Eat healthy, sustainable, low GL foods, where possible. But that's not exactly feasible 24/7. So...
I find that it all starts when you eat when you're not hungry. This may be the product of a need to reassert control via some of the feedback loops described below, but suffice it to say, it often starts there. However, very often it begins via the fixed 'scheduling' of eating times in our society, despite the fact that we may need a variable # of meals per day and it may vary based on workout, stress, your mind, etc.
So here's the progression:
(a) eat when you're not hungry
(b) leads to not eating *enough* during a meal time
(c) leads to feeling hungry in between meals.
(d) leads to cravings and short-term satisfactions
(e) further increases not eating *enough* during a meal time
(f) goto (a) and (c)
Goto considered harmful. So the key to breaking the cycle is eating a large meal and then not eating until you're hungry. Everything in moderation, of course. But yeah -- older, wiser cultures, imho, eat one large meal a day. In the U.S., we tend to eat two (either big breakfast and big dinner, or big lunch and big dinner) or three. In Europe, sometimes they have just one (sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner). But the key is to remember that nature and evolution are in your favor. Listen to it -- i.e., listen to when you're hungry and when you're
not hungry. Although, again, while the body is pretty good at adapting to whatever the circumstance, where possible don't let social conventions confuse you... Social conventions are young on the evolutionary scale. Large meals, despite what people say, are as old as hunting/gathering (and note, this doesn't apply to strength training where you may be trying to gain weight, etc. -- or if you're a farmer, in which case a big breakfast is critical as you're going to burn more calories than many professional athletes -- but, imho, there is a confusion in the Midwest and a large part of our society about too many large meals -- i.e., people are no longer farmers but the social conventions haven't caught up).
Also, final caveat. I'm just a programmer trying to figure things out. Probably I'm a hypodiscontinuist (i.e., I fear the discrete breaks in otherwise continuous systems).