I don't know if I'm posting this in the correct place, as what I did wasn't really a *binge* but anyway...

For the last week or so, I've been feeling really turned off to food. My hunger patterns are generally like this: Wake up, feel hungry, eat. Go to work, around 1PM-ish, have lunch. Fight cravings caused by boredom at work 2 - 5PM, resist urge to snack. Come home and... no hunger at all. I've been keeping track of my calories on my-calorie-counter.com and I have been STRUGGLING to get my calorie in-take up to a decent level-- a lot of days recently, I barely make it to 1200.

Anyway, I've been feeling really disinterested in dinner and I actually almost didnt eat dinner at all yesterday, except I finally forced myself. But today, I went after work and bought a few containers of Fage Total yogurt and strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, etc. I was on the bus and the blackberries were CALLING TO ME. I *hate* eating on the go, but there I was, eating blackberries from the carton on the bus.

I got home and had this overwhelming urge to have a yogurt and a bunch of fruit, which i ate. A few hours later, when I would have had dinner, I had an uncontrollable craving to have that same yogurt/fruit concoction AGAIN. I resisted and resisted but finally gave in.

It was so weird -- it wasn't a binge, as I ate a human amount of everything (except that I did it twice). It almost felt like my body was COMMANDING ME to eat this stuff -- has anyone else ever experienced this? What do you think it means? Was I lacking in some vitamins my body needed that kind of "drew" me to the yogurt and fruits? It was weird. Now, I feel strangely satisfied, no desire to eat further...

I noticed last night, when I had to force myself to have dinner, I had a cherry. And then another cherry. And another and another. It was the MOST delicious thing and the cherries appealed to me a lot more than my actual dinner did. I felt like having them compulsively, but it wasn't the same kind of complusion that accompanies a binge on cereal.

I'm eating low carb/high protein & fat and i know that does knock your appetite down a bit, but I'm *ALWAYS* up for dinner...

I have no medical background, so I may be talking out of my arse here, but it seems plausible that if you have very specific food cravings this is because your body recognises that it needs something to be found in that food. If it were something that you had particular associations with, then maybe we'd think it was a psychological thing, a comfort food thing - but this sounds more like a specific physical thing.

Which is rather cool, actually.

I have experienced this cravings too -- mine mostly come in the form of wanting to drink milk (which I never want to do because I have a general rule of not drinking calories). And it's not cheese or yogurt or anything, it's milk. And I do eat dairy at least twice a day, but just sometimes, I get an overwhelming craving for milk. It's happened a few times with bananas too -- I don't think anything else really. Even though I usually eat a couple of "treat" filet mignons a month, there are times that I will crave more and more red meat. I don't really crave red meat at other times, and I don't binge on it either. I usually only eat it those couple of times a month. I suppose it could be our bodies telling us we need more of a certain nutrient, but I'm not sure. I seem to get plenty of calcium from the cheese and yogurt I eat, but who knows? I don't track my calories online or anything, so I could be low on those nutrients my body sometimes seems to crave. I'm sure my iron is low, as it's always low, and I fall into anemia very easily when I'm sick. I think my head causes the other bingey kind of cravings. I can tell a difference as well.

I'm not much of a banana eater, but over the years (and I'm including growing up too - I'm 39) I've had some pretty intense cravings for them that match what you are describing perfectly.

Every time I was unable to satisfy that craving I had intense & painful leg cramps within 24 hours.

I asked a doctor about it when I was in my mid 20s and he told me it was my body telling me I needed potassium.

So maybe that's what's going on? Also, if you are low carb, you might analyze the food you are craving and try to replace it with an alternative that has the same nutrient? I know for bananas the best alternative is spinach (for low carb specifically).

Hey HarpoChicoGroucho I just noticed how much weight you have lost!! Congratulations! May I ask you which approach you took to lose that weight?

Thanks! I'm a calorie counter and exerciser. I started out by going cold turkey on fast food (serious addict), permanently switching to diet pop, and counting calories. I cut out a lot of high carb foods and cut way down on my sugar consumption and started to learn to like vegetables and ate a lot more fruit. In the beginning, I'd eat a lot of Healthy Choice & Lean Cuisine meals, but not so much anymore. I started out with 15 minutes of exercise a day (I did segments of Denise Austin and walked on my treadmill). After I lost some weight, I started walking outside and got up to 3 miles a day. I lost the majority of my weight the first year, and I've been pretty much maintaining (I sometimes fluctuate 10 pounds or so due to the ever lasting binge problem) for the past 2 years. For nearly the past year (since August/September), I haven't been able to exercise, so it was nearly impossible to lose the rest of the weight, but now I'm back to it, so hopefully I'll get to that elusive goal weight by my birthday in September. I still pretty much follow the same plan -- counting calories (I keep track in my head -- only did the online diet tracker for the first couple of weeks and never did it again after that), except since I've been the same weight for the past two years or so, I've stopped eating the frozen dinners that can tend to run high in carbs, and I'm pretty much just generally eating low carb, high protein, low sugar and low fat foods. I don't have a "CAN'T eat" list, so if I want a bit of pasta or a mini ice cream treat, I have one, like I had today, and I still came in under my calories. I was plateauing with the calorie amount and the same amount of exercise before I got sick, so I'm going to start working out more (I walk for about an hour a day) and reduce my caloric intake one last, final time along with the cutting out of the frozen dinners and seeking out lower carb meals. I think that should do it.



(Sorry for going off topic in your thread KLK)