Hi everyone.

I've been tied up all day chasing down a missing iPhone (thank goodness I finally found it) so am just now catching up with the posts.

I have to say that I continue to be astounded at this discussion. I've been participating in forums online since there's been forums online on all sorts of topics, and I can honestly say that I've never seen one more full of insight, honesty, and practical information.

Every. Single. Member. on 3FC should be reading this thread. I think it could change things for many of them.

I don't have a lot to add to what's been discussed today. I'm too busy learning from all of you.

Thanks guys! So interesting to read all this.

I just decided a task for myself for tomorrow: When I get up my first thought is usually "Am I going to binge or not - am I going to diet or not blabla". Tomorrow I will start to think "yay Sunday, I donīt have to work. I can sit on the couch in my PJīs have a fresh juice from my new juicer and watch sitcoms all day".

Focusing on other things than my eating is key for me, but it is hard to do. The more you donīt want to think of something, the more you think of it.

I so agree- reading about binging and addictive food triggered something in me and i craved and binged like never before. How can we get over this? This self-fulfilling prophecy needs to be broken.

It's interesting how everyone is coming to a concensus here, but the more I read the more I disagree. I do not think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's been called to my attention that I eat too many carbs, and too much wheat and when I realized it I cut back. Understanding how my body reacts to food has helped me, not made me binge more. For example, coming to an understanding that my body does not need one iota of sugar, not even the smallest amount, has made me make better choices about sweets. It's not something that I deserve to indulge myself in on a constant basis. Do I eat sugar now and again, yes of course, but I do not fool myself thinking that my body intuitively needs it.

If my hunger signals weren't so out of whack I'd probably agree with you about intuitive eating. But I like to stick to a plan, I don't like to give myself the freedom of eating whatever I want because I've proven time and time again I will abuse that freedom. Being healthy is about learning a set of skills, naturally thin people might know these skills intuitively, but I do not.

Probably why I am able to say all this is because I no longer fear binging. I don't hate myself anymore if I do binge. I'm learning to let go of the guilt and self-loathing that used to accompany all my binges. One of the skills I've incorporated into my lifestyle for example is to eat a cup of yogurt with fruit and almonds in the morning. I've learned by comparing it with other breakfasts that this is what keeps me sane, and full the longest. If I have a bagel or cereal or any wheat, it gets me hungry right away and I start scouring the kitchen for stale bread. How do you explain that? The right fuel for your body can help you continue to make better choices on fuel. It's all right and good to rely on your intuition to eat but when the food you choose affects you on a chemical level then your intuition is skewed. If I've eaten sugar I consider myself intoxicated and not to be trusted.

I honestly am still not convinced that carbs/sugar are the devil. When I look at my skinny friends - they all eat it, but they donīt chow down big portions or binge. I know that for me carbs/sugar is difficult because I want to lose weight and they are very calorie dense. So I eat them, feel guilty, start bingeing and promise myself that I will be good tomorrow.

I also need guidelines/rules but they are flexible. I just donīt want to be any kind of "eater" anymore. No binge eater, no clean eater, SBD, WW etc. I just try to eat a variety of food and enjoy my treat of chocolate every day.

I just know that I will binge when I come home to grilled chicken with broccoli, because I donīt like it. I am just really done with eating foods I donīt enjoy. I love a good salad, but this whole gluten/dairy free trend is just making me sick. The more food groups we cut out the more we will binge on them later...

I sometimes think I should just delete all these forums/blogs and take 3 months off to just feel what is good for me. I keep getting my feelings mixed up the more I read.

Neither am I. They get a bad rap just like fat did in the 90s. Watch out protein, your butt is next!

If you are larger than you want to be it is not because you consume one macronutrient in excess over another. If that were the case, America would be full of thin people, because most people seem to be on some low-carb craze, and yet...likewise, naturally thin people seem to eat every food group without a second thought.

Back before my dieting days I could easily eat sugar/sweets without going overboard, even as a teen with a junk food diet. There were no cravings, nothing was special or scary; bingeing did not exist. It wasn't until I started believing all of that crap about what's "good" and "bad" that food actually became good or bad, scary or not scary and a true dilemma. My beliefs made it so.

