I eat badly and I need to stop.

October 28, 2008 2:37 PM

Help me make better choices, food-wise.

I eat very, very badly. I know this. Yet, for some reason, I cannot stop eating badly. Portion size, food type, everything - I cannot be counted on to make good food choices, and I can't figure out why. It's starting to affect my health (I've gained some weight, and I have a family history of high cholesterol, which is getting higher).

When faced with the choice of, say, fast food or a reasonably healthy turkey sandwich, I will almost always choose the fast food - and if I do choose the healthier option, I eat that healthier option in a portion size that all but defeats the health benefit that I would have gained had I eaten a "normal" amount.

I understand, intellectually, the correlation between eating right and health - yet I cannot, for some reason, bring myself to do it. I exercise - I bike to work every day (13 miles round-trip), I go to the gym a couple times a week - but it doesn't seem to help because I can't overcome my food stupidity.

I'm not particularly depressed - I have a wonderful wife, a nice house, and a reasonably steady job, so there's no stress there. I just can't seem to make myself make good eating decisions, so I guess that in itself is really starting to depress me.

Anyway. Does anybody have any ideas on how I can help myself make better food choices? Understanding the consequences of making bad decisions isn't enough - I understand them fully, and yet I still make these bad decisions. I need something...more. I don't want this to become a major health issue, but I fear that if I continue down this road it will.

I'm posting this anonymously because family and friends read askme regularly and I want to start down this road myself, without worrying them. I've also got a throwaway email address ([e-mail]) if you have any tips/advice you'd rather email.

posted by anonymous to food & drink (38 answers total)

Three things:

1) You may have stress/self-confidence issues that you just don't see. Is there anything else in your life that you're self-sabotaging too?

2) Healthy eating is all about making the right choice next time. If you slip up, don't chastise yourself for being a bad eater, reaffirm that you're going to make a better choice next time. You'll find that individual choices get easier when you take the pressure of "always being good" away.

3) You have to want the benefits of eating healthy more than the taste/convenience of fast-food. What you're giving up may not be worth it for you.

Good luck.
posted by scabrous at 2:53 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

One thing you need to do is to find healthy foods you really enjoy and that are filling. For example, I really like baked sweet potatoes. As long as you don't slather it with butter and brown sugar that's a very healthy addition to your meal that's far, far better than, say, a baked potato or french fries or whatever. Snacks don't necessarily have to be really sweet to be really satisfying. Over the summer I got hooked on having a bowl of plain yogurt with quaker oatmeal squares and some fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, etc.) It's healthy and it's satisfying.
posted by Autarky at 2:55 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Since you already understand that you need to eat better on an intellectual level, maybe you need an anatomically accurate model of a blob of body fat to motivate you on a more visceral level.
posted by arianell at 3:03 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Cook real food from scratch, avoid meat. Rice and beans are amazing.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:03 PM on October 28, 2008

Option 1: Learn to cook. Start by taking a cooking class, not a one-day "Fresh Pastas for Couples" kind of class, but a more rigorous class with a name like "Fundamentals of Cuisine." Not sure where you're located, but a lot of universities offer these kinds of classes, and some culinary institutes have continuing education for non-degree students.

You will learn to appreciate real food, fresh ingredients, good produce etc. You will become more involved with the food you eat. You will learn to appreciate more subtle flavors, rather than the whack-you-over-the-head tastes of fast food. This is what works for me, personally.

Option 2: Get someone else to make the rules for you. You can join a program like Weight Watchers, which includes group meetings and a built-in support network. You can visit a licensed nutritionist, who will make a meal plan suited to your specific needs. Or you can drop a chunck of change and enroll in one of those plans that delivers three meals a day to your door. Choose one of these, let someone else dictate what you are going to eat, and then stop thinking about it. It's out of your hands.
posted by Mender at 3:03 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Also, you can't overlook self-discipline.

Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state.
posted by nitsuj at 3:04 PM on October 28, 2008 [4 favorites]

Don't put yourself in situations where you have to make those choices.

I had a bit of an issue with buying my lunch. Greasy is tasty, healthy is boring.

So I stopped buying my lunch and started bringing a packed lunch from home. Then a) I didn't have to make the choice and b) to the extent I had urges to go get something better, my innate urge not to waste stuff helped me.

Likewise, with portions: don't cook or make so much. I was in the habit of cooking for more people than we actually have in the house, so I started measuring one portion per person. Then I wouldn't dish up too much because I didn't want to eat more than my share. Or pack the leftovers immediately. Or get smaller plates.

I think the trick to a lot of "bad decision" stuff is thinking laterally about how to make the right choice the easy choice.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:10 PM on October 28, 2008

Weight Watchers.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 3:15 PM on October 28, 2008

Hello me.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Have fresh fruits and veggies in the house all the time.
Have hummus in the fridge always. Eat the fresh veggies with it.
Eat broccoli (or some similar green veggie) and grilled fish for dinner.
Eat cereal with lots of berries and bananas every morning.
Have canned and boxed soups in the pantry for quick meals.
Don't eat out so much.
Forgive myself when I mess up.
Keep trying to learn more about what will work for me.
posted by dog food sugar at 3:16 PM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

Another thing is that most people have a finite amount of will power. So it's probably easier to tackle this incrementally. So spend a couple of weeks just substituting apples for candy bars. Then maybe set a budget that constrains your takeout purchases, and stick to that. And so on. Every two or three weeks, extend the range of your discipline a little more. Doing everything at once is likely to lead to demoralising failure; continual small successes might be more helpful.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:23 PM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

Agree with everyone recommending that you cook your own food. It will be twenty zillion times better for you because pretty much all restaurant food is loaded with the stuff that your body has a natural "yum!" reaction to -- fat, sugar and salt. You can make things taste just as good with a fraction of all that stuff.

Not only will you eat better food, but you'll also get in the habit of being aware of what's going into your body. That will help you resist eating stuff that you know intellectually is bad for you. Remind yourself how much money you're saving too if you find that your resolve re: the health issue starts to crumble when you're hungry and there's a fast food place nearby.

If you cook in the evening, cook enough so that you have a portion or two leftover. Eat this for lunch the next day.

Get some cookbooks that have food you like that's not hard to make. Vegetarian ones are good too since the recipes are often lower-fat than meat-based ones. I highly recommend The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen. Her other books are good too.
posted by DLWM at 3:28 PM on October 28, 2008

Hm. Yes, my husband and I had this problem as well. I found that if I planned out what we were having for dinner every night of the week, and made my grocery list based on this, that I wouldn't buy junk food - but you have to stick to the grocery list.

As for portion control, we also had the rule that we weren't allowed to have seconds at dinner time. We often found that we ate seconds just because we wanted to, not because we were still hungry. If this means putting the leftovers in the fridge right away, then do that.
posted by All.star at 3:32 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

i have some of the same problem. i have no willpower, so instead of making myself make good decisions when i'm hungry, i make those choices in advance, when i'm not. to wit:

1. i threw out ALL my junk food and bought healthy stuff. fruits, veggies, whole grain things, etc.

2. i make my lunch the night before, after i've had dinner, when i'm full and satisfied. i make a normal sandwich and then load up on fruits and veggies. if i don't eat it all, no worries. my office has a fridge. a great lunch is a can of chunky soup (check the calories--the whole can should be about 250-300), a small roll, cheese sandwich, or cottage cheese, and a piece of fruit or salad. this is what i have for lunch--i don't go out.

3. all the money that you save by not eating out? put it into a fund and buy yourself something when you lose ten, fifteen, twenty pounds, whatever your goal is.

4. i ALWAYS have a midmorning and midafternoon snack. a piece of fruit, a yogurt, a handful of almonds, something like that. snacks keep you from being totally starving at mealtime and overeating.

