummy is comfortably full.

This is a really interesting thread. It was something I always struggled with. My own techniques for handling it are:

1. Have a drink
2. Take a walk. Seriously. I don't know if it is psychological - it simply takes my mind off feeling peckish - or biological - the sudden demand for energy causes fat to breakdown and blood sugar levels to rise - but it works for me.
3. Stretch out my Lunch (Like thtrchic does). I normally bring a sandwich & a couple of pieces of fruit to eat. They all fit on one plate, so it's NoS legal, but I eat them at different times. Sandwich at 11:30. Take a walk around Noon. Fruit at around 14:00.

DaveA

I'm trying to remind myself that it's good to feel a bit hungry. I've read so many books about how you can "lose weight without feeling hungry". But the bottom line is that if I'm truly hungry...not just psychologically hungry...that indicates that I'm consuming less than what my body is using - what a concept! I've spent so much of my life trying NOT to be hungry, when all along, being hungry means my body is using up some of those reserves I've globbed on my body for decades. If my stomach is growling before a meal, that's a great sign. Not only have I not overeaten, but the next meal will taste great because food generally tastes better when we're truly hungry. This probably doesn't help the original question about between meal hunger, but I couldn't help but add my 2 cents...

janie

determined wrote:I'm trying to remind myself that it's good to feel a bit hungry. I've read so many books about how you can "lose weight without feeling hungry". But the bottom line is that if I'm truly hungry...not just psychologically hungry...that indicates that I'm consuming less than what my body is using - what a concept! I've spent so much of my life trying NOT to be hungry, when all along, being hungry means my body is using up some of those reserves I've globbed on my body for decades. If my stomach is growling before a meal, that's a great sign. Not only have I not overeaten, but the next meal will taste great because food generally tastes better when we're truly hungry. This probably doesn't help the original question about between meal hunger, but I couldn't help but add my 2 cents...

janie

Wow! Great point...something for me to keep in mind. Thanks for sharing your 2 cents!

Mimi

john wrote:Here I am again. My downfall is snacks between meals. I am still searching for something to add to my willpower for that gnawing hunger 2-3 hours after breakfast and after lunch. Supper is my largest meal so that probably is why I have less trouble in the evening. I have tried everything suggested like larger meals with more protein and fat, milk, other liquids(H2Orange), coffee and others I can't remember. I am hoping somebody can suggest something I have not tried to deal with the hunger when it appears. I do not test as hypoglycemic or with any other measureable disorder. The timing of the hunger attacks is very predictable.

WHAT CAN I TRY TO SUBSTITUTE FOR SNACKING?????[/b]

Besides all the great suggestions I'd like to add that you might look at the getting through between-mealtime as an opportunity to learn what kinds of food your body actually needs to keep the blood sugar consistently stable.
I've read that part of the problem with snacking, even healthy snacking is that it causes your blood sugar to bounce up and down all the time and that can lead to insulin resistance, and it definitely can put you in a hungry all the time kind of cycle. At least it did me. I'm on the bottom end of normal, right on the borderline of hypoglycemic and until I started No S, I fought hunger and "crashes" a lot. I healthy snacked constantly thinking that was how to stay stable, but I did not know I was literally feeding the problem. In the beginning of No S I was so determined to make it from meal to meal with no snacking that I was finally motivated to really pay attention to what was on those three plates a day. It was (and still is) a learning curve, but the results are astounding. The only crashes I've had in 10 weeks have been on the days I skipped breakfast or wasn't careful about my carb types at lunch. My new normal is to sail though the morning with no hunger until about 5 hours after breakfast, and to just begin to get hungry about 5 hours after lunch. I do get hungry in the late evening but I've learned to ignore it. I tell myself that the growling sound is simply my engine burning off the love handles. LOL
Hang in there - it does get better.