Stop buying it. Starve yourself of it by just not having it around.
Keep a tall glass or bottle of warm water with you when you’re junking on content. Keep sipping it. Slowly. Over time you’ll finish the bottle and get up to pee. That’s there number 3 comes in.
Recognize another harmful pattern here. Is your approach to watching content affecting your mood or causing you to spiral into junk food addiction? Maybe cut down on the YouTube videos. Or if you enjoy them a lot, combine them with some other activity you can do with your hands - drawing, writing, lifting weights, anything. Basically understand that your hands are idle while your brain is engaged and that’s causing you to reach for that packet of food.
Recognize that junk food is an addiction. Deal with it as you would an alcohol or nicotine addiction. You can go cold turkey or taper down. But you have to commit. You have to hold yourself accountable. But do not let yourself get bogged down by failure. Addiction is difficult to deal with. Deal with it anyway.
I find your third point interesting. I read something a while back that suggested some cigarette smokers got started or hooked because of a compulsive need to have hands and/or mouth preoccupied, particularly in stressful situations. I think it was called something like digital-oral fixation? Anyways, I wonder if that’s one of the reasons behind constant snacking. Maybe a stress response paired with a compulsive disorder…
It’s actually incredibly common. Think about all the people who bite on the end of their pen or always have a drink (like a water bottle or coffee) to hand
Just stop buying that kind of food if you can’t control your consumption of it. If that’s too extreme for you, buy less of it, and when you do eat some, put one serving in a bowl and eat it out of the bowl. When the serving is gone, no more, no refills, you’re done snacking on that food.
don’t buy it. ever. and if people bring it over make them take it back. make grocery lists before going to the store with healthy snacks you like on it or meal plan filling meals. and eat before you go to the store so you shop with your head, not your stomach lolol.
Basically we all need to learn how to hack ourselves.
Whatever that may look like for you is fine, so long as the hacks don’t cause secondary problems then whatever works works.
Your Ritual = sit, watch, snack on crap, repeat until ??
So maybe try and replace each bit, one at a time, and see what you can bear to white knuckle long enough for it to transform into an enjoyable habit:
Sit -> walk on treadmill / exercise bike / whatever while you watch, or go outside for a walk while you listen to podcasts etc
Watch -> listening to podcasts and music or video audio frees up your eyes to be doing a crazy or hobby while you listen. This also means your hands will be occupied and not snacking.
Snack -> swap in fresh sweet crunchy veg (carrots, sweet bell pepper etc) or popcorn (no butter ya sneaky bugger) etc
Repeat until ??? -> Portion control. You don’t take the whole bag of chips out of the kitchen, you take out a small bowl full and that’s your limit
Pick whichever one you want.
Change is hard. We kinda hate it. But it’s worth it.
Find hobbies or projects or do stuff with friends to the point that you don’t have time for movies and youtube
When you’re at the store, don’t buy junk food. If it’s in the house it’ll be extremely difficult to say no to, but while shopying it’s easier to make a more rational decision. Also, plan your meals for the week and maybe meal prep
Following as I’m in the same boat as you… for me the only thing that helps is when I’m doing one of my hobbies or something else, although usually I end up forgetting to eat in that scenario 😢
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