Cereal bingers!
 

I have majour issues with cereal, two boxes a night sometimes!! typicaly 4-10 bowls I just can't stop! my father buys more because my sister asks for more no matter how i beg for them to just STOP.
so I'm trying to realise what it is in cereal i crave so badly, does anyone else have these problems? it doesnt taste so brilliant and i dont restrict carbs!

it's seriously hindering me! I've cut all over binges on the upside ;)

Hey Clearskye...a couple of thoughts about your cereal issue...which cereal are you eating...if they are the typical high sugar kind you are probably just consuming empty calories and thus not feeling satisfied and not really getting a lot of nutrition.

If it's cereal for your sister, can you ask your sister to keep it in her room? Can you sit down with your dad and ask him to make you accountable? If you eat two boxes a night YOU are responsible for going to the store and buying replacement boxes. Can you ask your sister to request cereal you don't like? Can you put the cereal in a cabinet and put a padlock in the cabinet with a combination you don't know?

Can you change your habits? If you are eating cereal at night, what can you change so that doesn't happen. Can you join a book group or get a job and stay out of the house? Can you take up a hobby? Can you ask your family for support - if you start to eat cereal, can they talk you down?

I have problems with cold cereal too, I think it's the sugary carbiness of it. Are you eating enough during the day or does your body crave the kind of fast energy that cereal gives?

Cereal is evil and should be banished from the face of the earth!!!

Ok maybe that is a little extreme, but cereal for me is a trigger food. Also if I do eat a bowl of cereal in the morning I am HUNGRY (Imean lick the paint off the walls kind of hungry) all day long.

The kids eat cereal so I have it in the house with me. But we have gone from storing it on top of the fridge in plain sight to ptting it in the cupboard above the fridge that we need to go to the laundry room and get the step stool out to get it down.

I buy Natures Path Pumpkin Flax Granola. When the box comes in the house I measure out 1/2 cup servings and put them in tupperware containers. Nearly everyday I take one of those along in my lunch with mixed berries and yogurt. That is the only kind and only time I will allow myself to eat cereal.

Cereal just can't be kept in my house. I, too, go completely overboard. It's like a switch gets turned on and I have to go back for more. And it's physically impossible for me to pour a regular bowl. I think it's the sweet, crunchy yet wet texture that gets me.

I'm sorry that your family isn't understanding. I know it sounds extreme for some people, but if you have binge tendencies sometimes the only thing that works is not having it around period.

I can not have sugary cereal around either! I will eat and eat until I am STUFFED.. like can't move stuffed.. so I buy my son cheerios.. and I dont like them... if they were honey nut.. different story lol.

Your family is in denial..you need to have a serious talk to them about it..though it might not do anything..and then what you do is get a glue stick and a fitness mag and paste fit or skinny girls on the boxes! So if you grab one you will know it will hinder your true goals.

CEREAL is the DEVIL

I have the same problem with any sweet cereal. Now I only allow myself Fiber 1, it satisfies my craving but I can control myself with it.

I'm so glad I'm not alone on this, I hate all cereal, it tastes disgusting, I even have it with water just to make it worse, but its CRUNCHY!! sure branflakes may be healthier than honney nut somthing or another, but it doesnt matter what it is, one bit and eat the lot! I'll talk to my family more seriously about it, it's not normal!
Also changing to oats rather than cereal in the mornings helped today :) nice to feel incontrol for once!

Cereal is definitely a trigger food for me as well - especially chocolatey cereals. Reese's Puffs are a real diet killer for me.

My son just came home from a week with my parents -- he saw an empty box of Cocoa Pebbles on the counter (a cereal I would NEVER buy for the kids to eat) and wanted to know what happened to it. It was some special "value pack" that Target was selling, with twice as much cereal as a normal box. I had eaten it all in about 3 days while he was out of town. Having to tell him that made me realize that it wasn't a normal amount of cereal for one person to consume in that amount of time. Ugh.

I love cereal. But oh, I hate it, too.

Just a suggestion but maybe try a different, healthier cereal?

I used to binge on cereal too...but now I eat a 1/2 cup of Fiber One original with a small handful of berries and a 1/4 cup of vanilla soya milk and it is just the right amount. I enjoy it and don't feel the need or urge to have more.

I don't even care about my daughter's Cocoa Puffs and haven't been tempted to eat them -at all- since I started eating Fiber One.

I haven't had cereal in weeks but seriously, my cravings are really really really getting to me. Every hour of every day this week I've REALLY wanted a bowl of cereal. It's a comfort thing with me, and I've had a very stressful month.

