[losermom]

Robin, we all trip up occasionally. But even though you struggled (by your looking, looking and yep I know that feeling too), you recognized it, fought it and came out triumphant. That is a maintainer! Quoting Renee from Inside Out Weight Loss, the goal is to lower the incidences of the DIF in our binges:

Duration
Intensity
Frequency

[AnneWonders]

Robin,

This happens. You did a lot of things right, and you're getting it back together now. String a few good days together and good habits will re-emerge.

Next time it happens, and sadly it probably will because it happens to us all, you will remember that you turned it back around and you'll do it again.



Anne

[Glory87]

Don't hold out - make with the pictures of your awesome party outfit!

[traveling michele]

Robin,
I am so sorry you struggled so much. I truly hope the worst is behind you. We have all slipped and felt those terrifying feelings. They are just terrible-- we can play such mind games with ourselves.
You have gotten great advice, just like you have given to us!
Hugs!!

[Idealmuse]

Robin -

I don't have anything useful to throw in other then I feel your pain. My last few weeks have been similar if not slightly worse. Not only holidays but multiple birthdays etc sorta threw me for a loop.

I understand what it takes to get to 300 and how even a glimpse of that behavior can be unnerving. It's probably also good that something like this happens... It's reinforcement to remember how important it is that we always have to stay on our toes, because it is a bit like recovery. One does not get to 300 without having serious food issues... its not just eating a few too many cookies after dinner every day.

Anyway I think you handled it well with all the tossing and giving away.

Your head-hunger will dissipate, but yeah sometimes it takes awhile to work it out of your system.

[luckymommy]

Hi Robin,

I'm not maintaining yet either, but I just wanted to say something. You have been such an inspiration to me and I love reading your posts. I have a food addiction and the next time I'll be "looking," I'll think of you and know that someone can have this problem and still persevere. I know it sounds weird but just knowing that someone like you can slip gives me permission not to have to be perfect in my journey. I'm so terrified of slipping (which I haven't done since Halloween) that I worry that one day, I'll slip and won't get back up until I'm back to square one (or even worse). Anyway, not sure if any of this makes sense (I should be asleep). I just wanted to thank you for being such a Rock. (even rocks have some grooves and imperfections, but they are still quite strong).

[megwini]

Oh robin....
I guess I'm a lot younger than you (I'm only 20!) and have a lot less life experience, but that feeling you described was so eerie similar to what I have felt in the past that it freaked me out a little. I AM 5'10" and have never weighed close to 390 pounds (since you said that would be the equivalent), only 212, but I starting losing at a time when my weight was still rising... rapidly. I was on my way to eating my way to 390... I had no self-control around food. I never had, but when I lived at home my parents were able to restrict my food intake and make it harder for me to severly overeat, so I stayed at just slightly overweight. But that also meant I had NO control around food, because my only "control" was my parents restricting it from me, and when I went away to college in the fall of 2008, it all spiraled out of control. I was gaining steady at 5 pounds a month and I'm positive it would have only kept going. I would just search search search for something to eat, anything. I felt like I couldn't stop it, and I remember crying as I sat there eating one time, but I kept shoveling it in my mouth anyway (my one true binge). And as much as I know I'd love to feel like I'm cured, it's so easy to snap back into the old habits. This Christmas I had a mini relapse, a string of 3000 calorie days. The cravings would not go away. I'm usually okay if I overeat a LITTLE on one day, but if I overeat a lot on one day I'm craving food every second for DAYS. HEAD HUNGER HEAD HUNGER HEAD HUNGER. You can't rationalize away head hunger. For days I kept trying to eat well but I kept craving more food. The only way to snap myself out of it was to force myself one day to just sit there and be bombarded by the cravings but not eat, and the next day I was fine. It wasn't worth any piece of pie to have to deal with that for days.

I've struggled with my eating habits my whole life and finally feel like I'm being healthy. Forget my weight, I bet I'd still be healthier at 212 eating all healthy foods than I would at 152 eating absolute junk, so I'm glad I'm eating better now (AND that I lost weight! 2 for 1!). I'm sure you feel the same. Junk food is TOXIC food. Do you believe in toxic hunger, robin? I never did until I experienced life without it. I would always get hunger pangs 2-3 hours after eating and would give in and eat more because I couldn't stand the pain and thought this was NORMAL. Any attempt at only eating 3 square meals a day was met in failure because I couldn't stand the hunger pangs. So when I started eating healthier I started with 3 snacks a day, because I knew that if I were hungry I wouldn't be able to stick with it. But after eating healthy food for a while, I realized... if I skipped a snack, I didn't feel hunger pangs anymore... at all. I can go all day without eating now and my stomach won't hurt at all. It was if I only had this problem when eating bad food.

