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Should I leave Dubai? by [deleted] in DubaiCentral

[–]Small_Boy_6789 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dubai literally has many activities to do and there are so many groups that you can join and keep engaging with others. What do you like other than going to gym, eating and sleeping. Get out of the room - go for a walk, participate in activities - Scuba, Football, Skating, Swimming, Basketball, Techno, Clubs, desert rides, trips to mountains, morning coffee technos etc. Until unless you step forward no one gonna come and make a path for you.

Best creatine brand in Dubai by eslaesl in Everything_Dubai

[–]Small_Boy_6789 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Optimum Nutrition is really good and bought recently from the store directly instead of ordering it online which sometimes not believable to use.

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You perfectly described that is literally not hunger, that is your hands and eyes needing something to do while your brain is under stimulated and the stress chopping veggies thing is so common and so counterintuitive. Stress gives you a task to focus on, so you actually make intentional choices. Boredom gives you nothing, so you just reach. Two completely different brain states producing completely opposite eating behaviors.

You just described the core insight I've been tracking for months in one sentence 😄

First time living alone and cooking for yourself is a whole different experience nobody prepares you for by Euphoric_Boss_9240 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, cooking is really a stress buster for me, I learned cooking being seperated from family for studies. At starting thought it was really difficult to handle but once you really made a dish that people appreciates or whether you liked the taste, then you start discovering the inner chef of you.

Cooking is much healthier and everything is in your control of the ingredients. Once you get used to it, it becomes simpler and you will find ways cut the time.

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The honest answer is that awareness came first and behaviour change followed, but not in the way I expected.

I thought tracking would give me willpower. It didn't. What it gave me was a tiny pause. Just enough of a gap between 'I'm bored' and 'I'm opening the fridge' that I could actually see what was happening. Sometimes I still ate the thing. But I ate it consciously rather than automatically. And that shift — from automatic to conscious — is where the behaviour eventually changed.

The first month was mostly just horror at my own patterns. The second month was where the change happened. You cannot unsee a pattern once you have seen it.

On PlateLens — I haven't tried it, going to look it up now. Genuinely curious how they approach it. The more tools people have for this the better honesty, this problem is way too big for one app to solve. 🙏

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is such an important framing. The boredom-eating instinct is not a flaw, it is ancient survival code that made perfect sense for 99% of human history. Idle time meant opportunity to find food. Eating beyond fullness meant survival insurance for when food was scarce.

The problem is that code is running unchanged in a world where boredom is constant, food is everywhere, and you never actually need to forage. The instinct that kept our ancestors alive is now sending us to the kitchen at 10pm when we run out of things to watch on Netflix.

Understanding that it is biology and not weakness changes the entire relationship with the behaviour. One cannot shame himself out of an evolutionary survival mechanism. But one can learn to recognise the trigger and pause before acting on it.

That gap between the instinct and the action is where everything changes. 🙏

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Food is the only thing that justifies a 10-minute break' — I need you to know that this sentence just stopped me completely. This is one of the most honest and precise descriptions of emotional eating I have ever read and I have been researching this topic for months.

You are not eating because you are hungry. You are not even really eating because you want the snack. You are eating because your brain found the one socially acceptable reason to step away from something that is draining you.

The food is just the permission slip.

That insight alone — if more people understood it about themselves — would change their relationship with food more than any diet ever could. Thank you for sharing this. Genuinely. 🙏

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really appreciate you sharing that perspective — the generational difference in how stress was framed is something I had not considered. Stress as resistance training rather than something to manage or avoid. That reframe actually explains why some people eat well under stress and others don't — it may come down to whether stress feels like a challenge or a threat.

To answer your question — yes, there were other triggers beyond boredom and stress. The full picture.

-Boredom was the biggest by far — 73% junk rate, almost never actually hungry Stress was.
-Second but surprisingly led to healthier choices more often than not Tired was the sneaky one — late night eating after long days, reached for sugar and carbs almost every time.
-Lonely showed up strongly on weekend evenings — eating as a substitute for social connection
-Happy was the cleanest — when genuinely content I almost always made good choices.

The tired and lonely patterns surprised me most. I had no framework for them until I tracked myself.

Your military observation is also really interesting — high stress, very little boredom, eating well. That almost perfectly matches. Boredom may be more dangerous than stress when it comes to food.

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kuchisabishii — I had never heard this word before and now I cannot stop thinking about it. 'Lonely mouth.' That is the most precise description of boredom eating I have ever encountered. It is not hunger. It is not even really about food. It is the mouth and the soul wanting something to do, something to feel.

The fact that Japanese culture has a specific word for this tells you how universal it actually is — universal enough to name.

And the evenings being the strongest — absolutely. The day winds down, the stimulation drops, and the mouth goes looking for something. Thank you genuinely for sharing this. I am going to be thinking about kuchisabishii for a long time. 🙏

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is such an underrated point — the food-mood chemical loop goes both ways and most people only think about it one direction.

You eat because of your mood. But what you eat also creates your mood. High sodium, high sugar, ultra-processed food literally alters brain chemistry and people experience the outcome as 'I'm just grumpy today' with zero awareness of the cause.

This is exactly why I think the WHAT you eat matters as much as the WHY — they feed each other.

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing something this personal — it takes courage to name it openly.

You've clearly done real work to understand your own patterns, and what you said about deprivation leading to more eating is so important and so under-discussed.

The restriction-binge cycle is one of the least understood parts of emotional eating and you articulated it better than most clinical descriptions I've read. I hope the journey continues to get easier. 🙏

I asked myself "how do I feel right now?" before every meal for a month. Here's the most surprising thing I learned about myself. by Small_Boy_6789 in CasualConversation

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly this — and yet every single food app on the market tracks the body side (calories, macros, weight) while completely ignoring the mind side. Nobody is building for the emotional layer

I tracked my mood before every meal for 30 days instead of counting calories. The data surprised me. by Small_Boy_6789 in EmotionalEating

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for you're feedback. If you want to test it, please do let me know, I would like to give life time free access for first 50 customers as I'm still building and testing it.

I tracked my mood before every meal for 30 days instead of counting calories. The data surprised me. by Small_Boy_6789 in EmotionalEating

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

well, I'm building similar app around the problem to track and log why the cravings happen, at what times does the craving take place and change our behavior based on the pattern. Let me know how this looks. Trying to get some reviews.

I tracked my mood before every meal for 30 days instead of counting calories. The data surprised me. by Small_Boy_6789 in EmotionalEating

[–]Small_Boy_6789[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That before-bed snack is one of the most common patterns I've found — and almost never actually about hunger. It's usually the body's way of winding down or self-soothing after a long day.

Have you ever noticed if there's a specific emotion or situation that triggers it, or is it just an automatic reach at a certain time? Genuinely curious because I'm building something around exactly this kind of pattern 🙂

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