binge on diet products
 

whenever I go to the store and buy diet products like lowcal ice cream bars or rice cakes, I always end up eating like 4 ice cream bars and 8 rice cakes, and even though I don't go over my daily amount of calories it still just doesn't seem like normal eating and I feel like I can't eat those products without eating all of them. Any one else feel this way?

Mini Goal by March 31st, 2009
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Giving up "diet" foods was what I credit a big part of my weight loss success to. It just doesn't satisfy you....so I have to go eat something "real" anyway to curb my hunger.

From now on try not to keep foods like that in your house. I try hard not to keep things that will trigger binges for me in my house.

I also have to eliminate all treats when I am serious about losing.I am a binger.If it is in my house I will eat it.

Originally Posted by harrismm:
I also have to eliminate all treats when I am serious about losing.

It sucks but I think we are better off for it.

I had the same problem the last time I tried to lose weight, I'd buy a container of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, and eat most of them the same night. I'd start out by planning them into my calories for the day, but as soon as I finished one I started obsessing about the next one... and a binge would start. And like Marms said, it was never satisfying, I always had to have "real" food anyhow.

So this time around I don't really eat any "diet" food. I eat normal cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, normal sandwiches or salads for lunch, and things like baked potatoes, soups, and pastas for dinner. I don't have anything that's been altered to be low-cal or low-fat. On rare occasions when I snack, I usually have a piece of fruit. I find it's working great for me, and I'm much happier and more satisfied eating well-chosen, reasonably-portioned regular food.

Edit to say, btw, that I do still eat "treats", frequently, in fact! Just yesterday I had a real, honest-to-goodness chocolate chip cookie from the bakery across the street, and today I had a real PB&J sandwich! Plus my daily multivitamins are delicious jelly beans. :D So by all means, have "treats"! Just plan for them, and make sure they're going to leave you feeling satisfied and happy when you're done, instead of empty-feeling and miserable. :p

Yes, I had to quit buying them. There are plenty of "low cal" foods that make me binge just as much as a chocolate cupcake. I remember a particularly bad incident once with an entire box of Teddy Grahamn "low fat" cookies.

I started concentrating on foods with powerful nutritional properties and significantly reducing foods with little to no nutritional benefit - the result was quite frankly, a little miraculous to me. Those out of control eating fits that I suffered with for 20 years of dieting - pretty much gone completely. I always thought I was weak-willed about food, turns out I was only weak-willed around certain foods (mostly empty carbs like cereal, chips, pretzels, crackers - even the low cal versions).

If you had told me 5 years ago I would be living a life without cookies, chips and huge bowls of cold cereal, I would have thought you were crazy. How could I give up the foods I loved? Let's just say, I didn't know I was in prison until I set myself free. Living as a slim person, with energy, feeling good about myself - worth every Pringle or Oreo. I honestly don't miss that stuff, it's not even a blip to me anymore.

(to be fair, I still eat treats, for example tonight I had 90 calories of excellent dark chocolate with sea salt, but I have a better idea of what sets me off after 4 years of figuring me out!)

Originally Posted by jooanie24:
whenever I go to the store and buy diet products like lowcal ice cream bars or rice cakes, I always end up eating like 4 ice cream bars and 8 rice cakes, and even though I don't go over my daily amount of calories it still just doesn't seem like normal eating and I feel like I can't eat those products without eating all of them. Any one else feel this way?

I had this problem the other month. I lost a good 10 pounds being strict. Then started introducing cereal bars and other 'diet foods' into my regime. Low and behold I'd eat a whole pack of cereal bars in one day. It just reaffirmed my addictive eating habits. The solution was to stop buying them. Many of these snacks are empty calories or have little goodness in them anyway, I concluded I may as well have been eating chocolate bars.

I'm a little bit afraid of nutrition bars, meal replacement bars, cereal bars & what have you. They look like a candy bar, the mouth-feel is like a candy bar, the unwrapping ceremony is like handling a candy bar, the taste is like a candy bar with a little sawdust added. Here it seems to me to bring up the "if it looks like a duck & quacks like a duck ..." rule. I just know I could get into serious problems if I ate these regularly.