Everyday Systems

How long did it take to change your way of thinking before it wasn't such an effort not to snack? I keep slipping up having 2 snacks and its not that i'm hungry its out of pure habit and it just replays in my brain until I eat. Its rather annoying. I know it takes some time to kick a habit so I wanted to know how long it took you before you were comfortable with no snacks.

It is said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I find this to be pretty accurate for me. However, it has been five months, and I still occasionally find myself mindlessly reaching for seconds when I am at special events. So long term habits may take a bit longer to completely do away with.

Different people have different experiences. I suspect many give up before they beat those urges back. Some people get off easy in a few weeks. Others give up then if it's not easy. How long have you had the habit of snacking? As you know, most weight losers gain their weight back. Some of them practiced their new habits for a lot longer than three weeks before they relapsed. I'm not sure which habits have been changed in 3 weeks, but I think some things take a lot longer, esp. things that we take into our bodies. Just keep working at it. You say the urges keep playing in your brain until you eat. The truth is you just haven't outlasted it. If you always give in, the brain will just be trained to keep bugging longer. It will feel very weird the first few times you go the evening without eating, and it will go and come in waves of different "heights" until the basically recede. Be honest about how bad the feelings actually are. It's an illusion that they are terrible. Are they like the pain of a sprain? a bone break? Nausea bad enough to make you throw up? Could you tolerate them another half hour each night and work up?

If you just insist that you're going to keep doing this until it's easy, it's likely you will get to the point where it is easy.

Thanks. I've had the snack habit for the past 8 years. I don't have weight to lose, i'm doing no s as a means to stop this food obsession I have developed after years of being told I must eat every 3 hours. So its deeply imbedded. Today i'm going to really give it my all as I know each time a cave and snack i'm reinforcing the behavior I don't want. Thanks again for the advice.

I started No S last week and did 5 days straight with no snacking. But I find that between lunch and dinner I get hungry if I'm at work - to the point where my hands are shaking and my legs feel wobbly. So I'm having to snack, although it's always on something healthy like fresh fruit or nuts. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do the 'no snacking' although I'm finding it quite easy to do no sweets through the week.

Did I mention I've been No S-ing for 16 months? I've found that it is not linear. I sometimes go through days that are a challenge even now, but it's not the challenge of "staying on a diet," or it doesn't feel like that. It just feels like it's a challenge sometimes to be moderate. A lot of things affect that desire. That's one of the reasons people gain weight in the first place. That and that there's so much damn food around. For the most part, though, N days feel pretty routine. After decades of eating all evening long--and some mornings and afternoons, too, it now feels normal just to have my dinner and that's it. Sixteen months for a pretty good turnaround on a 35-year habit seems pretty good to me. I went into No S knowing that most weight loss maintainers take 2-5 years to have their new eating become rock solid. I also saw that over the last ten years, I had actually changed a lot of things, but they had been gradual and didn't all happen at the same time. I know it's tempting to think all the pain will be over in a few weeks, but as the ads say, results vary. Then again, there are some who start this and never look back. Some of them feel solid and then disappear, so we don't get to see that they exist. Anyway, give yourself some time! What's the alternative? At some point, you're going to have to commit to some kind of ordered eating plan. If you want to start by planning an evening eating event, you can. It's basically the RANDOMNESS of eating that No S strives to counteract. I do bet you'll find you won;t need the evening snack after a few weeks, or you'll at least get curious about going without. But give yourself a few MONTHS to let things take hold.

I've slightly adapted NoS to allow myself a small meal/snack at around 4-5pm when I get home from work, before my evening meal at 7-8pm or later. I was finding that waiting 6+ hours between lunch and dinner just was making me too hungry, and having 5+ hours between dinner and bedtime also wasn't working!!

As long as I PLAN it, don't go for sweets and try and balance my meals, it works. I often don't have breakfast so sometimes the afternoon meal becomes my 3rd meal of the day in any case.

I agree with Oolala, the spirit of NoS is about not mindlessly snacking or eating between meals when you don't need to and/or don't even feel hungry. If you struggle at first, try eliminating just one of your 'usual' snacks per day, and then building up to eliminating them all.

Also, if you don't need to lose weight, make sure your main meals are big enough that you won't feel the need to snack in between due to hunger. If you are used to portioning your food with snacks in mind, you might need to up the sizes for a bit or at least experiment.

Good luck!

Read Brian Wasink's book "Mindless Eating". To a certain degree we are hardwired to eat if food is available. I imagine that some of us have stronger urges to forage for food than others, which today looks like going in search of a snack. You would have been the rock stars back in the hunter gatherer days. Habit can overcome hardwiring but it takes a while.

Very impressed with all of these answers!

Blithe Morning wrote:I imagine that some of us have stronger urges to forage for food than others, which today looks like going in search of a snack. You would have been the rock stars back in the hunter gatherer days.

What a lovely way to think of it.

We'll come into our own after the collapse of civilization, too.

By far the hardest thing for me when I started No S was not snacking -- especially after dinner. It took WEEKS. I think it was probably about six weeks before I didn't have this constant low-grade desire to go forage in the kitchen in the evening, maybe longer.

One thing that helped was making sure that, during that period, I was not eating "diet" lunches and dinners. I made it a point, especially during the first three weeks, to eat favorite meals that would not be allowed on most diets. That really helped me not feel deprived -- yeah, I can't eat at night, but when I do eat it feels like a treat. French fries made it onto several of my plates! Mmmmm, French fries ...

Blithe, that's funny, but I think it's also true! I have lots of inclinations that make sense for a forager: I love gathering food, like picking blackberries and so forth. I love harvesting food in the garden. I love picking and choosing and working my way through a farmer's market for the best stuff.

AND I love food where I have to work a bit for my little food rewards -- pistachios in the shell, pomegranates, artichokes, a whole crab ... it's SOOO satisfying! Huh, now that I think about it, most modern food-like products are designed to make getting food in your mouth completely effort-free -- you don't even need two hands or any utensils, let alone a nut cracker. No wonder it's easier to just keep shoveling, when you're not doing those little tasks that slow you down and make you conscious of eating.