Thanks for the effort. I rarely ever just eat candy- I find that I don't feel well afterwards. If I have a sweet tooth I distinguish between a craving and something more important by imagining myself eating it- if I imagine feeling good after it then I will have a small serving, typically with a meal. I find that sometimes I am lacking complete satisfaction with an evening meal if I don't have a little bit (sometimes less than one serving) of something sweet. I think this resonates with many food traditions (dessert appears to be a cross-cultural practice) so I allow myself that small indulgence. I feel like I have given myself a bad name by saying that I like junk food all the time. I have a very strict interpretation of "healthy food" (a lingering part of my ED). Just for example here's what I ate today:

B: Bagel w/ spinach cream cheese
S: Small (<1oz by eye) amount of peanuts
L: Sourdough bread, Irish porter cheese, tomatoes, pickles, and an egg.
D: Warm kale salad with bacon, almonds, dates, and parmesan cheese.

Except for the bagel and bread (each of these were palm-sized) many people would consider this a healthy-ish plan (based on your own beliefs).

I eat very small quantities of high quality foods that I enjoy. This doesn't lead me to bingeing on sweets afterwards in my program so I keep it. If I were to find, all things considered, that allowing myself two small squares of chocolate with an evening meal made me an out of control sugar fiend then I wouldn't continue, but it hasn't. I feel like people focus on this one part of IE- the "unlimited junk" factor but they think that means just coming out of a diet mentality and eating all you want. If you come out of a period of food restriction and then give yourself permission to eat anything you're going to eat a lot of your favorite "forbidden" foods at the start. I know I did. This was, however, an essential step to showing myself that I was allowed to have things that I wanted. This is a process-oriented, not goal-orientated technique. I am not the same as I was when I started IE. My meals and eating habits are much more sensible now, and I've only been eating this way for a little over three weeks.

I LOVE your post! I just wanna give you a big hug honestly It so spoke to me.

I am a binge eater, tied very much to my emotions. I get depressed & I just wanna curl up & stuff my face.

I have talked it out with my sister in the past & food was tied to so many happy moments in my life that I think it really has nothing to do with the food itself but the feelings of comfort it sparks. In one of my very worst windows of depression I had a pattern of sitting on the couch, watching my favorite movie & eating pizza. It was like a every other day almost thing! And I mean a whole frozen pizza.

The food wasn't making me feel good. Most of the time I didn't even love the food really. Like in the moment it seemed to be so good but afterwards thinking of it, it wouldn't be something I would go crazy for or count it as my favorite food even. It wasn't great.

But the feelings of comfort, the memories, etc.. made me feel good emotionally. Like I was feeding my emotions and not my body.

But then afterwards I would hate myself for eating it. Put myself down. & then even in the past when i was trying to be healthy it was so

But the best times I have actually had with food was times I was cooking. Making recipes, paying attention to the ingredients and actually eating real food. I never want to hate food. I think part of this journey is trying to come to a healthy relationship with food.

I see others just straight cut things out like, I can never eat this whole list of items. And I personally could never do that. I wanna have a dinner with family, go out to a restaurant, try a new recipe and yes even eat my favorite foods. I just need to learn moderation. Food will always be there and if I can't learn self control then one day I will snap and binge again. I also think denying myself might just make me want it more, knowing I could never have it again would tempt me to just break the rules and eat it.

I hate that I have so much guilt over food. Like my sister is trying to lose weight along with me & just today we were talking & she told me she ate a doughnut as if it were the worst thing possible. I don't want that. I don't want to be like omg I ate a cookie I should throw myself off a cliff.

It is so easy to just hate on yourself, put yourself down. Make a mistake? You are the worst person ever in the history of the world.

I remember reading once how we would NEVER tell a friend or family member that they are ugly, stupid, fat. If my best friend was trying to lose weight and ate a big slice of cake I would never tell her omg you fat cow, you are a horrible person & don't deserve to be happy!! But I had no problem telling myself that.


Anyways though my point is I so think that this is so much of an emotional journey as it is a physical one. I have to learn why I do things, why I wanna stuff my face when I am not even hungry. learn to LOVE MYSELF. Learn to break the negative cycle. Learn that I will make mistakes & that is ok. learn that food is NOT my enemy.

Locke i'm not going to go into any length in reply. I've made my point. Its not like i haven't tried to eat sweets in moderation. Some of us just seem unable to do it. Of course who knows in a few years i may feel differently. But for now, this no sweets is working well for me and i have no problem with it at all. When someone offers it to me and i say no, i don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Its just like saying no to a cigarette. On the other hand if someone offered me lavender ice-cream with a toffee thing decorating it and a stick of something else in it that was amazing, i would eat it. Rest assured if there is something special on offer, i'm going to eat it. But mostly the food around on offer is not special and not worth the price i would pay. Not even most chocolate is that good.

