Moooo! Let's chat about grazing!

As my 19 year old son would say... Word!

so hard to get this genie back into the bottle.

I am 8 years out from my Band and suffer with the same things. I have a whole set of tricks, I will make hot tea, since it is hot it takes longer to drink and usually my desire to graze is gone, or (not sure if the VSG works the same) I have a list of items that will make me super full and take a long time to go down. Carrots and apples with skins, I keep those always and if I eat a few slices I am uncomfortably full and straight away the urge to eat is gone.  I also have 3 kids who keep me busy so I have LOADS of distractions...

 

Thanks for the post.

Grazing occurs most frequently when:

- easy snack/junk food is around

- watching tv/computer time

-driving/in car

-less structured daily routine (teacher- summer months vs. back to school)

-family members around me graze also seems to increase it

- I am not exercising

Strategies;

-#1 is to exercise at night. A total **** strategy at the moment and for over a year due to pervasisve surgeries with one more and hopefully the last one coming tomorrow

- rid house of junk food

-convince my daughter to stop baking or give away what she bakes

-get my hubby to clean up his habits if possible

- stay busy/distract

- eat clean

This post and so many of the responses resonate with me. I am struggling with grazing and I do think it will affect my ability to reach my goal. For me, it's all based on emotion, stress and sometimes boredom. All of my regular tactics against it aren't working on me right now. Self-talk, like Gwen suggested, can be powerful. Waiting it out, doing chores... I'm trying it all. Reading posts on OH can help, too. I wake up every day, telling myself I will have a great, compliant day. Not going to give up!

Very timely post for me. Thank you! 

I'm only a little over five months post-op, and the impulse to graze around 4-6pm in the afternoon before dinner is very hard to shake. Since it's just my husband and me on our boat (our home for the summer and fall), there is absolutely no junk food of any kind in the galley or anywhere else. That's absolutely essential for me. If there's crappy food around, I can't get it out of my head until I get it into my stomach.

My solution for the late-afternoon craving is to make a big cup of black, unsweetened coffee and sip that slowly while eating my vitamin gummies one at a time. For some reason, that's just enough to hold me over to dinner. After that I'm home free until bedtime (usually).

As I get closer to my WL goals, I'm sure I'll need additional strategies, and some brain-editing, to avoid grazing. I wish I could remember the poster whose signature says something like, "Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels." I think of that every day.

 

psychoticparrot

GREAT POST!!!! I am about 4 1/2 years post op from RNY. I have lost and mostly maintained my weight loss of 140 pounds.

I usually do pretty well eating in terms of breakfast, lunch & dinner. HOWEVER...it is in between meals I struggle with. I usually am doing battle with the Graze Maze between lunch and dinner and after dinner and before bed. I have tried lots of different ways to deal, some good some not so much. I have just made peace with the reality that it is something I must be mindful of every day and deal with it the best I can!!

 

 

I definitely don't stress  eat, stress has the opposite effect on me, but I do graze while watching tv. I'm currently on summer break and have lots of time on my hands and find myself setting out little snacks for my evening movie. I have to keep my cupboards cleaned out of the wrong snacks and keep stocked up on good snacks, like apples and cherries. I, too, don't think I'll ever be 'cured' but will try to win the fight daily. I weigh every day to see if I can afford an extra snack or not, and if not I try to drink more water. 'Try' being the key word. I don't always succeed.

My times for grazing have been in the afternoon and right before bed...I try to have veggies cut up to for a planned snack for the afternoon and save calories for the evening.  I have nuts in my pantry and fight with myself to walk past every time I'm in the kitchen.  Lots of self talk...I log my food early in the day and sometimes the day before so if it's not on my food log then I tell myself I'll have to wait until tomr.  It doesn't always work but working on it.  I'm really never physically hungry like I was before but the emotional need to eat is certainly there.  I'm not sure it will ever go away!!!

Kairk,

I always love the way you dig and "define" things.

I've always believed in chopping up stages into smaller pieces.

Fine tuning is not documented by scientific case studies and doesn't fit everyone, but the skill set to define just maybe the single biggest key to long term success at this.

frisco

I'm 5 years out and feel like I'm a grazer. But, I've made it work for me because I PLAN for it! My meals are usually just protein, sometimes a little something on the side. Then when I'm hungry an hour later, I'll have some fruit or a veggie. When I get hungry again I'll have some nuts, next time a protein coffee. I feel like I eat all day long, I just never eat very much at a time and I always try to make sure I'm eating the "right" foods when I do eat. This works for me. I never feel deprived and always feel like it's ok to eat if I'm hungry. The hard part is knowing if you're truly hungry. If you are, those good foods will satisfy you. If it's a craving, they won't.