Also, I find that my cereal cravings also have a LOT to do with needing calcium/dairy in my diet. I don't like milk - but when I have cereal I always drink THAT milk so I'm starting to think maybe that's where my huge cravings are coming from.


Good luck with your battle.

No you aren't alone. I used to binge terribly on cereal when I was home alone and in the dorm rooms in college and then I would purge hoping no one would notice. I still have trouble sometimes but have realized that I gave the food the power that it had over me. Rethink yourself and when you want to eat, sit in front of the mirror and try to understand why you go back for more. I should probably eat in front of the mirror more often because I have noticed that it's a way to focus on me and meal time, without any other distactions. You can overcome this, it's supposed to be conquered.

Well, several of us in the thread have admitted to having the same problem, but not with healthy cereal.

I haven't had any binge cravings at all since switching from Frosted Mini-wheats (claims to be healthy...but it's still coated in sugar and high fructose corn syrup) to Fiber One.

I still binge on healthy cereal too. It might actually be WORSE with healthy cereal than with the sweet stuff! I'm starting to think I might have an actual real problem - these cravings aren't subsiding!

Something CousinRockingChair said in the "Binge Free" thread really hit home. To quote:

I have had years of eating disorder experience and I've noticed that when my behaviours are worst, it's usually to mask something else I don't like in my life or that I feel I have no control over.

With binging it is never about the food. It's always about something else. We have to figure out what is going on in our lives that triggers binging. Once we know why then behaviors change.

lol, im surprised that so many people are crazy about cereal!
I am, too, haha i thought i was the only one.
I go on cereal binges, too. blaaah!!

cereal is my ultimate temptation also! seriously tho, i could easily polish off a box in a day. it's sweet, mushy, cold stuff i can just woof down. like ice cream without the brain freeze.

one thing that has helped me is to switch to a kids bowl and spoon. this way, i eat it slower. usually i would shovel it into my mouth with a tablespoon from a huge bowl!

also, kashi's high protein/fiber cereal is pretty good and filling. at first, it tastes sort of like cardboard or something a gerbil would eat. but i've learned to like it.

I love cereal also! A definate binge food for me!
The only way that I can deal with these kinds of foods is to make them zero tolerance foods. There are some foods that I cannot even let touch my skin. I cant have just one. I can't have just a nibble. I can not start at all! As long as I get that through my head I can have the foods in the house and not have a problem...but I never touch them...even to prepare them for others.

I liken it to foods that I am allergic to. If I have them bad things will happen to my body that are out of my control. Therfor...I can't have that food.

No sweet cereal is allowed in my house either! Fibre1 is now the only cereal I eat and it's portioned at 1/2 a cup mixed with 3 oz of fruit yogurt. I've found that's the only tasty combo that keeps me full beyond half an hour.

Otherwise I can go through 2-3 heaping bowls of sweet cereal in the morning and a whole bunch of munching as long as it's there. the evil excuse to have sugar anytime you feel like it!

Every time I read this title of this Thread, I crave a good handful of my Kashi GoLean Crunch clusters. Oh but I haven't given in! I can wait til breakfast... i hope! haha =]

During the day, every time i walk past the box of cereal i have to put my hand in and grab a handful. It's more like habit now!

Even on my on-plan days I eat about 3 bowls of a cereal, and I used to be WAY worse.

Yes, I have purchased boxes of cereal getting myself good and ready for a binge. Absolutely.

I try not to eat any cereal. Very big trigger. I do much better with nuts for breakfast.

I love cereal too. I can handle it sometimes and it helped me lose a lot of weight in the past as i would eat it everyday for lunch.

But it is a trigger food for me too and I pour huge bowls of it and then keep pouring and pouring until I look in the box and see Okay it is practically gone, might as well finish it. I am trying to avoid it for a while.

I even binge on healthy kinds like Special K with Red Berries.

I ADORE cereal!! All kinds of cereal. I don't even use a bowl most of the time, I just grab handfuls straight out of the box. Sometimes I take one bowl and say that's it. But it never is. I refill it and refill it. A few months ago I realized that I am just not able to keep cereal in the house.

So I stopped buying it and replaced it with oatmeal, which at least requires some preparation so I can't just eat it constantly. Then I saw Kash GoLean on sale this week and decided to try some because it looked super good for me and not all that tempting and I thought it would be good for yogurt. Of course the next day it was gone. Darnit.