5. keep a food diary, or record your calories. once you see how much you can mindlessly consume, you'll shape up quickly.
posted by thinkingwoman at 3:45 PM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

i meant a small roll OR a small cheese sandwich OR cottage cheese, not all of those plus soup and fruit. :)
posted by thinkingwoman at 3:46 PM on October 28, 2008

Sounds like you might benefit from low carbohydrate eating. No, I don't mean bacon dipped in mayonnaise - I mean eliminating sugar and starch from your diet and eating protein, good fats (nuts, olive oil, avocado), and veggies.

Junk carbohydrates, which are likely in both that fast food *and* that turkey sandwich*, do not satisfy hunger very well.

*I'm assuming that turkey sandwich is made with lunch meat and commercial bread. Neither one is healthy.
posted by chez shoes at 4:03 PM on October 28, 2008 [3 favorites]

In regards to going overboard on portion sizes - people usually eat until they feel full, not when they've gotten the energy they need out of the meal. Another way of saying this is you feel full based on the volume you filled your stomach up with, rather than the caloric content of that food.

Part of the reason fast food is such a weapon of ass destruction is your standard In-N-Out double double is extremely dense - it packs 700 calories into 330 grams of processed white bread buns and greasy meat'n'cheese (mmm.)
Now compare this to 330 grams of carrots, which has about 125 calories.

330 grams is a measure of weight, not volume but it'll serve as a reasonable approximation as I'll assume that the density of carrots and a double-double is roughly comparable.

How can you use this to your advantage? Find foods that are light in calories, big in volume. You will feel as full as if you scarfed a hamburger, but you took in less than a quarter of the calories in the above example.
posted by spatula at 4:26 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Listen to the conversation in your head that is taking place while you're making that choice. What is it saying? Is it "Oh I hardly ever eat out, I deserve this" or "I've had such a bad day, I just want something that tastes good" or "Well, this burger is a dollar cheaper than the sandwich, so I guess I'll have that." In other words - what are the emotions and rationalizations that are driving you towards the junk food and away from the healthier choice? Once you've identified those, then you can take steps to mitigate those factors and take them out of your decision process.
posted by platinum at 4:35 PM on October 28, 2008 [3 favorites]

I have the same problem, and for me it's all about convenience and cost. When I'm tired and hungry, I do not want to cook. If I have something easy, I will eat it - if not, I will get a cheap fast food meal. Every once in a while, I will crave fast food, but it's not the primary reason I eat it, it's the convenience.

So, I try to have easy to cook or pre-cooked healthy food around. I will eat a pound of green beans for dinner if it's the easiest thing in the house. Lay in a selection of Amy's frozen dinners (or some other healthy frozen entree) and have some cleaned, ready to microwave vegetables in the fridge or freezer. Buy healthy bread and lean meats for sandwiches, buy low fat mayo, cut up some tomatoes when you get them and when you get hungry you'll have a healthy, fast option to eat. If you can't count on yourself to make good choices when you are hungry, then make them when you're not.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 4:36 PM on October 28, 2008

I think the time to exercise willpower isn't when you are hungry, choosing between the crap food and the healthy food. You say when you have the choice between something greasy and a healthy sandwich, you choose the unhealthy option. Most people do. But how to do arrive at the position where these are the two choices you have? If I were hungry right now, I wouldn't have any junk food to eat so there is no choice.

The first step is to get the packaged and frozen food out of your house. Don't buy it, or else you'll eat it sooner or later. In fact, just don't buy a week's worth of food in advance -- you can't buy something fresh and healthy that will last a week, and you cannot know what you will want to cook in 7 days.

And this leads into my suggestion: try not shopping at all at a big box supermarket. Find a bakery instead. Find a vegetable market. Find a cheese shop. Find a deli. Buy interesting ingredients that will last for the next 1-2 days, things that look good and don't require much preparation. Buy whatever you want right then so you're sure you'll eat it.

