Krampus,
I can relate so much to your last post. I will go crazy with candy and pastries, and I also have no fullness meter either. I can honestly say that I could eat an entire box of doughnuts, on my own, in one sitting. I could eat a dozen cupcakes as well. So I'll end up eating 3 or 4 and feeling horrible... Hence why I have such monster runs and workouts at the gym. I always "joke" that I should attend overeater's anonymous, but I actually should. I can't control myself and I'm worried about what will happen if I ever get injured and can't work out. I'll be pretty much screwed at that point. Like you, I also can't turn off diet mode because I know the calories in all of the foods that I eat. Therefore I can't truly enjoy anything because I'm mentally counting the calories. Even if it's high in calories I'll eat it, but it just means that much guilt later. Some days I try to say that I don't care, but the sad thing is that I do. Because if I don't get this under control in my 20s, what kind of eating monster machine will I be in my 30s, 40s, 50s?
I'm sorry for blabbing on and on...I can just relate so much to what you're dealing with.

I found myself nodding along to all of your posts -- I too can/have eaten huge amounts in one sitting (full 700-cal dinner, then 3 cookies for dessert, then an hour later even more... would be typical for me). But I always felt sick and terrible afterwards -- not guilty, because I didn't then know how much I'd eaten and I always, always rationalized it as 500 calories -- but actually ill.

Do any of you feel physically ill after binging? Or is it not binging but constant grazing on whatever you want that ends up killing your plan?

I think for me it can be either a binge or constant grazing. Sometimes I'll sit down and eat an entire bag of candy (not an individual sized one, but those gigantic type that are used for Halloween or something). Other times I'll eat dinner, then immediately afterwards I'll eat something else, and then something else, and it just snowballs. There are certain things where I have no self control, like doughnuts or cupcakes. Those are full on binges, because I'll eat a ton of them at once. I rarely feel sick afterwards, but I feel bad mentally and my extra full stomach doesn't help matters.
Lackadaisy, do you have any foods that you just can't stop eating? I feel that anything cake-like or chewy candy I should just stay away from altogether, because I just don't stop eating them until they're gone.

That's a good idea. Fortunately, I was already planning on having actual lunch after that workout, and I felt tons better as soon as I started to get some food in me. I think I just don't realize I'm going full throttle with my workouts. The calorie burn expenditure for many activities is, I think, underestimated, so I feel like, "Well, gee, all I'm doing is Activity X, and that only burns 150 calories at this number of minutes, so I should feel GOOD, not like a sick, sweaty mess on the floor!" so I push myself harder, and then bam, I'm just all weak and tired. Either I need to lower the intensity or lower how much time I spend working out at a stretch. I always feel crummy if I try to drop weight too quickly, too. Patience in the short term leads to better results in the long term.

Maybe I should also invest in a HRM so I can see how many calories I, personally, am burning at various activities rather than what the arbitrary estimates are.

I can't stop eating chips -- I could eat them all day and not feel more full. So I stay away from all kinds of chips -- potato, tortilla, pita, whatever. I recently bought these TJ flaxseed & soy chips which I thought I could deal with because they're SO oil-scented I just eat four or five at a time (as long as I pre-portion). But I ate 300 calories worth (22?) just a couple days ago, so I'm hiding them from myself again.

Cake used to be one of mine, too. I finally risked having cake with brunch today ("tea bread", but basically cake). I took the 150 cal portion size and brushed off the crusted sugar top to reduce the damage to my blood sugar levels and ate it really slowly with coffee, and actually felt completely satisfied afterwards -- I had to "force" myself to eat my (no-cheese) egg white omelette for the protein. My whole brunch (egg white omelette, tea bread, canned pears & strawberry, black coffee) was ~350 calories.

Mostly, I think I have pretty good self-control if I only prepare a small quantity of food and stick to it. I guess in that respect I'm quite lucky. Since starting to count under five weeks ago, I've been really off-plan three days and never went over "maintenance" range. It's not like the fat has melted off, though... at 122.6 now, still stalled/inching down...

Kat, do you run? If so I can't say enough good things about the Garmin 305. Comes with a HRM, and tracks calories, distance, pace, etc. I have heard the 405 is pretty water-sensitive, so I went with the 305. Not too expensive (I think mine was about $130?). A little bulky but does some awesome work.
Lackadaisy, sounds like you have some pretty decent willpower. Wish I could say the same for myself. Maybe I should be one of those people that goes to the grocery store every day and buy food a little at a time so I won't be tempted by anything else in the house.

pinkrunner, buffet-style college dining halls can be really tough to deal with because of the constant temptation (at brunch today: chocolate muffins, fried french toast, amazing belgian waffles, chicken parmesan, and I'm not listing all the daily grill items like burgers, fries, etc, etc). But it's also good for NO excuses -- I always have healthy options, I can always choose not to take the unhealthy ones, I can always walk away. So I'm tough with myself for the thirty seconds each meal when I'm picking out food, and then I can relax and enjoy my choices.