Food is true neutral and can't make you do anything. I don't buy it. I think believing so made me give up my personal responsibility of reconciling my demons and finally moving on. It's not rational to be literally afraid of a cheeseburger as if it were a serial killer wielding a knife, but that seems to be the psychological response a lot of dieters have. I think that mentality held me back a lot of years from getting better. Maybe I needed a more tough love approach; not everyone does, but I needed a kick in the pants - someone to tell me to stop whining and do something about it; after all, I had to live in my own head and I got tired of it, so I decided to change the tape. I forced myself to get over it because I wanted to care about more important things than internally debating with myself about my dinner schedule.

Xena - if you can get rid of the guilt, you might find yourself not binging. Guilt is the first thing I let go of when I stopped dieting, and I think it's the reason I have not felt any strong urges to go back to any type of restricted eating.

Example: Yesterday was very, very stressful for me. As I mentioned, my iPhone was missing. I knew where it was and I knew there was some shenanigans going on (I'd left it in a restaurant the night before and I felt pretty sure that someone there had it, although I couldn't be certain of that) so I finally had to confront the manager with it. Not a comfortable situation - but I did get my iPhone back.

Anyway, my whole day was shot dealing with them AND with the phone company. I had had a late breakfast but by the time I had gone back to the restaurant it was 2:00 pm. I gave them an hour to come up with the phone & left. I was pretty upset, and what did I spot across the parking lot? A Starbucks. Suddenly I just HAD to have a white chocolate peppermint mocha, an indulgence I partake of from time to time. I wasn't particularly hungry, just upset. So I went in and got one (a tall, which as everyone knows, isn't tall at all ) and sat there and drank it. It calmed my nerves. They called my husband's cell phone at 2:45 and said they'd found my phone so I finished up my mocha and went over there to retrieve it.

Then about 6:30 pm I decided I was hungry. We had a frozen pizza in the freezer so I fixed it and ate 1/4 of the pizza (which was 2 relatively small pieces as compared to take out pizza), followed by 2 oatmeal cookies for dessert. My breakfast had been standard Waffle House fare - one egg, bacon, hash browns and toast. (I'd had no lunch, unless you want to count my mocha as lunch). I wasn't going to win any awards for nutrition with yesterday's intake, but did I feel guilty about what I ate?

NOT IN THE LEAST!

Overall it really wasn't that much food. But had I been on a restrictive diet when all this happened, I can assure you I not only would have gone completely off plan and no doubt engaged in "last supper eating" which would have likely been much more food ingested, but the guilt on TOP of the stress I'd been feeling over the phone would have been overwhelming.

This morning I woke up and in about two hours I decided I really wanted some yogurt & cheese toast. So breakfast was one slice of cheese toast and a cup of low-fat vanilla yogurt with some frozen berries out of the freezer. Yum!

Yesterday's "junk" (as the food police would refer to it - I don't) was forgotten. Today's a new day. I don't have a clue what I'll eat for the rest of the day, because right now I am completely satisfied.

This is what IE has done for me. By allowing myself to let go of the guilt, I'm able to have complete freedom with food. That doesn't mean gorging myself day after day but rather eating what I want and what I NEED depending on the circumstances. Yesterday was stressful and I just "went with it," so to speak.

ETA: As I read over this I thought "people are going to be thinking - how did your husband call you?" I had actually gotten back in my car for a little while to use my car phone to call people to let them know why they couldn't get me on my cell phone & he called the car phone to let me know they'd "found" the phone. Just lucky that I was in the car when he called - but I'd have gotten the phone anyway since I was supposed to return at 3:00 p.m.

Just wanted to clarify.

I have to agree with southernmavin about the guilt thing. That has been the number one thing I've had to work on. I think without the guit, the bingeing disapears a great deal. It's very tough to get rid of it. For me the only way was to force myself to eat some of these things in a public place and realize I actually COULD eat them without any ill effects. All it took was erasing all the diet dogma i've absorbed over the years. Seriously, donuts used to be my number one trigger food. Now they are harmless. And I actually look forward to them. I was under the belief that once I had one, I would only want to consume donuts and other crap. Just not true. Donuts appear in the lunchroom at my work only once or a maximum of twice every week. Now I look forward to them. I have one and savour and enjoy it. I don't feel like i'm going out of my mind watching everyone else eat one. And ironically, the donut (for someone who cares about calories) is probably less calories than whatever else I would probably bring in my lunch. Before it would put me in such a bad mood and I would just think about those donuts the entire day. Then often at the end of the day I would make some excuse in my mind to go back into the lunch room and secretly put any stale leftover donuts in my lunchbox and gorge on them on my way home in my car while stopping at the store to load up on other junk. All because of guilt. All because I labelled these things as bad. Now no problem. I have one, and that's the end of it.