You'll quickly find favorites. I swear, things like fresh brown bread and freshly made guacamole (or hummus or tabooli) tastes good, is healthy, and if you buy them the same day then you won't let it go to waste.
posted by cotterpin at 4:41 PM on October 28, 2008

I am not going to go to in depth with this but i have a few suggestions.

Meat: more or less just eat chicken. Chicken is extremely lean and it goes great with almost everything. One of my favorite meals is a spinach salad with any veggies you have available topped with a small grilled chicken breast. I usually use a george foreman grill for the chicken because its extremely fast and you dont need any oil or anything else. If you want to stay with red meat you should find lean alternatives like Venison or bison. Though they can be trickier to cook and less versatile in terms of dishes.

Never get anything fried. You can pretty much always ask for your choices naked. Even when i get general tsos, my local place just charges me a dollar extra for not fried. Just because its not on the menu does not mean the wont do it.

Get used to oil and vinegar salad dressing, light on the oil. If you want to make your own dressing just toss some herbs into the o&v and let sit for a couple of days in the fridge.

If you eat a lot of yogurt, i would suggest getting a yogurt machine. This way you can limit all the sugars, etc that are normally put in.

If you want to eat pizza, make your own. Use a tortilla and just slop what ever you want (within moderation) on it and stick it in the oven for a little bit.

If you need to snack on something besides veggies. Make some real popcorn (not that pre-bagged salted/fake butter stuff), its really easy to do it on the stove top or use an air popper.

And MOST important, start working out. I personally hate cardio and have an injured knee so if anything i will swim or bike. 9 out of 10 times i lift weights. Not only will this increase muscle mass and burn fat but it will also raise your metabolism. You can get cardio with it too if you train with "stations". It works best if you have 3 or 4 people working out. For instance today we had a burpee pullup station, bench press, a choice of two ab workouts and squats. After you have the rotation set up you either set a rep mark (10-15) or as many as possible in 30 seconds (my favorite), 15 seconds to switch stations and then keep going. You will need to toss in a couple of breaks (1 minute). Seriously this gets awesome results. I highly recommend the crossfit workouts. If you follow the workouts you will drop fat and get cut up faster then any other workouts. Don't be intimidated by the workouts, they are all scalable. If you do start lifting you should use protein powder, i prefer nitrotech whey. Your muscles will be starved for protein, this will help you recover faster and get more bang for your buck. Find some buddies to do this with, with a group of 2/3/4 people someone will always be motivating the rest of the group. Remember everyone starts somewhere and while people get intimidated at the gym, i have not met many assholes out there, most people whether lean, overweight or jacked are willing to help you and spot.

Ok...that was not very brief, oh well.
posted by Black_Umbrella at 4:46 PM on October 28, 2008

oh, when you do cook, make big portions. Left overs are WAY better then ordering fast food.
posted by Black_Umbrella at 4:52 PM on October 28, 2008

Every time you pick up something to eat, you are making a choice. Tons of small choices add up. Start trying to make a better choice more often. You don't have to make the best choice every time, but listen to some of the suggestions above and pick one or two that seem easy enough and then implement them. Then implement more of them and more often.

It won't be super easy or especially fun. But you can do it.
posted by KAS at 4:54 PM on October 28, 2008

Dittoing take up cooking.