Shopping for food on an empty stomach is terrible for me, though. I try not to do it and I now only go to specialty shops where everything is ludicrously expensive. Then it's easier to remind myself, "You have $10, do you want to blow it on dark chocolate?" Otherwise -- I would totally be screwed with delicious, high-quality "junk" I'd buy each time I go to the local deli/import shop. Like almond butter (not better than peanut butter). Or dried mangos (mostly sugar).

Some of this, I'll admit, is just the "I'll-eat-this-when-I'm-maintaining" trap. I do plan to eat tons of specialty chocolate and hummus and European cookies when I'm a svelte 110 lbs. But I also plan to be able to sample only a few and run almost daily, and with my current plan, 1800 calories a day (maintenance with 5x week exercise) sounds like an incredible amount of food.

Lackadaisy, fortunately, I'm only at school two days a week for my schedule, so I don't visit any buffets. If I did, I would be in a lot of trouble! Do you live on campus then? I try to pack my lunch, but some days I leave the house late and end up eating there, which usually includes a trip to the coffee place for a latte and a pastry....

I do live on campus -- I think 95% of my school does, they really encourage it. And lumped into on-campus living is unlimited meal plan, eat-it-or-lose-it, as many meals a day as you'd like... and yes, the menu is full of delicious desserts as well as entrees cooked with too much butter and salt (but still pretty decent).

I gained a lot of weight from not paying attention to what I was eating and just taking what looked the most appealing. I'm a foodie in the sense that I'd take a well-balanced, interesting salad over a heap of french fries, but not picky at all, and I'd eat SO much. But this is my 8th & last semester eating this food and I have a bit more self-control against those cheesecake brownies now.

But yeah, knowing all the food is "free" -- you've already paid for it -- is definitely dangerous.

But just to add - what I love about my dining hall is how I get to control so much about what I eat. The salad bar is fantastic. All the nutrition facts are online (sometimes inaccurate, of course), which means I can check how much oil goes into the entrees. And I can make weird requests like "3 egg omelette NO CHEESE egg whites only with onions, tomato, and peppers" for brunch and have an amazing 100-calorie omelette, fully on-plan, and ludicrously good

I walk, hike, jog, and sort of run (like a fast jog, I guess ) so that thing sounds awesome! I like to track how many miles I travel on foot each year; for 2011 it's my goal to do 200, which shakes out to about 50 every 3 months. DH and I are on a kick to try to hike 30 miles this summer alone.

I weighed in at 121.2, which is a bit higher than Friday. I am SO tired of this see-sawing back and forth....I am experiencing a high amount of stress in my life right now, so maybe that is hindering my weight loss?

I have to eat upwards of 3,000 calories in one sitting in order to feel physically ill, and even then it's not that bad. Like I said, broken full-o-meter...

Fortunately for me I have never had a binge session of that degree except for a couple potluck dinner parties (which were more "excited fervor" than "self-loathing binge").

I graze-overeat most weekends and I don't count that as binging, because it's somewhat willful. If I sit down with a huge portion of something I know will cause me to lose control, I consider that a binge. Often my mindset during a binge is "this is stupid, but if I finish it all now I won't have to deal with it."

kat999 Take care of yourself and feel better soon! You're doing great, no need to push yourself so hard you feel sick.

Thanks for the support, Lisa & Pink! And as always, right there with ya Krampus.

All of your posts resonate with me. I am going through the exact same struggles!

I am the same as you all, my full-o-meter is kinda broken.
I can eat a ton of food and not feel super full or sick... it's kind of shocking sometimes.

I also have such a thing for sweets. I do NOT buy them, because then I just hoover them like they're going out of style. I have also stopped buying things like cereal and Peanut Butter, because I really can't stop eating them. There's other, lower fat ways to get my protein, and lower sugar ways to get my carbs/fiber.

I've been journaling lately about what I'm feeling when I do that weird "Eat a meal and then eat other stuff, even though I'm not truly hungry" thing. Working on sorting out the emotions, because those are the real problem-- not the food.

So, my plan is that while I'm in transition (planning a move, just started new job) I will be doing Bikram Yoga almost every day (until I use up the classes I have left on a coupon), with a few runs sprinkled in to the week. Starting in April: Back to Group Fitness!

Also looking forward to the warm weather and getting my bike back out. Winter is so tough in the activity department!

I feel like I should change my ticker... but I'll wait and see what I get after changing my scale batteries. If I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna be HONEST! ahhaha

Have a great night everyone

Thanks, krampus. I think I'm going to take a rest day from exercise tomorrow and recover a little.