Having been in the same situation, as well a similar one invoking cigarettes, I suggest to you winter green life savers. (Bare with me.)
They certainly don’t help with any physical issues but they help with the mental side.
I’m not sure what it is but the fact that you can move them around in your mouth and gnaw on them while still lasting a while makes it feel like you’re “doing something.”
Every time I’d want to partake i would eat a life saver. They are also innocuous so there’s no guilt or anything.
And I’m sure you can replace them with whatever gives you the sensation described above. I know it’s silly but they were my secret weapon.
All the sedentary screen time (I am a SWE, surprise) is an ongoing prompt to indulge in little side rewards, and it makes good sense to substitute relatively innocuous ones. I used soda and cigarettes heavily early in my career which would scale up along with whatever project I had going on, so when it was crunch time I would consume horrific levels of these. My main challenge now is that I've cut out so much, I don't even eat candy anymore, so my options are limited, but perhaps it's worth a temporary trade-off just to get away from the substance I find most irresistible.
They certainly don’t help with any physical issues but they help with the mental side.
I’m not sure what it is but the fact that you can move them around in your mouth and gnaw on them while still lasting a while makes it feel like you’re “doing something.”
Every time I’d want to partake i would eat a life saver. They are also innocuous so there’s no guilt or anything.
And I’m sure you can replace them with whatever gives you the sensation described above. I know it’s silly but they were my secret weapon.