It also sounds so familiar to me when you mention the chicken breast and broccoli for dinner making you binge. I think it's just so detrimental for people to eat things they don't enjoy. Also, totally agree on the whole anti gluten/dairy etc. trend going on. I fell into this and went paleo with disasterous results. Once I decided I could no longer do it due to constant daily binges, going back to even eating oatmeal filled me with so much guilt. I found myself feeling bad and wanting to binge even after eating oatmeal, something that had been a staple for me with no problems for a decade.

I think people underestimate the power of their own thoughts. There is plenty of medical evidence that suggests the placebo effect is very real. In a documentary I saw recently revealed that when taking into consideration all published and non published data comparing different antidepressants/anxiety with placebos, the placebos performed just as well. This is not to say the actual drugs didn't do anything, but more that when people believe something will help them, actual physiological responses can take place. It is a real medical phenomenon. Check out this harvard artricle. It is really interesting. http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/t...ebo-phenomenon. This article is quite objective and discusses both sides. I enjoyed reading people's comments at the end. One man who has practiced accupuncture for many years states that in his experience, attitude is very important in the healing proccess.

Wouldn't blame you one bit if you disappeard from this forum for awhile or even forever. I used to frequent bodybuilding and fitness sites to absorb all the information, but I decided to stop because it just made things worse and second guess everything. One minute I would think one thing, and the next something else. I just felt confused and lost. What I did learn from visiting these sites though, is that eating disorders run rampant in this insanely fit group of individuals. They look great on the outside, but they are some of the most mentally sick people I have come accross. Pretty well every site has a section dedicated to eating disorders. And when reading these sections, it becomes apparent that most of them developed their disorders after comitting to eat clean and compete.

Veggiedaze thanks so much - you and SouthernMave are so right! I need to get rid of the guilt.

I also relate to all the other things you said. Especially the Placebo Effect. I really think we are all going nuts and it gets us nowhere. The whole Paleo thing is just crazy...I agree that more veggies/fruits are good, but who can eat like that for the rest of their life without inhaling a whole chocoate cake every once in a while...

Diets donīt work and never will. That is all I know.

Funny that you say that - I joined bb forums as well before and it drove me crazy...I felt like such a loser. They all ate fish and asparagus and I couldnīt stop thinking about bread with butter. Plus then they bragged about their post competition binges and it made me justify bingeing.

I think I will stay here in this thread, just because it really helps me. But I will stay far away from binge threads, diet threads etc. The only one I also enjoy is the Beck Diet Solution because it taught me a lot i.e., that hunger is not an emergency.

Such a good question. I have found over the last few days that by simply acknowledging this prophecy exists takes away alot of i's power. By believing our thoughts are really what is dictating our behaviour, it helps to blame the thoughts for our actions instead of the actions themselves. This is the basis of CBT. We must challenge our beliefs!! Please everyone read this. It is truly amazing. Noone believed the "less than 4 minute mile" could be done. Then someone did it and then what followed was that many more also did it. It wasn't until people believed it was possible that it was achieved and repeated again and again. http://www.nomeatathlete.com/4-minute-mile-certainty/

great to hear. we would have missed you but would have understood. I know, funny about how they just talked and talked and talked about how they binged uncontrolably after their contests and how they would gain like 20 pounds in a week. They called the days after their competition the "post competition blues".

That is my plan also to stay away from binge threads and diet threads. When I first joined this site I started following and posting on the monthly binge free challenges. It made things worse as people listed what they were bingeing on etc. And I couldn't help but notice the focus was so much on the bingeing as being the problem, and how they were going back on their diets the next day and being sure not to go over their allotted calories. My binges got only worse reading all this. I found myself also feeling bad about myself when I read about how people hit the gyme and exercised furiously in the days following in order to undo the damage. It made me feel like my measly leisurely walk with my dog taking nature photos and enjoying the sunshine and smelling the cherry blossoms was totally inadaquate. Why wasn't I running 20 miles the day after? I realized the binges weren't the problem. The diets were the problem. That's why I started this thread. I still post on there now and again to give encouragement, but I can see the focus is on the wrong thing. I was thinking there should be a thread called the monthly diet-free challenge instead of binge-free chanllenge.

Ha ha, yeah, protein is next I think. They've got nothing else left. But I do remember the vegetarian craze in the 90s. I fell into that. I was a vegetarian for several years. I was the biggest preacher there was to all my teenage friends. Vegetarianism was my religion much to the chagrin of my grandmother.