I keep eating the crusts I cut off my kids' sandwiches

This is the cousin of the “one bite while cooking” thread lol. Pating mine first helped me too.

Cafe owner here, and the standing-up bites are my nemesis. I used to call it “quality control” at work and “not wasting food” at home. What finally clicked: I put a tiny bowl next to the cutting board and all crusts/leftover bits go in it. If I want them, I sit down with that bowl. Usually seeing a bowl of cold crusts kills the urge. If not, I eat them, but they’re on the log. Do you think it’s the crusts themselves or the 5:45 chaos that gets you? For me it’s 100% the chaos.

Ah, the crust tax. There was a long thread on here a while back about “standing calories,” and it changed how I handle this: I keep a tiny bowl on the counter, and anything I eat while serving goes in it, then I log it after dinner. If it doesn’t fit in the bowl, it goes straight in the bin. Boring, but it killed the 9pm cupboard amnesia for me. Question: now that your own bowl is on the table beforehand, are you actually sitting down to eat it, or still nibbling through the kids’ meal and eating yours cold later? That was the real switch for me.

Not dismissing the crust thing, but have you actually weighed or logged the standing-up bites for 2–3 days? I did that after swearing cold macaroni “didn’t count,” and kid leftovers plus crusts plus a few crackers was often 250–350 calories. It made the after-bedtime cupboard feel less mysterious. What helped me was a physical barrier: scrape plates straight into the bin before sitting down, then eat my own bowl at the table. If you’re up for specifics, what’s your 5:45pm fallback when you’re too tired to make yourself a separate meal?

Standing up is a cheat code the ledger always audits anyway.