"Auntie Em" Auntie wrote in message
...
The problem I am having is with hunger. Generally, when I get up in the
morning, the LAST thing on my mind is food so I can get away with forcing
myself to eat a few pieces of fruit or a small bown of some type of
granola
type cereal.

If you're not hungry, there is no point in forcing yourself to eat stuff you
don't want. The "breakfast must provide 25% of the energy for the day" deal
is a pure invention of the breakfast, and mainly cereal, industry. Unless
you have shares there, you don't have to follow that "rule". Actually, if
the dinner is your main meal of the day, it's pretty normal *not* to be
hungry in the morning. That's the natural way for your body to balance out a
high calorie meal with a low calorie one.
For some people, the problem is not being hungry right after coming out of
bed. Or maybe they have to hurry in the morning to prepare stuff or leave
for work, and they experience some stress, which can lower hunger. Again,
there is no rule that you should eat right after bed. If you're only
slightly hungry at 10am, then have a fruit or whatever at 10am and call it
your breakfast if you want.

Even in the afternoon, food still isn't of a huge interest to
me so having a nice salad for lunch isn't a problem.

Good.

By dinner, however, I am a ravenous beast. Even trying to eat 6 small
meals
a day (rather than three), doesn't alter my hunger pattern. By 6 pm I am
so
hungry I am virtually frantic.

What's happening by then? *When* does the hunger really start?
Mid-afternoon? When you get back home? When husband/kids are back home?
Usually, hunger comes rather slowly. You start to get a little hungry, then
some more, and ravenous normally happens quite a while later.
If hunger kind of jumps at you all of a sudden, maybe it's caused by some
external event rather than by your own body wanting nutriments. Maybe you
have been keeping yourself busy throughout the day, and you hadn't noticed
the hunger yet - some people get so absorbed in their work or whatever they
can even forget to pee or drink. Or maybe dinner has some special meaning to
you, and this somehow translates into hunger.
Or maybe you were doing "to well" during the day, and really not eating
enough, and this is the way your body is coming back at you with a revenge.
However, if you *really* do not feel hungry, this is unlikely.

I have been trying to satisfy this by eating
a HUGE salad 20 minutes before the main meal, but it doesn't even put a
small dent in it.

What happens if you try to eat something really *slow* and *filling*
something like one hour before the meal? I thinking something like nuts or
dark chocolate, in reasonnable quantity. Does this cut the hunger some or is
it like you ate nothing at all? If stuff like this doesn't lessen the hunger
by a significant amount, it would point to some psychological mechanism,
nuts/chocolate *is* filling.

Trying to distract myself from this I have tried taking nice long walks
after dinner but all I can think about is getting back and getting
something
to eat. The first thing I do when I get back is head for the fridge.

This is really obsessive. So, either it's *real* hunger (like, you really
didn't eat enough, by a wide margin) or it's a real psychological issue.
Moderate hunger just won't cause cravings like this.
You might try eating a really filling dinner, and see what happens. I mean
something lowish in fast carbs (sugars, potatoes, white rice) and highish in
fats and proteins and fibers - while remaining reasonnable in calories (that
would be around 600-800).

Also, I have found that eating a LOT of salad (like I have been doing),
really upsets my stomach a lot and is very uncomfortable.

Then don't eat salad. If by salad, you mean the green leafy stuff, like
lettuce, with not much else thrown in, it's not really interresting food
anyway. It's mainly water, with little fibers and little vitamins. It's not
very filling either, since you're merely eating water in a fancy shape. You
might want to try real "green" vegetables instead (broccolis, eggplant,
zucchini. tomato, French bean, cabbage...), cooked or raw.