I'm more interested in addressing what moon kissed is saying now.

Moonkissed. I don't know how old you are. You sound like you might be younger and not done much experimenting with diets and stuff. And it sounds like you may not have done any therapy but i can't tell for sure. You may be doing it now. I'm 50.

Anyway i think you would benefit from a counsellor/therapist. Even if some people think they don't get any benefit from it, they do. They just don't realise it, otherwise why would they go see someone for 10 years if it doesn't help.

So I am a binge eater too. I used to eat for comfort after i quit smoking but as i got better at solving life problems, food wasn't my main go to, counselling was although i still got cravings when my mood sank. and food just became a bad habit. Especially sweet food.

I want to address you because, i think you would benefit from knowing more about how hormones and mood interact. How low mood makes you want to eat. Its a physiological thing. I find that understanding this makes me work all the harder at keeping my mood up. I've only learnt about that this year. See my last post for the info.

I have more skills at managing my mood now and can address things fairly quickly so that i can resist the temptation to binge when my mood sinks. When it happens, i find a counsellor quickly. I often use the phone helplines for that. And then a real life person because that is better still. But while i'm on a diet, i'm also trying to eat non sweet things when my mood sinks. I'll just eat anything else but try to make it low cal. Last time it was wine that worked for me because it was night and i needed to go to sleep anyway. So just one glass of wine. But not more because that makes your mood worse.

I gave up major guilt a long time ago. I am still a little bit ashamed when i eat tons of food but i don't hate myself over it. And so it doesn't make my mood worse. If you can get rid of the guilt, its a major advance. So i don't get the snowball effect that can come from overeating. So i'd say learning to put guilt aside is the first thing to try to address and doing it with a counsellor is going to get you there really fast. I think you can trust me on that.

Secondly, one of the reasons why i find leaving out sweets to be useful is because when i don't eat sweets and my mood is fine, i like eating healthy food. I enjoy my food. And i will eat anything freely except sweets because basically i don't have a problem with any other foods. But while i am on a diet, of course you have to restrict the amount of high calorie foods because if you don't', you will leave yourself hungry.

And if you going against what you want, you may want it even more but in quitting, i am so committed to it, i don't feel any tug at all. I don't want it even more. Its a free choice i make each time.

the point about high calorie or junk foods is that the satisfaction does not last very long. But lets just talk about a few nuts. Say you eat a cupful of almonds. That's a lot of almonds and a lot of calories but they are generally good healthy food. There are 826 calories in a cupful of almonds according to the site i just looked at.

for far less than 826 calories, i can eat a plateful of food and i will be much more satisfied. That's why its advisable when on a weightless kick to restrict certain foods and to choose your foods wisely. So i wouldn't recommend pizza more than once a week. And if you eat pizza once a week, i wouldn't recommend kfc another night. Doing so will make it all just too hard. Low calorie nutrition rich food is the way to lose weight most easily. It helps your mood (read that link again) and will satisfy you the most.

There are a lot more pleasures in life than food. Since losing weight movement is so much more pleasurable. No sleep apnea. Back pain gone. I can hold my own with 20 somethings on a basketball court again. Tennis is a pure joy. Waking up with no pains again.

The key for me was and is a process of finding foods that I love and that are also healthy for me. If that means eliminating foods I feel from my experiences and research are unhealthy, best decision I ever made. I still get the pleasure of food while at the same time getting healthier all the time.

This is just what worked for me. But yes absolutely, for me, I needed to eliminate foods. Even in social settings. Still more than enough wonderful foods to choose from.

I've been thinking lately how a Way of Eating is like being a parent. You just can't do everything you used to do and like as a parent. Can't go out to the wee hours on weekends, can't go to a movie anytime you want. You have to restrict things. But you also experience so many other pleasures, just like you do when successful at getting healthy.

And in most of our lives we experience restrictions in spending. We know we can't get everything we'd like. And if we really want something big we have to give up other stuff along the way. So most of us in other aspects of life experience restricting things in order to reach goals.

But everyone needs to find what works for them. In fact I'd say what works best IS best. If moderation is they key and it works, embrace it and go for it.

Just relating what worked for me. And eventually with what I did it ended up not being about restrictions at all per se. After awhile, for me, I simply didn't want my former foods anymore. But never would have gotten there without intentionally restricting them at first.

And I was ready to embrace this approach. 47 when I started. So I understand it isn't right for everyone or for a particular time. Just throwing out that restrictions can work. Does not mean it is the only way or the way anyone else should choose.

I find that if I eat something regularly, I start to crave it when I don't get it. Growing up, I hated salads. I started eating them with DH and after a while I was shocked when I craved one after some salad-free days. Similarly, some foods that I haven't eaten in a long while have fallen off the "I want" list. Once in a while, I do eat something that I remember as being delish, but I'm usually (just usually, not always) very disappointed in it.

