fruit lady, i can REALLY identifiy with you about the eating. I was a total vegan ONLY organic eater. And I drove myself nuts. I would let a boundary down ONE AT A TIME. I went nuts trying to incorporate "no, no" foods back into my diet. And LIKE i said, my "all or nothing" mentality caused huge binging attacks.
I walked dangerously close to the binge line. I bought some carmel covered roasted pecans--i never buy these ALWAYS raw nuts...and something happened and i wanted them.
the baby was fussy again, and I checked his temp this time. it was 100.1. I felt like a total a$$ because I have been so annoyed with his behavior. It didn't occur to me that he was running a fever.
well, i went to the store late tonight to get his drops for his fever, and I saw a mini container of mini eclairs. Eclairs are a total danger food for me. Because I LOVE the creaminess of the insides and the soft sponginess of the choux. anyways, i bought the little mini pack, lying to myself that i would eat one..hahhah. good thing this was a mini pack. But i bought some more sweet/salty nuts, and this, and the drops...on the way home...i started to crunch on the nuts again...and then i thought i REALLY wanted the eclairs not the nuts...but i kept munching on the nuts...thinking about the baby being fussy when i got home. finally i shoved the nuts aside. I got home and ate the eclairs--which is what i really wanted.
the baby is still fussy, and I was going to have a drink tonight, but i don't think i will because i feel like he needs me extra. I am going to have some tea though--it will calm my nerves. almost through day 7.
jendiet, no one can possibly know everything a baby might want. i hope you're not too hard on yourself over feeling annoyed. well done on preventing a binge, reading your post i was almost nodding my head because i know EXACTLY how it feels to be eating something while craving something else. in the past i always ate a bunch of stuff i don't "really" want before i get to what i truly crave - almost like "saving the best for last."
Did not even make one day...seem to have slid way way back in my mental outlook. Binged on toast and jam (ate half a loaf ) - just don't seem to care. I did finally throw out the jame so I would not start on another loaf...and the honey goes out as well! Just feel like such a baby-cannot have anyhting in the house. I am happy for all of you who have been successful and who have managed to defeat demons. I am still working on that I guess. Day 1 again tomorrow...
My last binge was on 1/2 loaf of french bread (the cheap but fresh kind at the regular store's bakery), 1/2 chocolate bar, and 1/2 bag of peperidge farm goldfish. I immediately recognized that I was sabotoging myself, and threw everything in the trash and spoiled it with hairspray. Since then, I have been eating normal foods, not diet foods, and just indulging once every few days, and just a little bit.
My weight has been going down. But I cannot have bread in my house. I have some amazing tasting chocolate bars in my house, but I don't binge on chocolates usually. It's usually bread-type things that I have a problem with. I could have jars of peanut butter and I still won't binge on it. But give me a box of graham crackers or a loaf of wheat bread, and I have to try to pull myself together to not eat it.
We all have food different food demons. We all have battles to choose. Even the skinny people. I choose to have small indulgences and extra cals here and there and losing weight slow and steady, versus going very strict and eating only whole foods and losing the weight fast.
Thanks everyone for your support! you chicks are the best!
Day 5- Ate on plan, perfectly. I've been thinking deeply about my overeating & binging lately and why i feel sad & depressed alot. The past 3 yrs. I've been watching my weight, I had too many rules, I am very strict about what I will eat & when, there were alot of healthy whole foods i refused to eat because they had high carbs or were starchy. So I never eat bread, pasta or rice(not even 100% whole wheat) Never eat potatoes, corn, beans & peas. I'm sure there's more, i can't think of. I basically live on fruit, yogurt, chicken, nuts & very little veggies, if any. The same food everyday! I love all the food I eat & will never stop eating them, but I need to let my guard down now. I realized I'm depressed alot because I didn't have the choices to eat whatever I wanted, it had to be a safe food, one I knew wouldn't make me gain weight or one that made me lose. I'm in my 40's, i feel it's time to be happy & live my life. So, no more rules! As long as it's a whole food I can have it, no matter which meal it is. I want to start cooking my dinners in advance & have them ready to grab, i want to try different recipes and have really good healthy dinners. If I want something sweet, if it's here, I'll have it( we have it here maybe twice a week). No more depriving myself of healthy food that I know I like. This is my attempt to feel normal, if I feel normal, I won't eat like a hog!
