How to stop eating when you work from home

[Anonymous]

Please give me any advice you can. I work out 3-4 times per week (weights and running), but I know the real reason that I’ve gained between 10-15 pounds is my diet. I work from home more than 80% of the time and I have a really high stress job. I just find myself wandering into the kitchen to eat during and after phone calls/meetings on stressful topics, after I turn around a tough email or do an analysis, etc. I’ve tried to hard to be better but I cannot seem to stick with it and I feel it’s because I’m at home — when I work away from the home, I can be great with restricting myself since the food is not readily accessible. However, working from home has also been a blessing for my family bc I’m able to do things (like laundry) during the work day and can be there when the kids get home.

I just don’t know what to do. I eat all the time when I’m not hungry. I find myself going into the kitchen to get small portions of food (like a half a cup of soup with some cheese melted on it or chopped chicken) between 5-10 times a day. Once I’ve started eating for the day, it’s like a flip is switched and I cannot stop. I’ve never been really great at self-control or self-regulation when a temptation is right in front of me. I always start my day feeling really motivated and ready to be good with my eating, but by lunchtime I’m eating way more than I should.

I am a mid-40s woman, by the way, so I’m sure some hormonal changes are also happening. This weight gain hit me at the beginning of COVID/work from home and that’s when my habit of constant eating started.

Please help.

[Anonymous]

Try Phentermine with Weight Watchers.

[Anonymous]

I could have written this a few months ago. I started intermittent fasting and it has helped tremendously. I would recommend reading anything by Gin Stephens. The concept of a clean fast is game changing.

[Anonymous]

I have the same problem. What worked best for me was the intermittent fasting thing - no going into the kitchen for food before 4pm, and then having some healthy things ready to snack on-carrot sticks, celery etc.
The other thing that was good was green tea - over ice in summer, hot in winter. Often you just want a break/are bored rather than hungry. Another alternative is to take a walk rather than head to the kitchen.

[Anonymous]

I have a very similar problem so I sympathize! Best I can offer though is try to skip breakfast and set yourself up by having in the house whatever snacks work for you (pickles, popcorn, apples, maybe a few nuts).

[Anonymous]

OMG, absolutely yes. I used to do a modified IF when I worked from the office - because I just didn't bring food with me to the office. I drank tea & coffee with milk, but that's it until I left the office around 3. So now that I'm home 100% of the time - there is food available all the time. I KNOW I need to stop nibbling but it is so hard.

I recently started doing IF again, and limiting my food intake (except tea/coffee with milk) until afternoon. But even then, more snacking than i'd like. So I need to kind of get myself under control. The Covid 10-15 pounds are real, and unwanted!

[Anonymous]

I also find that I snack a lot at home! I don’t have solutions except to not have snack food at home.

[Anonymous]

Same boat here...I am right now just eating three meals a day with at least 5 hours in between. Otherwise I snack all day for no reason.

[Anonymous]

Can you go into the office, even if it's not required or necessary?

[Anonymous]

Can you give yourself a category of food that you can eat unlimited amounts of, to scratch the snacking as entertainment itch?

Grapes or bananas or whatever? Not that it's good to eat HUGE amounts of anything - but knowing that you CAN eat may help you resist the urge.

For me - I've worked at home on and off for over a decade - getting into good routines is really what matters. If I get into the habit of snacking all day, I snack all day. If I'm in the habit of breakfast, lunch, fruit, then dinner, then that's fine, too. It's just what my body and brain is used to - so perhaps you really just need to get yourself into a new habit, if you think that could work for you.

[Anonymous]

Your description of a “switch” you find it hard to turn off after starting sounds like it could be carbohydrates. Maybe focus on protein so at least the snack will hang around a while. The only other suggestion I have is simply to declare the kitchen off limits during the workday. Put a coffee machine and a reasonable amount of protein snacks in your office. If you need to get away from your workspace take a short walk outside. This issue isn’t just limited to work from home. I worked in an office that had snacks available as an amenity. It was very hard not to graze.

[Anonymous]

I moved my office upstairs and it helped a lot.

[Anonymous]

I could have written the same thing in my early 20s and it wasn't about too much access to food or diet strategies, it was about stress from work and using food like a drug. I would describe it the same way and once that switch was flipped, I felt like I was out of control. Like there was someone else making the decision to eat and I was just along for the ride. Anti-depressants, specifically Wellbutrin, helped me come out of it.

If you feel like it's actually just more of a bad habit and you could control it if you try harder, what works for me is having my home office on a different floor than the kitchen and putting myself on a schedule like I would a toddler (e.g. snack time is at 10am and 3pm, lunch is at 12). When I start feeling like I could use a snack around 2pm, most of the time I'm too lazy to make the effort of going all the way downstairs to get it, and since I'm "allowing" myself to eat at 3pm, I don't feel deprived by not eating something an hour earlier.

[Anonymous]

Make an eating plan for the day, with full meals and snacks. Set out your snacks (or bring them to your office). Only go to the kitchen for meals.

I think cutting the bored eating is important. You want to listen to your hunger cues, not emotional cues. I do this too when I WFH, so I am trying to be better about managing my snacks in between meals. I try not to be crazy, like if I am hungry I eat something, but that 3pm boredom snack isn't always being dictated by hunger. So I try to do something else then like take a walk around the block or clean something or play a game on my phone for a few minutes.

[Anonymous]

The biggest thing that helps is to have a bare bones kitchen. One or two snacks that you think will satiate you but that you won't gorge on--we do nuts or dried fruit. Pretty much everything else in our kitchen needs to be cooked or prepared (with the exception of some kids snacks that really aren't that tempting), and I'm typically not going to put in that effort for a snack. If it's been prepared already it's set aside for a meal, so I'm not really tempted to eat it knowing I'll have to figure out lunch/dinner later if I do.

Also, do something else when you want to eat. Take a walk. Fold a load of laundry. Clean the sink. Anything to distract you from food.