So I started googling hunger, and I came across this:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives...f-obesity.html
Here's a good excerpt from it:

True hunger requires no special food to satisfy it. It is relieved by eating almost anything. We can't crave some particular food and call it hunger; a craving by definition is an addictive drive, not something felt by a person who is not an addict. Remember almost all Americans are addicted to their toxic habits. A disease-causing diet is addicting. A health-supporting diet is not.

After having fixed my diet, I wholeheartedy believe this. I felt toxic hunger my whole life and never even knew it was because I wasn't eating well. If you give your body the nutrients it needs to function, you won't feel this way. Jay, I understand how robin is okay with 1200 calories, because days I ate 1200 calories of nutrient-dense food I felt very satisfied, because of the complete lack of toxic hunger.

Junk food is like a drug... it's probably possible to smoke in moderation if you only have ONE cigarette once in a blue moon, but any more than that and you can become addicted, or readdicted. So why even bother with that one cigarette in a blue moon? Why even take that chance. Most of us don't have an addiction to food, we have an addiction to TOXIC food. Having that toxic food in our lives doesn't really benefit us anyway. WE DON'T NEED IT. Robin, you're right on wanting it out forever, BECAUSE YOU DON'T NEED IT! I haven't completely rid myself of it either, but I'm working on it, to change that mindset that "everyone needs a treat sometimes," because no, I don't EVER need that toxic food, thanks. Baked bananas and raspberries... now that's a treat, and one my body feels is a treat too.

I really respect you for posting this, because I always saw you as being this perfect maintainer, someone who had completely recovered from their food addiction. I felt bad that I was still struggling. But your post helped me to see that even the strongest of us cannot be CURED, and that is why we can never ever ever even THINK it's okay to let our guard down. You're human, and that's okay. It's much better to admit that you will always struggle than to try to deny it and end up failing because of it. It is precisely your imperfection that makes what you have accomplished so admirable; if maintenance were extremely easy for you, it would not be quite the same accomplishment. You should truly be proud of how far you have come, and continue to strive to be the best robin you can be.

[rockinrobin]

Originally Posted by Idealmuse

One does not get to 300 without having serious food issues...

And that there just about sums it up.

I've learned how to keep those issues at bay - mostly. But I've still and always will have serious food issues. This is my lot in life. I knew I'd never be cured of it. I knew that.

For the past week or so, I've felt like that game, is it called Grogger or something? Where those heads keep bopping up and down and you have to beat them back down with all your might. And I've been on the losing end. And I know this will pass. I know it.

I also know that the only way for it to pass is for ME to get past IT. And yesterday afternoon got ugly again. So today we'll pull out a different strategy and if need be I'll pull out a different one and then a different one.

I'm really not worried because I am CERTAIN I will get past this. I'm just down right uncomfortable. I'm all out of sorts and don't feel right. I've created myself a new normal and am not abiding by it and it feels - crappy.

All right. Enough. Just gotta do what I gotta do and DO IT and then DO IT some more!!!

Oh and Glory I really don't see me putting up pics anytime soon. I had my pics up at one time (befores, inbetweens and afters) but that didn't work out so well, so though I thought about it, have decided against it. But I do have the wedding coming up. Oh and another engagement party as well. Daughter number 2 is about to get engaged too. Who in the world makes 2 weddings back to back????

And these upcoming weddings, is exactly what gave me the final push to overhaul my lifestyle. My daughters were getting close to marriagable age (though I didn't think daughter number 2 would be ready THIS quickly) and there was no way I would have made it through these weddings being super morbidly obese. No way.

I am looking forward to getting *past this*.

[rockinrobin]

megwini, I LOVED and benefited from your post.

It makes perfect sense to me. THAT'S exactly it. I've always known cravings and hunger are two totally different things. I once read somewhere if you're hungry and refuse to eat an apple - you're not really hungry. Because if you were really hungry - you'd eat anything. Luckily for me or most likely UNluckily, hunger, true hunger has not been an issue for me. I'm dealing with the head hunger right now. The true hunger WOULD be LOTS easier to deal with.

The thing though is, what I've been experiencing is not a craving for something SPECIFIC - it's that looking, looking, looking - for anything, SOMETHING and I don't know what it is. It CAN'T be satisfied.