In the past, you were obsessed with food. Even when you ate healthy food, you had so many rules to follow. You freaked out too much if you ate a carby or starchy food. Now these rules have caused you to feel like you're missing out on life, and caused you to feel depressed and deprived.
Eating healthy whole foods is good and you can eat that way for the rest of your life, but you can't completely shut down the pleasure centers in your brain. If you don't feed yourself with foods that you really love, then it may cause you to take a turn and spiral into a binge.
I know you like to bake, and you recently started doing that more. Maybe it's one of the joys in your life, to bake good foods for yourself and family. You can bake for the rest of your life as long as it's eaten in moderation and baked with LOVE. Baking with LOVE means baking with good ingredients, not that crap from the box. You know what I mean, good flours, good fresh ingredients, and healthy substitute ingredients for the fatty butter and cream, such as mashed bananas, applesauce, blackbeans, and chickpeas. You can literally hide healthy vegetables into your desserts and no one will know!
What I'm getting at is that you can enjoy your life the way you want it to be, and do it the healthy way. Whatever it is you love most in your life, you can do it. You can eat at bbq's, buffets, bake at home...whatever it is, there is always a healthy choice and a way to avoid binging. Making sure you had a snack before the food event is another healthy way to prevent yourself from overindulging.
I think you are smart and know all of these things already, but sometimes you just need to hear it from someone else. And sorry if this sounds cliche, but you make your own choices in life, and what you put in your mouth. But the best part of it is, YOU get to make those choices! You're not in a prison cell, or in a 3rd world country. We can eat what we want to, and food is in abundance. Yes, it's hard to control how much to eat, but I'd rather have the option to have more choices than less options, and just practice self control.
Anyways, I'm really glad to hear the latter part of your message, and that you are on this self discovery towards a happier YOU. And don't throw out all the rules, just keep those rules that you feel are within reason, and will help you follow your dietary needs (gluten intolerance? organic? raw?) and those that help keep you feeling healthy and strong. Consider these to be more like preferences rather than self-imposed laws that need to be enforced.
Hey ladies I am super tired right now and just about to go to bed, so I hope you don't mind if I skip personals tonight. I did read what you all posted, I am just too pooped to respond to each one.
Finished Day 13 today! I am so excited to make it to Day 14 because that is TWO WEEKS without bingeing. It might not sound like a lot, but for me it is huge. I can't remember the last time I went 3 days without bingeing since this summer (lots of stressful stuff and I unfortunately chose the unhealthy route of stuffing my face), so it would be a great milestone for me!
Congrats on 2 weeks! Its sounds like you have made a HUGE turning point! It's a great feeling when you first learn how to stop stuffing yourself, especially when you recognize that you were in a situation where you COULD HAVE binged, but you didn't. With all the stressful events that have happened since summer, you chose the right thing to do and for these past 2 weeks, look at how you have overcame the stress, with a clear head and with good intentions for yourself. When you start to care more about yourself and your body, you will see taht stuffing yourself is damaging and sabatoging to your health. It doesn't make going through stressful events easy. However, when you are eating healthy, and caring more about your body, you are more effective at being able to take care of the stressful things in your life.
I think this is a great change to make. Recently I feel "normal" because I will sometimes eat something like a single serving of ice cream, a peanut butter sandwich, and sweet potatoes with dinner. On the whole I know I could be doing a little better nutrition-wise, but I don't have that crazy deprived feeling that makes me want to stuff chocolate bars down my throat and wash it down with an entire pizza. I've been limiting my calories to under 1700 a day (but not aiming for 1200 like I used to) and I'm the lowest weight I've been since winter. Everyone is different but I feel like I could keep up this way of eating forever. I hope you find "normal" and can live well that way!
I'm so glad you are feeling "normal" again! Feeling skinny at your lowest weight right now must feel so good too! That "crazy, deprived" feeling that you had before is easily squashed now with a small ice cream, or a peanut butter sandwich. Notice how now, you will just eat it without guilt of regret. But in the past, at a higher weight, you would eat it with some guilt and regret. Food should not have to harbor such feelings, no matter what your weight is. What is important is knowing that food is just food. It's not your best friend, it won't solve your problems, and it only temporarily drowns out bad emotional feelings before you feel physically sick and emotionally worse than before. I think you know now that the restrict-binge-restrict-binge cycle of living is torturous and unhealthy, and though you may not have as much nutrious food as you would like to now, what you are doing now is probably healthier than the restrict-binge cycle before. As you continue on this steady path of eating normal, you will start to find more nutritous foods to strengthen you and sustain you longer and you will find new goals to achieve, and not have to focus so much on the binge aspect of eating.