You might find that if you change what you eat for breakfast, then the rest of your diet will change more easily. Make time to scramble some eggs for a good protein start to the day - or tofu or whatever takes your fancy so long as it's not just cereal.
posted by airplain at 5:01 PM on October 28, 2008

Mefite jdroth, alongside his personal finance blog, runs Get Fit Slowly, a blog chronicling his attempts to start exercising and eating healthily with a friend. His latest post celebrates the fact that he ate some broccoli, and he spends a fair bit of time talking about his food choices and realising why he makes them.
posted by jacalata at 5:28 PM on October 28, 2008

Black_Umbrella's suggestion for bigger portions is great. That way, even when you're on the run, you can easily heat something up (instead of heading to a burger joint). However, if you have portion control issues as I do, I've found that I need to put the leftovers appropriate portion sizes in tupperware and freeze everything immediately. Otherwise there might be a horrible tendency to overeat.
posted by mittenedsex at 5:32 PM on October 28, 2008

You will want to get your family on board with this plan in order for it to work. It is hard to eat healthfully if the people you live with aren't doing the same. Especially if your family has certain food related habits (pizza and soda on Friday night, doughnuts on Sunday morning, etc.). Since I've communicated with my spouse about my desire to eat better, he stopped bringing home chips, candy and beer and other tempting things.

Contrary to what other posters have advised, you should avoid prepackaged frozen and canned foods. Check out the nutritional and ingredient labels of these things...the sodium levels are off the hook. High fructose corn syrup adds a lot of empty calories and carbs to processed food.

Cook your own food. Make extra portions for dinner and then take a container of leftovers and a piece of fruit for your lunch the next day. You could also make big salads for meals and add smoked salmon, chicken, nuts, eggs for protein.
posted by pluckysparrow at 6:09 PM on October 28, 2008

In an ideal world I'd cook everything from scratch & be able to afford a ton of fresh fruit and veggies from a non big box store.. but..

Is there a Trader Joe's around where you live? they have some prepackaged foods that are not all processed & heavy on fat, but are pretty good & very convenient. Like the Indian dinners, or the precooked chicken breasts, or the tuna in curry sauce, or some of the frozen chicken that's already cooked and comes with teriyaki sauce. even the frozen burritos aren't too bad for you but lots of them come in a pack of two, so just take one with you to lunch. frozen food section @ Trader Joe's is awesome.
posted by citron at 6:27 PM on October 28, 2008

Not sure what your work situation is, but I eat most of my daily food in the office, and keep a stock of healthy stuff onhand for that purpose.

It's done in the principle of eating small amounts, more often. Here's a typical day for me right now:

7am: grapefruit juice & coffee.

9am: slice of wholemeal toast with two dessert spoons of baked beans. sometimes add fat-reduced ricotta or labni (lebanese yoghurt spread). a loaf of wholemeal & a can of beans lasts me all week.

10am: mandarin

11am: coffee with a small lebanese date-and-walnut pastry (about an inch square - these combine so well with a sugarless double espresso)

midday: slice wholemeal toast with tinned tuna or salmon, or else smoked salmon or trout (ricotta or labni again)

2pm: more coffee

3pm: apple, handful of nuts or trail mix

4pm: toast with fish again

5pm: banana, sometimes with tahini & honey

the general principle is that the fruit & wholemeal bread keep the fibre up, making me feel full. protein from the fish (or lean ham or turkey etc) does the same thing. fruit in the afternoon keeps sugars up, but in a lowish-GI way, coffee is coffee, but also keeps the metabolism up. the banana is for exercise after work, the beans for breakfast are for recovery after cycling and cardio exercise.

this works for me because i genuinely enjoy all these things. but also, if i'm tempted to get some fast food for lunch, i often end up looking at the greasy food & thinking "shit, that nutrient-empty slop costs as much for one meal as my lunches do for the entire week!" which is a massive disincentive.

it helps as well to have a week's worth of fruit sitting on my desk. i know i have to get through it, so i never fail to have at least 3-4 serves of fruit per day. like i said, these things fill you up in a good way, and keep up my sugars so i'm less tempted to go for an energy burst from oily or sugary food. it also works out that i'm rarely all that hungry in the evenings, so if i eat at all, it'll often be more of a light snack than anything else.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:35 PM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

I can so relate. I know how to make healthy food choices, I know the good effects of good nutrition and the bad effects of poor nutrition, and I have such good intentions. But sometimes (a lot of times?) it feels like the willpower just isn't there. I haven't yet found a silver bullet for this, but there are two things that help me.

