I've often noticed that my weight loss clients and friends who are overweight spend an awful lot of time thinking about food - planning what to eat, salivating over what they think they should not eat, giving themselves a hard time about what they ate and think they shouldn't have, talking about what they ate
And in contrast my friends who are slim just get on with their lives - they may plan what's for dinner but they don't often think about food until they are hungry (or until someone puts a chocolate cake before them - well, they are human too!) and when they've eaten they don't think about it again (unless it was a spectacularly delicious meal!)
In some cases, the slim friends have busier lives than the more overweight ones - but it's not always true.
So what is going on here?
It seems to me that the slim friends have a "set it and forget it" approach to food. They may have a vague idea what they'll have for lunch or dinner or a firm plan in place and when they get hungry - they eat!
The others eat more because thoughts about food comes into their head all day. It's a bad habit they have got into. When they think about food, they feel hungry even though they are not physically in need of food - and more often than not they give into temptation because they don't stop thinking about food until they do.
I have found three ways to deal with this obsession:-
The first involves getting 100% occupied and interested in what you are doing so that you get in a flow state where you don't even think about food. This is the ideal but it's difficult for most people to achieve when they have got into the habit of thinking about food too much. And to be fair, most of our lives are not filled with activities that are so very interesting!
The second involves not giving into food thoughts unless we are truly physically hungry (tummy rumbles required) and giving ourselves a task to do before we even consider whether we are hungry again. It means not eating now "in case we can't get time to eat later". It means not fearing being a little hungry - it won't do you any harm to wait.
With the third solution, you eat whenever you like but you change what you eat. Give yourself permission to nibble all day if need be but keep very low calorie foods (such as raw vegetable sticks) on hand and all higher calorie foods under lock and key until meal times.
If you need to lose weight, try to use a combination of all three tactics so that you get out of the habit of
a) thinking about food all day
b) giving into food thoughts when are not hungry
c) eating lower calorie foods when you do give in!