THANK YOU for the support ladies. yesterday was wed which normally means a binge because i cannot eat dinner until after kickboxing class (or i'll be sick during class) so it is normally really late. add on top of that that i was at my boss' bbq yesterday adn i thought i was in for disaster but i had one sausage, some lovely quinoa salad adn just one piece of carrot cake. yes, i was over calories for the day but NO BINGING.
i noticed some people commented about not being able to have stuff in the house... i still cannot have real butter or honey. I am doing okay with natural pnb in the house but wouldn't dream of having the Kraft full-sugar stuff in the house... chocolate and cookies are still super hard on me and i often find i am overeating them. i can handle chips no problem but i dont have a salty tooth, it is sweet all the way....i dont know if i'll ever have honey and some of the other foods in the house again but hey, that is just my life. I have to make choices right? Do I want honey in the house and weigh another 20-30lbs more than I do right now in a very unhealthy manner or just accept that some food is not coming in the house and maintain (or maybe even lose, fingers crossed)
earning day 4 today ! i can do this... it is about health and not weight! I need to embrace my body and win instead of fighting it and lose !
Before, I also questioned whether or not I will have to live with never having ____ in my house again. But lately, I am having a lot of ____ and ____ around me, and guess what, it's still here and I have hardly eaten any of it! I think over time, when you start to practive the techniques of preventing binges, and learning how to eat normal portions of healthy foods, the cravings for those bad foods diminish, and you learn to adapt to this new healthier way of eating. Also, you start to care more about your body and realize the immense damage that binging brings about on your health. Soon, you start not care as much for those ____ (foods). Even if it were healthy foods, like for me, bread is a type of food I would binge on in the past, (even the expensive Ezekial srouted grain bread!), the thought of stuffing myself with any type of food and knowing how damaging it is to my digestion, my well being, and my emotions is enough to make me stop at just the healthy portion of that food.
Honey is a condiment to me. It should be used to sweeten breads, tea, cereals, oatmeal. Binging on honey doesn't make sense to me, but I could see how the sugar high would make someone want to eat a massive amount of it.
Chocolate and cookies, well, does anyone NEED to have them in their house? I mean they can be enjoyed outside of the house, say at an event, a party, at the mall, at a cafe.
It really doesn't matter whether or not you can or cannot live with certain foods in your house. I think everyone has some things that they don't like to have in their kitchen due to the temptations that it brings. I'm sure you've seen friends or family try to give you the rest of the cake or cookies, or whatever, just so they can "get rid or it" from their own household.
It's your choice and your life, and no one will judge you. You have your reasons, so don't feel like there should be a rule that says "normal people can have anything they want in their house and not binge on it".
I often get stuck in a binge- fast cycle. I'll barely eat for days and then I'll crack and just eat and eat and eat. Then I feel so guilty over eating that I stop eating again. I know this is really bad but sometimes I can't seem to help it.
So today I have decided to try and avoid binging and just to eat normally and healthily.
Trying " to eat normally and healthily " is the very goal of ending binge eating.
Deprivation is how we get stuck in that binge-fast cycle in the first place. If we continue to deny ourselves of good tasting food, we keep wanting it more and more. The desire just continues to grow until it overwhelms our ability to control ourselves around food. Just have a little bit of what it is you really want to eat. Indulge yourself just a little, just enough to get you to the next meal. And then you are okay again. And if that piece of ____ (food) keeps calling to you, have another small bite of it. Then ask yourself, was this second helping any better than the very first bite of it? Probably not. There is a point where the desire for it starts to diminish, and then you no longer care for it that much anymore. The key to all of this "normal eating" is to eat those foods in small portions, and to keep asking yourself if you are satisfied. But fill yourself up with more healthy foods to squash the desire for more of that ____ (food).
fruit lady, i can REALLY identifiy with you about the eating. I was a total vegan ONLY organic eater. And I drove myself nuts. I would let a boundary down ONE AT A TIME. I went nuts trying to incorporate "no, no" foods back into my diet. And LIKE i said, my "all or nothing" mentality caused huge binging attacks.