And without a doubt I believe in this TOXIC FOOD theory. Makes perfect sense to me. I've said this hundreds of times. I only overate CERTAIN foods. Once I started with them I couldn't/wouldn't stop. My solution - don't start. Even I, after going cold turkey had gotten into the belief that I *needed* a splurge now that I'm in maintenance - and maybe I really don't. Though I don't think it's realistic for me to think that I won't indulge in TOXIC foods from time to time. DEFINITELY something to think about.

Like you said I'm just gonna hunker down and get past these cravings/lookings - do whatever I have to do - work past the discomfort. And I will. It is the only way.

One more thing, I do believe that you've experienced the same food feelings things that I have, though you never got to 300 and something pounds. Thanks for pointing that out. Oooh and yet another thing. I started piling on the weight as soon as I got married. I was 30 pounds or so overweight from 5th grade till marriage (22). But as soon as I got married I REALLY let it go. It reminded me of what you said about when you were on your own, away from your parents. I've felt the same way. I even remember thinking at the time, "now I can have my *own* food. Very interesting.

My head is really spinning now. Toxic food. Toxic food. Toxic food....

[megwini]

Originally Posted by rockinrobin

The thing though is, what I've been experiencing is not a craving for something SPECIFIC - it's that looking, looking, looking - for anything, SOMETHING and I don't know what it is. It CAN'T be satisfied.

To me this only reinforces the addict aspect of it. For me at least, a craving doesn't mean "I eat ____ and my craving goes away." I want more. I hate to bring up the same comparison (especially because I don't smoke myself) but do you think that those smokers smoking a pack a day can just smoke one cigarette and feel satisfied? I bet that even after they have a pack they are still craving more. They can have one, but they will probably find themselves searching searching for another one, or thinking about when they can have the next one. If giving into a craving genuinely satisfied the urge, it would not be a problem. I think that for some people that do not suffer from a toxic food addiction, this may be the case. But once you get the addiction, NO amount of that kind of food is ever going to satisfy you, yet you keep looking anyway, with the vain hope that you'll find something that will. You can only be stopped once you feel so full you're not capable of eating anymore, and even that is temporary. It's a very degrading way to live, isn't it? And even when you get over it it never completely leaves your mind, but I do take comfort in knowing that despite this, I still only think about food 1/3 as much as I used to. If you look at it in comparison, 1/3 of the time still beats before, even if it is still a problem for me.
But I genuinely do believe that for most of us, cravings aren't for one specific food so that if we eat it our craving goes away, but rather, giving in just allows it to feed upon itself and fester into something much, much worse.

Originally Posted by rockinrobin

One more thing, I do believe that you've experienced the same food feelings things that I have, though you never got to 300 and something pounds. Thanks for pointing that out. Oooh and yet another thing. I started piling on the weight as soon as I got married. I was 30 pounds or so overweight from 5th grade till marriage (22). But as soon as I got married I REALLY let it go. It reminded me of what you said about when you were on your own, away from your parents. I've felt the same way. I even remember thinking at the time, "now I can have my *own* food. Very interesting.

Perhaps foodwise I have experienced the same feelings, but at the same time, your experience was completely different from mine for the sole fact that you had to deal with life in a severely obese body. I remember descriptions you had written about being so lethargic and not even being able to move barely at all without being exhausted, about being so large you couldn't fit into seats... that sort of agony caused by being extremely overweight is not something I can understand, because I have never experienced it. As hard as the food demons are, I think you have felt the full extent of their hardship in ways I cannot even imagine. In a way, that can work to your advantage, because you KNOW firsthand what this toxic food addiction can do to your body. You KNOW what the worst of it feels like, and now that you have escaped it, you know more than anyone why you NEVER want to go back. I can't even fathom how difficult your life must have been, or how you felt. It wasn't vanity for you; you weren't able to be LIVING. Although I cannot relate, I really really respect you for pulling out of it. The deeper you are in a situation, the harder it is to get out of it, but you did it ANYWAY, and that says something for what a little determination and COMMITMENT can do if you stick to it.

[rockinrobin]

Well yes, I honestly don't think we've had the same exact experiences food wise, how could any two people? I do realize that mine was for lack of a better term, was *more severe*, and lengthier for sure, which caused me to be super morbidly obese which brought on a whole slew of issues. I just wanted to make clear that I didn't think that anyone had to get to 300 lbs or more to experience these type of behaviors.