On a normal day, my WOE incorporates food guidance (tailored by me for me and constantly evolving) which restricts when I can eat (by choice, since I know this helps me manage my hunger) and limits/restricts my usual food selections (by choice, since I know how certain foods affect my hunger). But I love the food that I do choose to eat and I love the fact that I can eat as much as I want in my window and I don't miss the foods that I limit or exclude on a regular basis.

My current WOE doesn't make any food permanently forbidden. I ate out at the Outback a few days ago and had a very large complete meal, including bread, blooming onion, creamy onion soup, garlic mashed, meat&veg, and dessert. I also ate a piece of fruit just before I arrived at the restaurant, because the last thing I wanted to do was eat a big meal and still feel hungry (I don't eat earlier in the day and I have a large appetite).

I left the restaurant stuffed, and after I got home... I was hungry again within an hour. And I chose to eat more (my eating window was actually still open).

This is why I choose to limit my sugary and starchy carbs as part of my regular eating (I stick to very small servings of foods that I know I can handle). I know my limits and if I eat too much of them, it just makes me hungry again soon after and then I will feel deprived if I try to fight it. But I do still eat "normal" amounts once in a while because my current WOE seems to allow me to integrate exceptions into my lifestyle once in a while without overall weight gain.

All that said, to the OP, you know your own priorities and your first priority is to find a way that you can avoid binges and your second priority is to deal with emotions/guilt over food. Restrictions may affect you in more negative ways than they affect me so they may not be appropriate for you. Similarly, you might not have the same issues I have with starchy carbs. I hope you have found the best way you can deal with those issues and I truly wish you fantastic success.

Also, I don't think it's a big deal, since many people don't pay a lot of attention to the forum that posts are put in, but you might want to consider the "Chicks in Control" forum instead of (or in addition to) the "Weight Loss Support" forum.

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head. Restrictions have caused chaos in my life. I'm a complete failure when it comes to dieting! I just can't seem to get it right. And the binging after a diet is intolerable anymore, self destructive to the Nth degree. Obviously lots of IEers can handle restrictions, just look at normal eaters, they all eat intuitively and are able to fluidly restrict a food and allow it occassionally without many problems. But I suspect that their ease around food has more to do with not being dependant on eating for reasons other than hunger than it has to do with self-control. They maintain rational thought when it comes to food and I find myself acquiring more and more of rationality around food. I can't seem to stay on a diet for more than a few days or weeks before I go bonkers and fall into a long deep binge. The binges last longer than the diets do. I can't explain what that's done to me mentally.

I totally agree with food that's lying around on offer. When I was restricting myself I'd binge on anything! Now I'm a lot more picky and choose only foods that I have to have. If I want a cookie it's got to be a specific cookie, it can't just be whatever is within reach. If I'm craving that delicious cookie that my local bakery makes then I cannot offset that craving with a chipsahack cookie. I've tried before and the only thing I accomplish is eating a bunch of bad cookies and then since I've "blown it" anyway I just head over to the bakery and satisfy my craving for a real cookie. Now I just go to the bakery, get my cookie, enjoy every morsel of it without guilt and move on in my life.

I wish I would have had some of these realizations when I was younger. You're way ahead of the game kiddo.

YES! I love this post and your use of the word "balance" because that's what it feels like to be free of guilt about food choices. The consequences of restriction are harder to take for some of us. The truth is that you cannot cure an eating disorder with a diet and any kind of restriction causes me to freak out. Been doing that for decades and it's only gotten worse. This may seem like a radical approach but this is the very first time that I feel like I'm making real progress with my ED. My process is very slow, it may not result in drastic weight loss and my goals are to be free of my demons. My binge behavior causes me to lie about eating, eat secret meals in between meals, hoard food, and then torture the people I love with dieting advice. Imagine a person who goes through 3 different drive thrus in a row hoping to get the right combination of foods to sate her ----> that's me. Obviously a simple diet will not cure this.

I know what you mean about everyone tooting their WOE. It's all well-intended but each of us know what will and will not work in the long run. Like you, I just want to eat in a way that will maintain my sanity. I'm acting as if I'm already at goal. I'm in maintainance mode as far as I'm concerned. If I can be as sane tomorrow as I am today I'm happy.

If I could wish anything at all for you, it is for you to keep that mindset you have now! (and not to get too rocked when it takes short vacations now and then!)

We all have to find our balance, and be ok if our balance is different than other people's balance.

I wasted years trying to eat in a style that was suited to someone else and not to ME.

Food used to be a "black hole" pleasure for me, I sought it out more than any other available pleasure -- to quite an unhealthy extent.

