Exercise is great, no doubt about it. But you really can't eat whatever you want and then exercise your way out of it. No.... In fact a commonly tossed around statistic is that losing weight and keeping it off - no diets - is 80% food and 20% exercise.

I don't call being careful, responsible and choosy with my food, worrying. Although not thinking about it, NOT being careful and responsible, particular and choosy led me to be 287 lbs. Enjoying food is one thing - OVEReating food is another. One CAN enjoy life and "clear ones mind without high calorie foods. In fact now that I've gotten rid of the high calorie/high quantity food - my mind is a whole lot clearer and I am enjoying myself soooo darn much, it's like every day is a holiday!


No, diets don't work. Changing ones lifestyle does. Realizing, accepting that high calorie/high quantity food causes waaay too many problems and deciding to be a health minded person who cares what she consumes and who eats responsibly - that pretty much works. As long as you make it work, that is.

Jane Hirschmann's Overcoming Overeating helped me so much, it's worth a read for anyone who struggles with food addiction feelings.

From my experience, I'd about agree with the above statistics on eating and exercise. If I don't keep my calories down, the exercise is great, but doesn't do enough for me weight loss wise.

Maybe it's just me, but when I read the original post I didn't think "binge", you just ate dinner at a Mexican restaraunt followed by ice cream for dessert. Not a weight-loss friendly meal by any means but not really disordered eating either until you thought of yourself as on a binge and added the quesadilla after ice cream.

I think when we start trying to lose weight many of us try to embrace "perfect" eating and set ourselves up for failure.

Thank you all for your support! I planned to get back on track the next day and I was (!)...until we had a game night with friends last night. Blech. I gained two pounds this week.

BUT I'm even more motivated to get healthy now! Thanks for all of the great tips! I love Mexican food and cook it, too, so I have to make sure to do more making it at home rather than going out. Plus, I've learned to NEVER go out to eat without checking out the nutrition facts beforehand.

Yeah, the word "binge" seems to be thrown around quite loosely on this site. I've started accepting it as a synonym for "splurge," as that's how it seems to be used mostly

I have been doing this. I LOVE qdoba's ancho chille bbq burritos! I started making them at home with brown rice (instead of the white they use), black beans, lite sour cream, no cheese, bbq sauce with some chilli powder and home made corn salsa. It has about 250-300 LESS calories than the qdoba burrito. Oh, and i make it without a shell, I just dump the ingredients into a bowl and enjoy! The shells alone are a good 200 cals a lot of times.

You've got a lot of advice in this thread. And a lot of it is conflicting I think that's because binging is not a physical or mathematical problem, it is emotional and psychological, and emotions and psychology vary greatly from person to person.

So, my advice.

1) Don't over react. It was bad, yes, but it isn't a reason to feel like you've failed completely. People deal with this differently. Some hide the scales because they know they'll over react if they see the number, some intentionally face reality because they know it's a slippery slope to denial if they don't.

2) Learn from it. What were you thinking? Why did you order more than you knew you needed? Why did you continue eating when you already felt full? What were you ignoring? Were you punishing yourself? Then, try to come up with a way to avoid this reaction next time. There is a lot of stuff in this thread that people have found works for them, maybe there's something you can use.

Rinse. Repeat. Don't give up because of one imperfect meal.

Take heart. I did the same thing last night with the pint of ice cream. Except I didn't really want it, because I was full at the time but I ate it for whatever reasons after dinner and then felt so sick/nauseous and guilty afterwards. So I stayed up till the sick feeling went away and then worked out for an hour which is why I'm still up. I don't think that was the best idea because 1.) it doesn't change the fact that I ate a pint of ice-cream and 2.) now I'm really awake and tomorrow (or I should say today) is Monday and I have to work and I haven't slept at all. On the bright side, the guilt is gone.

I think you should just let it go. Last night was last night. Today is a new day. If you want to assuage the guilt a little you could add a few extra minutes or reps or whatever to your workouts this week so that mentally it feels like atonement. Or you could just wipe your slate clean and just start afresh this week. Move on, and don't let yesterday become an excuse to give up today.

I live in Southern California, boy do I sympathize with the challenges of mexican food!

The way I handle going out for Mexican (which my hubby looooves to do) is this:

*no chips. Sucking on a breath mint really helps with this! If I don't feel like I can manage to not have chips, then I count them out and only have salsa, if anything, with them.

*I decide before we get there what I'm going to have. I look at where my calories are for the day, how many I have to spend, and where my veggie/protein servings are. When I get there I don't even open the menu, I just tell the waitress what I want.

*this goes along with telling the waitress what I want: I modify the heck out of all my dishes. If I DO happen to order off the menu, it might sound like, "can I get the chicken fajita salad, no oil on the fajitas, with no guacamole, sour cream on the side, light cheese, and no side." You're paying for it--get what you want!

When dinner comes, enjoy the heck out of it, and then move on. Right back to your plan!

Well put and I definitely agree.