First is eating snacks whether or not I'm hungry. I know, I know, I should be trying to get in touch with my appetite and only eat when I really feel hungry, but that's not working. What does work for me is to force myself to have a piece of fruit, a little cup of cottage cheese or lowfat yogurt, some veggies and hummus, a hard-boiled egg, or half a can of soup (save the other half in a little tupperware for tomorrow) about halfway between breakfast and lunch, and again about halfway between breakfast and dinner. Somehow this makes it so I don't crave giant portions of pasta alfredo or deep-fried-whatever when it's time for the actual meal, and I manage to eat healthy food in healthy portion sizes without even having to talk myself into it. (Of course having healthy and easy options available at snack and meal times is required for this to work, so follow everyone else's advice about packing your lunch and clearing the junk out of your kitchen.)

The other thing that helps is to own my decisions. It is so easy to say "Oh, I'm having another one of those bottomless-pit days" and give into the cravings. I'll tell myself (and sympathetic coworkers, who go through the same thing) that I just can't control myself today, that I can't resist another donut, that the food is calling out to me. And the more I overdo it, the more I confirm that I'm not in control. But the thing is, I really am in control, and I can feel more in control if I tell myself that I am. Instead of "I need a giant piece of cake!" I try to remind myself to say (mentally) "I really want a piece of cake." Sometimes I give in to what I want and sometimes I don't, but either way I try to make sure it's me making the choice rather than me pretending that some inner demon chose for me. When I choose to have a piece of cake, I usually stop feeling like I need more bad food later. When I let the piece of cake choose me, I just keep wanting more. Sorry, this sounds like psychobabble mumbo jumbo even to me. But it really does make a difference somehow.
posted by vytae at 6:46 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

You need to learn to love the taste of healthy food. Fortunately, this is pretty easy once you start eating healthy food on a regular basis; food that is good for you is generally pretty delicious.

The single best thing you can do is to eliminate soda, white bread, and fried potatoes from your diet completely. Order an unsweetened iced tea and a side salad instead. After a week or two, soda and fries will taste disgusting to you (they are disgusting), and fresh veggies will be like ambrosia (they are ambrosia). If you're eating at a restaurant that serves a good (i.e., fresh) salad, ask them to omit the dressing and the cheese. Fresh vegetables are delicious unto themselves, and a salad laden with dressing and cheese can be as unhealthy as a bacon cheeseburger.

Use spices instead of fat to add flavor to your meals. Mustard instead of mayo is an easy solution when eating out. Buy a wide selection of spices and actively seek out ways to use them. Countries have fought wars over spices, and there's a reason.

Learn to cook. This will not happen overnight; you'll have to practice. Fortunately, it's extremely fun and delicious practice. allrecipes.com is invaluable; just search for an ingredient or a dish that has caught your interest, and pick the recipe that gets the highest rating. I've rarely been disappointed with this technique.

Make it a point to explore new cuisines, especially those with an inherently healthy tradition—Thai, Japanese, most Asian cuisines, really.

Buy the following ingredients, and Google for information on how to prepare them: kale (I like it steamed with a splash of white vinegar), quinoa, tempeh (stir-fry and add soy sauce), black beans (great for tacos; just heat with cumin, cayenne, and chili powder), edamame.

Breakfast: non-fat Greek yogurt (granola and honey optional; I like the Fage brand); fresh fruit; poached eggs.

Snacks: popcorn (with low-fat toppings such as nutritional yeast, soy sauce, vegetable broth, or Old Bay seasoning); rice crackers.

Go grocery shopping two or three times a week (or more). Fresh ingredients make all the difference.