I walked dangerously close to the binge line. I bought some carmel covered roasted pecans--i never buy these ALWAYS raw nuts...and something happened and i wanted them.
the baby was fussy again, and I checked his temp this time. it was 100.1. I felt like a total a$$ because I have been so annoyed with his behavior. It didn't occur to me that he was running a fever.
well, i went to the store late tonight to get his drops for his fever, and I saw a mini container of mini eclairs. Eclairs are a total danger food for me. Because I LOVE the creaminess of the insides and the soft sponginess of the choux. anyways, i bought the little mini pack, lying to myself that i would eat one..hahhah. good thing this was a mini pack. But i bought some more sweet/salty nuts, and this, and the drops...on the way home...i started to crunch on the nuts again...and then i thought i REALLY wanted the eclairs not the nuts...but i kept munching on the nuts...thinking about the baby being fussy when i got home. finally i shoved the nuts aside. I got home and ate the eclairs--which is what i really wanted.
the baby is still fussy, and I was going to have a drink tonight, but i don't think i will because i feel like he needs me extra. I am going to have some tea though--it will calm my nerves. almost through day 7.
You are doing exactly what I would have done had I been in your situation. If I was craving the X, but I bought Z, I would regret it, and keep eating Z until it was all gone, and then realize, darn, I should have just bought the one X instead of polishing off the entire Z.
We have to practice eating what we truly want to eat instead of eating, mindlessly, foods that don't give us the pleasure that fulfill our desire of eating in moments like these.
Now, it's a different story if we continually desire that food, every moment of the day, and always giving in. That's why we choose healthier foods to cook and eat at the market, and sqaush those desires by filling ourselves up with the healthy food first, and by exercising and keeping ourselves busy and productive. I know you are smart and know all of this, but just helps to hear it coming from another person.
Anyways, you did good and you know you have made a HUGE improvement because you realized the binge line that you didn't cross, and you also were in a stressful situation with your baby's fever. I think you are doing really good and well on your way to ending binging forever.
7 whole days :-) that's the longest I've ever gone. Hopefully I can keep this up for many more days to come.
That's really good! See if you can try for another week now. Then 2 weeks for a month! It gets easier with time Then you forget the last time you binged and don't even care about eating those foods anymore.
Day 3 is going well so far...I am so exhausted with school and my internship...I decided to take a break from my early AM workout and sleep till 7am cause I had to rush to class at 9.....I am glad I did cause sometimes, couple hours of sleep can do the body good....
I also went to flame broiler and yogurtland after class and I think that was the best decision I have made, I was craving and got icecream, rather than trying to substitute and end up binge...this worked for me today....it's one day at a time...
any hoo, I need to finish a bunch of papers....remember you ladies are awesome!
I haven't heard of flame broiler...but I can say that yogurtland is a great choice for that ice cream craving that you had. You made a good choice and turned away from eating a full fat ice cream tub from the store, or other place. Frozen yogurt, although it can have many cals and sugar, is a good treat for yourself when craving something sweet. They have active bacteria cultures that help digestion. And if you know that no other food would have stopped you from binging, then you made the only real choice that you could, which is the RIGHT choice.
In stressful times like these, with so many papers to do, making that quick 2 second choice can be so detrimental to your health. But if you give it more forethought and time to ask yourself, what do I really want, what do I really want, sometimes the answer is something healthier than you actually think, and sometimes it's nothing at all.
I would like to join the challenge ir you have room for one more.My hardest challenge is with sweets,specifically sweet and sour candy.Can't go a day without it and get crabby and angry without it.At work if I start getting stressed out they give me skittles.A slow steady supply or sugar keeps me calm.I usually have jolly rancher candy,sprees,sweet tarts,starbursts or skittles with me.Really hard habit to break and I get miserable when I can't have them.Is it still considered a binge if I eat them slowly all day?Can't really stuff yourself on them,just eat them all day.Horrible habit of course and not healthy.Trouble comes when I can't have them,get stressed out angry and down right miserable.What do I substitute? How do I stop without getting miserable? I do like fruit and sugar free jello or pudding sometimes.thanks