I miss it SOOOO much but I know cereal is dangerous for me.

It seems like a lot of people just love that kind of food. I love cheerios! I Could eat them all the time. It's different with Fiber One cereal, I can have one bowl in the morning and that's enough for me, it also keeps me full through half of the day. I enjoy it as well, even though it takes some time to adjust, but it has a lot less sugar and that's what makes it "stop able"

Wow. I completely understand this!
I live alone (thank God) so I never buy cereal...no matter how bad I want it.
Until I moved out my sister would buy those huge value bags of...well...anything. That huge bag and four gallons of milk would be gone the second I found it.
Every. Time.
I even had a special mixing bowl for it...*sigh*
Now I try to eat hot cereal in my crockpot. That way, I only have so much at a time.

been a while since i made this thread! but i think i figured why its such a huge trigger emotionaly and physicaly.
as a kid id eat HUGE lunch and breakfasts, and then not eat at night, so in the morning cereal was what i used to break a fast. its got high amounts of sugar and carbs so that sets it off worse... and if ive had artificial sweetner then heaven help the second box of cereal!!!!!
actualy came back to this thread because ive just polished off a box of ffrosties and feel utterly disgusted. need to work out how to maintain without binging. bleh.

and what to have in the mornings if not cereal!!
porrage is good but not always practical

since you came to a conclusion to the 1st part of your post, lets look at the 2nd part re: "...hindering me".

Put a note on your bathroom mirror so that you can see it in the morning to remind yourself that....
1. You have done such a great job losing your weight!
2. You're only 12lbs away from your goal!
3. Try to remember what you did to get there & stay focused & stay strong!
4. You CAN do this!! :cheer3:

I bought a box of granola cereal mixed in a ton of peanut butter and added dried fruit and ate the whole thing last weekend. The calorie count had to be obscene.

I have a big problem with binge-ing on cereal. I love the comforting aspect of it, as I used to eat a lot of cereal as a kid.

Right now I have cereal in my apartment, but I have the healthy kind. I haven't had any strong cravings for it, surprisingly.

If your family isn't able to not have cereal in the house, since you are binge-ing on it and it is a problem for you, have you thought about making a request of either keeping on healthy, high fiber cereals in the house, or locking the cabinet the cereal is in? At a certain point you will be strong enough to avoid it, but right now, it may be a bit too strong an urge (for me, I still avoid bread in my house cause it is too tempting for me at this stage in my quest for healthier eating) to avoid.

And yes, I can binge on all types of cereal, there is just something comforting about it

Cereal is probably worse than ice cream in terms of a binge for me. Cereal is mostly carbs & when mixed with milk (which is high in lactose sugar), it makes me crazy. Healthy cereal is worse in a way- higher in calories and fiber, which makes me sick the next day.

I switched to oatmeal and that works pretty well. I have binged on it, but not remotely to the degree I have on cereal. Plus I have to cook oatmeal, which means it takes longer to prepare and eat.

Cereal is expensive and never lasted long in the cupboard. I never buy it and rarely miss it.

I don't eat cereal at all anymore and I don't keep it in my apartment. Nor do I buy milk, though I do have powdered nonfat milk stored away, in case I need it for recipes. I eat oatmeal instead.

For me, cereal is dangerous because it's instantly a trip back to childhood, to Saturday mornings with cartoons on & me sitting on the carpet, in a square of sunlight, eating whatever sugary cartoon character-affiliated cereal was currently being pitched in the commercials in between. (I even remember a lot of the jingles for the cereal ads.) I feel relaxed, safe, entertained.

This is, of course, an illusion, and not wholly due to the cereal, itself, since you do not get all that just from eating something -- it's the circumstances that I'm craving, of course, the rest of what happened while I was eating, the whole experience of the sunlight, the TV, it being Saturday, relaxed & happy parents reading the morning newspaper in the background, and fun exercursions planned for the rest of the day. But it's why the food is so potent, because it's so nostalgic, a trigger for memory, particularly to bodily memories of pleasurable emotional states, and it's a way of projecting oneself back in time, at least briefly.

So true. I have many memories of snacks and treats growing up. I remember a filet o fish from MC D I had in Freshman high. Scary. As children we would attack a box of Capt Crunch and eat peanut butter and butter sandwiches.

Omg....you are so right! Cereal for me is really weird. I used to eat a lot of it as a kid (often for dinner---long story there). It is totally comforting, and very rarely does it feel me up. Usually, the tons of milk I use is what makes me full.