And, yeah, don't beat yourself up when you fuck up. You will fuck up. By the time you realize this, it will be in the past, and you can't do anything about the past. You can, however, do something about the future.
posted by greenie2600 at 7:26 PM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

Do you think there's a convenience factor at play here? Or does the fast food seem more "fun", maybe? Because both of those you can combat by making your own whatever, and it'd probably be better for you anyway, even if you're substituting your own burger for a McDonald's burger. True, it's still a burger, so it's not as healthy as a salad, but -- it's still going to be a damn-sight better burger for you than what you'd get at a fast food place. Try substituting your own homemade versions of whatever for what you've been eating first, just to get into the habit. (Hell, the cheese pasties and eggplant-olive calzones I just made beat the crap out of anything "Hot Pockets" could come up with.)

As for portion control -- try using a smaller plate. This isn't just a practical solution (smaller plate = can hold less stuff), there's also a psychological component -- a smaller plate is going to look bounteous and full with less stuff on it, so you'll look at it and see what looks like a big pile of food and think, "whee! So much food!" and it'll psych you into satisfaction. Sounds insane, but I've heard it works.

The thing that finally convinced me to brown-bag it, though, was price -- spend a couple weeks writing down the PRICE of all the fast food meals you eat each day, and then add that figure up at the end of the two weeks. Then go to the supermarket and see how much more food you could get with the very same amount of money. Then think about whether you want to continue paying someone else five dollars to make you the same burger you could make for yourself for only about two dollars.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:50 PM on October 28, 2008

I've just gone over the previous posts, and while there's a lot of helpful advice there, they don't address the key issue that I see: you're cycling 65 miles a week for your commute, working out twice a week, and still gaining weight. Even if you commute slowly enough that you don't break a sweat (which is my goal when cycle commuting, so I can wear my work clothes), I suspect that your meals are not the major problem.

I'd suggest keeping a food diary and noting down everything that you eat for two weeks (to capture weekday and weekend variations and smooth out daily variations). Note down meals, snacks, drinks, nibbles, etc.--everything. Then identify empty or unnecessary calories. For instance, a 20-ounce soda might have 200-250 empty calories. Even coffee or tea can add a lot of calories if you use sugar or cream. And booze has a lot, regardless of its form. Once you know what you're eating, on average, every day, you can compare it to your energy expenditure and decide what to cut out.

And if, like me, you're a male entering his 40s, you should be aware that your metabolism is probably slowing down and you'll need to eat less, or exercise more, to maintain a constant weight. In other words, the regime that might have worked in your 20s and early 30s might be failing you now.
posted by brianogilvie at 8:24 PM on October 28, 2008

Per the Light Fantastic's suggestion, "Lay in a selection of Amy's frozen dinners (or some other healthy frozen entree)". Seriously man. I accidentally lost 15 pounds last summer by making myself too busy to cook and eating almost nothing but Amy's frozen entrees. I lived right across the street from a co-op and that was the easiest, tastiest frozen food available.
posted by tejolote at 9:02 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I got great results using The Daily Plate to track my food intake. You enter weight, height, sex and age, and it tells you how many calories you should be eating, either to maintain or lose weight. Then, you use it to track your calories, and it tells you the proportion of fat/carbs/protein you're eating. It has most major brand names and chain restaurant foods, so it's very easy just to type in what you ate in a given day. For a week, try just using it without changing your habits, and see just how much food you're eating and what the major sources of calories and/or fats are; then, see if you can eliminate just one or two.

For me, a simple switch to low-fat dairy products; keeping fruit to eat when I craved sweets; buying chicken breasts instead of fatty chicken thighs and hamburger meat; and tossing a few (frozen) vegetables into the microwave to go with dinner every night resulted in my losing 7 pounds in less than two months (and on track to lose more), after being the same weight for two years.