If giving into a craving genuinely satisfied the urge, it would not be a problem. I think that for some people that do not suffer from a toxic food addiction, this may be the case. But once you get the addiction, NO amount of that kind of food is ever going to satisfy you, yet you keep looking anyway, with the vain hope that you'll find something that will. You can only be stopped once you feel so full you're not capable of eating anymore, and even that is temporary.

When I'm in control of my food, I do every now and than get the feeling of "I'm in the mood for ____" And I DON'T feel the need to HAVE TO HAVE IT IMMEDIATELY. It's something that's been on my mind, slightly, and it kinda builds up. And I can deal with it and plan accordingly. And it's almost never, ever anything TOXIC. It could be a certain chicken dish I haven't made in a while or a vegetable dish or whatever. It feels normal and fine. THERE IS NO SENSE OF URGENCY. And since it's not toxic, there's no harm or guilt in eating it. THAT"S what I've been used to these past bunch of years. Which is why I've said many times that I've come to *crave*, thinking we all throw that term around too much, and look forward to the healthy foods.

This looking, looking thing has only happened to this large of an extent since the party. and I am CERTAIN it's been brought on be me eating *those foods*. Not only eating them, but actually bringing them into my home. Once an addict, always an addict. And no, I don't throw that term around loosely. I honestly believe in it.

Toxic food.. toxic food... toxic food...

[JayEll]

Just for the record, I did not ever say that Robin was not satisfied or was hungry all the time with 1200 calories. That was her interpretation of what I was going to say.

I have also found that 1200 calories of highly nutritious food, or even less, can still be satisfying. But it's not where I want to live every day.

Jay

[rockinrobin]

Originally Posted by JayEll

Just for the record, I did not ever say that Robin was not satisfied or was hungry all the time with 1200 calories. That was her interpretation of what I was going to say.

I have also found that 1200 calories of highly nutritious food, or even less, can still be satisfying. But it's not where I want to live every day.

Jay

Yes Jay, you most certainly have not mentioned that even once in this conversation.

We all get to pick and choose how we want to live. At this point in my life I am picking and choosing to live at a healthy weight. It works for me. I LOVE it. And that's not for everyone. We all get to decide that for ourselves and can't tell someone what is *right* for them. We all have to be comfortable with our choices.

I am also picking and choosing to have a healthy relationship with food in general. Regardless of what these past 10 days may seem. I am SO getting back there! 10 days, is that all it's been?? Seems like forever. Which is what happens when I allow food to overtake me.

Megwini, I can't begin to tell you how you pointing out things that I've already known to be facts, but in a different way perhaps, or when I needed to see it again, has renewed my strength today. You can't imagine how you have helped me.

I wonder how many others you've helped as well... You are very wise for your 20 years.

[Windchime]

Originally Posted by rockinrobin

I wonder how many others you've helped as well... You are very wise for your 20 years.

I agree! Meg, I would not have remembered that you are so young if you hadn't reminded us. Your words are very wise and you are such a good communicator. Thanks for taking the time to remind us about toxic foods--this is exactly what happened to me over the holidays. I allowed myself to eat toxic foods without limits, and I'm still trying to deal with the consequences. My weight only went up a couple of pounds, but I'm still struggling in my head to get back on track, still standing in front of the fridge looking for.....what? What am I looking for?

[paperclippy]

I hestitate to post this because I don't want to offend anybody, but it's something that's been rattling around in my head for a while, especially after reading the posts on this thread.

We are all aware of eating disorders. Everyone has heard of anorexia and bulimia. Fewer people have heard of binge eating disorder or compulsive overeating. The quote "One does not get to 300 without having serious food issues..." made me think about this.

Some maintainers need to very carefully restrict particular foods, eliminate them from their diet, or have other similar types of techniques. Some people need to treat overeating like an addiction in order to maintain their weight. Other people do not have these same techniques, and do not treat overeating like an addiction. I'm not saying one is any better than the other - different things work for different people.

What I'm wondering is if the folks who feel like overeating is an addiction are people who suffered from some form of disordered eating (whether binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating, or some unnamed form of disordered overeating, and whether it was officially diagnosed or not) which led them to becoming obese in the first place. A related question is if any of the people who maintain with a nothing-off-limits approach became obese by means of disordered eating.

Of course this is really a question for the weight control researchers. It's just something I've been thinking about. And like I said I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm certainly not going to point a finger and say "You have/had an eating disorder!" or anything like that. I'm just curious.