First is that because you’re starving yourself, you’ll feel hungry. I find that if I feel hungry and I can thwart the shove-food-in-mouth-now reflex, all I have to do is wait 20 minutes or so and I’ll feel less hungry and eat less when I do snack. I can trick my stomach sometimes with water or coffee, but it’s pretty smart and catches on quick to my ruse.

Second is the “Hacker’s Diet” [good references and description at Wikipedia]: basically the idea is to track a rolling average of your weight to eliminate daily fluctuations then to use the change-per-day to calculate Calories. The 10-day rolling average is trivial: (today’s average) = (yesterday’s average) + (today’s weight – yesterday’s average) / 10. Calories-per-day is trivial too: ( (today’s average) – (yesterday’s average) ) * 3500 Calories / pound. If the resulting Caloric change per day is positive, that’s exactly how many Calories too many you’re eating. I find it much easier to adjust my eating if I know I need to cut 100 Calories today. If avoiding the candy bars stops working, I’d highly recommend this method.