5 years ago I started what’s basically the slow carb diet. Not really a diet, but a lifestyle change since it’s not just a temporary restriction of certain foods, but rather removing most / all processed foods, cutting out sugar as much as possible and if eating carbs, focus on things like legumes or whole grains.
It’s worked great, I’ve lost ~45Lbs since starting it and have been able to stay there.
While that really helped me get to a healthy weight, I still have a few problematic eating habits. Mostly around eating for no reason. By that I mean, overly snacking on food when I’m not really hungry. I was able to shift my snacking from eating large amounts of nuts or fruit to eating large amounts of vegetables (peas, pickles, salsa, etc). Now that’s much healthier but didn’t really deal with the deeper issue.
That’s fine as I’m a big fan of incrementalism and think it’s unrealistic to try to break all your bad habits at once. Now that I’m at a better place I’ve joined Nerd Fitness and my current focus is on mindful eating.
The idea is that now instead of just going for the fridge when bored, I ask myself, “Am I actually hungry? Or is it just that I’m not so full I could stuff more things in my stomach?”. I then also don’t multi task when eating. No listening to a podcast, no watching a youtube video, no working or reading emails, all I do is focus on eating.
It’s interesting and I still have lots of progress to make. I just ate a bunch of pickles and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t hungry, just looking to procrastinate.
I think I’ve set some good systems in place to help me (and a reward if I stick to this for 3 months). Hopefully in a few months time I’ll be able to understand my hunger better and react better to it.
If you’re interesting in nutrition, particularly the psychology of it, I’d strongly recommend reading Xi Zhang’s blog on the matter: https://ithinkthereforeiovereat.blogspot.com/ she actually has qualifications to talk about this, as opposed to me who just rambles about things that have worked for me.