Now food is just one of many other pleasures. I've mostly given up foods that make it harder to maintain a good life balance, and embraced foods that make it easier.

I'm all about easier.

Food is highly pleasurable but I would also say it's important not to encourage people who are trying to lose weight to eat trigger foods if they still find them triggering. "Just a little" for the sake of proving one's willpower to one's self is easier said than done, and people on long term caloric deficits are hungry.

I don't restrict any food groups because I can have "just a little" and move on - but a lot of foods that exist (mainly those containing high amounts of sugar) have absolutely no nutritional value and should be consumed with the same sort of caution and restraint that one would use recreational drugs or other vices.

I wouldn't dream of encouraging anyone to eat something they don't want to eat. I'm used to eating for reasons other than hunger. Thus, eating is behavioral for me and I'm approaching my eating with a behavioral solution and part of that is not to subscribe to the idea of trigger foods. Foods don't trigger me, habits and emotions do.

This is my opinion, and it's not meant to reflect on the OP or anyone else here.

I don't ascribe to the idea of food BEING pleasure. Food is fuel. That doesn't mean I have to hate the fuel I put in my body. I don't force myself to live on broccoli and kale and dry over cooked chicken breast. (I happen to like all of those foods, except I prefer my chicken to not be dry and overcooked ) But I also know that candy, fried foods, junk, soda, fake sugars, processed foods come with consequences that have NOTHING to do with weight. They damage the body, even though you can't necessarily see it on the outside. Not right away at least. Those items cause harm inside the body. There are medical studies out there to prove it. (No, I don't play the internet game of "Oh yeah? Show me!" We're all adults, and can each do our own research. I have no skin in the game of you taking my word for it or caring about what I say. The info is there for those who seek it.)

So, for me, I choose not to view food as recreation/fun/pleasure. I've done a lot of hard work to try and learn to treat food as what it is, a necessary component to keeping me healthy and able to do and experience the things life has to offer me. I'm never going to, as an old lady, sit there and say "I remember this bag of oreo cookies I ate once in 2014, it was so good!" But I do suspect that as an old lady I will be able to say "I remember that trip I took to *someplace* and how much fun I had! I was able to do this, and that, and this!" Things I wouldn't have been able to do if I allowed myself to abuse my internal/physical self by allowing myself to eat things that I know just aren't good for me. Hey, I may feel great for a few minutes when I eat that cake. I'm not saying I wouldn't. But minutes aren't worth it, I'm aiming for the long view. I won't remember that cake in a month or a year. But my body is a long term investment. I'm the only one who can manage and protect that investment. So I do the best I can at that. It's a process, and I'm not perfect.

I am not sure how I should take that lmao! I am actually 31... I guess to be honest I am not very mature for my age. I surely do not feel 31. Kindof feeling awkward now lol

Oh i agree with you there for sure. I have an anxiety disorder. So it is very easy for me to fall into a negative frame of mind I guess. I often joke that it is like chicken little, the smallest thing can happen & I am like omg the sky is falling, the world is going to end. I panic. I am healing & getting better. Finding ways to cope and manage it. But it is always there. I am far better then I used to be.

I think I am partly lucky there because I am not big on sweets or junk food really even. I will take it or leave it honestly. I am not having huge sugar cravings and I can always pop a small piece of dark chocolate and be content. My issue is carbs. It made up my entire diet. I am a hugely picky eater, not big on meat but give me pasta and bread I will go nuts. That is all I would eat was huge carb filled food 90% of the time. It is like take everything you will eat & 90% of it is the thing you wanna cut out/lower & it can be a whole mess.

I have struggled alot with finding out what I should eat. I am diabetic/pcos so on top of it carbs should be managed. I had alot of guilt about not going on a super low carb diet. There is currently a huge love/hate relationship with food for me. I am trying to end that though. Like I know where I wanna be, even if I am not there yet.

My other issue is that it was hard for me to eat enough calories. I would be afraid that eating 1500 calories was far too much. I couldn't find that balance. I was always eating not enough or I would binge & go over. Because on a normal day I wouldn't eat all day long & then binge at night far too often. And idk for me when I would binge it seemed out of mind I guess so I wasn't aware in the moment how much I was eating. So to sit down to a real meal, it seemed like so much food.


And when I meant I wanted to be able to eat anything and not restrict myself I don't mean just eat crap all the time at all. IDK if I came across that way? I just meant that if one day I want to go out for pizza that I shouldn't hate myself for it. If I grab a cookie it won't be the end of my world. I don't way to hate myself for those choices, second guess myself, or feel guilty about it like I am doing something wrong.

I want a healthy diet. I want 99% of my diet to be whole natural, real food, veggies and fruits & healthy stuff. I wanna cook meals instead of just grabbing some processed crap all the time.