Really, if you're just aware of what you eat, it is SO much easier to control it. In fact, it's sort of fun to try and fill up your calorie allotment with the right balance of nutrients. It's like a game.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:31 PM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Drink more water. Fill up a two litre water bottle every morning (a used fruit juice bottle, the kind with the handle, works best for me) and lug it around with you everywhere you go. Redirect compulsive snacking into compulsive sipping. Unscrewing the bottle cap, taking a sip and replacing the cap is the same kind of busy-hands ritual that helps keep smokers hooked.

This is the most effective food control trick I've ever played on myself, and it's high time I acquired another one of those bottles and started playing it again. Thanks for the reminder!
posted by flabdablet at 4:34 AM on October 29, 2008

Are you binge eating/overindulging at any particular time of day or mood? Target why you eat as you do--is it for comfort, to release stress, etc? Also, do you eat at night right before bed, or get up in the night and raid the fridge? I think a lot of times when it feels like I or people I know eat badly there's definitely a source or trigger for it. For myself, if I've had a bad day or a long boring or stressful day at work I come home and am TIRED and unhappy and just find myself drifting towards food I know gives me a mood/comfort boost--fatty crap like cheese fries etc. Also, do you drink? When I've been drinking the only thing that I want to eat (and logically so, absorption-wise) is lots of fat and protein. If you can figure out what triggers lead you to your moments of excess and replace the food response with something else or avoid the trigger in the first place, you're on your way. When my food choices are emotionally fueled or because of drinking, substituting healthier foods DOES NOT WORK--my body wants the fat, and if I eat veggies or something I'll still later want that fat and just eat it too.

For stress, there's relaxation techniques. There's also keeping busy with fun but relaxing activities--if I get bored I play board games or go out with my boyfriend. I've also noticed if I cook a decent meal for my boyfriend, the time it takes and the effort for some reason makes me less hungry--maybe because I get to smell lots of good stuff, and that's what I'm really craving? I'm not sure. There's also, ehrm, sex.

And this is the obvious and eye-rolling one, but seriously. Exercise. It keeps you busy, simultaneously relaxes and motivates you, and curbs your appetite. It doesn't have to be a big deal either--just grab some headphones and take a long walk. This to me is the best answer because it makes me eat less AND makes me healthier in its own right.

I also agree about drinking plenty of water. Even if it doesn't curb your appetite--it might though--it'll make you feel better.
posted by ifjuly at 10:19 AM on October 29, 2008

You need to learn to love the taste of healthy food. Fortunately, this is pretty easy once you start eating healthy food on a regular basis; food that is good for you is generally pretty delicious.

Just popping back to heartily second this.

Also, there's a kind of almost orthorexic satisfaction when you're chowing into something that you know is loaded with a particular nutrient (or mix of nutrients). To that end, it helps to know more about what you're eating. You needn't become a walking encyclopaedia of nutrition, but make a point of skimming healthy eating articles in newspaper supplements, magazines etc and over time you'll build up a background awareness about the calories & the nutritional goodies in certain foods.

Then, when faced with, say, a carton of strawberry flavoured milk, you can do a quick mental equation & end up thinking "fuck that, instead of drinking this i can eat 100g of salmon, twice that carton in soy milk, and a punnet of fresh strawberries" - to me, it's a total no-brainer which i'd prefer.

Only mentioning strawberries coz they're in season here & i've just eaten an entire punnet as a snack *YUM*.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:40 PM on October 29, 2008

In addition to the multiple helpful hints above, I have a book rec for you- Martha Beck's The Four-Day Win. She starts from the premise that everyone knows what to do to lose weight/be healthy (eat less, move more), but that people have a hard time doing what they know, which sounds very much like what you describe. She provides a number of easy exercises that you do (four days at a time) to help yourself figure out what issues, if any, you have going on, and gradually address them so that you can lose weight successfully. Even if you don't work through the exercises, I personally found just reading the book eye-opening. Her work is based on scientific research and very scientifically grounded, which I appreciate. It helps to know that there are actually biological reasons why getting bad news makes me crave macaroni and cheese...
posted by oblique red at 1:14 PM on October 30, 2008