Hi everyone
I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. In the past, whenever I went on a diet, I would make sure there wasn't any food in my kitchen that would tempt me to binge. For example I cannot have any cheese in my fridge or I will binge on it. (That is to name just one food. There are a ton of foods that I binge on).
However now I am not dieting I am making permanent changes in my lifestyle and eating habits. But what does that mean for those foods that trigger me? Will I never be able to have a brick of cheese in my fridge again? Or will I eventually get over this? I am lucky in that I don't have kids or a husband so it is easy to control my environment in terms of what foods I have in the house, but how do those of you with families manage? And should I be controlling my environment or should I purposely have that cheese in the fridge and learn how to control myself?
You're just like me! I have absolute no self-control when it comes to certain foods (especially cheese). I live alone so it's been really easy changing my lifestyle (no husband/kids to worry about). I am so incredibly impressed by those with families and having the temptations right in their own home...anyone that can lose weight with a family deserves a gold metal!!!!!
For me the only way I was able to lose weight and not binge was go cold-turkey and not eat/buy junk food (or certain trigger foods like cheese).
I started my lifestyle change / weight loss journey in early 2009. Since I've changed my lifestyle I rarely crave junk food and I rarely overeat. For me, the hard part was the first few weeks, after that the urge to binge became manageable then pretty much nonexistent.
My self-control is also a lot better but I still have some issues. I now have plenty of self-control at work, friends homes, restaurants, ..., the holidays were easy for me and I wasn't tempted. But for some reason if certain things (cheese, cookies) are in my home I will binge until it's gone. I still don't trust myself to buy those trigger foods, but I'm planning to eventually start slowly reintroducing items as my self-control grows.
Whatever you do really depends on your personality and what will fit into your lifestyle. Going cold-turkey worked for me, but it's definitely not for everyone. If you do buy those trigger items I'd suggest buying healthier options (e.g. low fat) and in smaller amounts so if you binge it's not as much. Good luck & stay strong!
This is really tough. I know that right now, there are many, many things that I can't have in my house. White pasta, and most kinds of junk food, avocado (I know, healthy fat, but I eat the whole avocado--too much healthy fat is still too much fat!), white bread, nice cheeses, homemade hummus, and other things. So even though some of these things can be healthy and useful (hummus, avocado), I can't have them because I can't stop myself.
I know that I can't make a permanent change, like you're talking about, with these foods in my house. I think it might get easier though, as long as these things are around only for special occasions. For example, right now, I have a box of mac and cheese in my pantry--total binge food for me. I bought it for a specific event, I know when I'll eat it, I bought it just the day before I need it. I don't have time to go back to the grocery store to buy another one should I binge on the one there. I will make it tonight with my friend, as planned, and then it will be gone, or I'll have a resonable portion of leftovers in the fridge--no eating the whole box!
So, I can't have it around just "in stock" in my pantry, and I don't think I'll ever be able to do that. But sometimes, if you're feeling comfortable and in control, it's do-able--I think for me the most important thing is to be honest with myself. I thought about buying some nice cheese for tonight too, but I knew that having that in my house would be very, very bad. I was almost convinced to get it, that I could handle it, but when I honestly thought about it, I knew I couldn't have it around.
Also, for my motivation, I've gone a really long time binge-free (for me), and my goal for now is to get to New Year's Day binge-free, so that helps.
For now, just don't have the triggers in your house, it's not worth having to deal with resisting them--it's too hard!
Will I never be able to have a brick of cheese in my fridge again?
Maybe, maybe not. I don't think it really matters, as long as you find a way to make it work for you.
A lot of people will tell you that you "should" be able to have trigger foods in your house, and learn to control your behavior, instead.
But, why make your house an obstacle course if you don't have to?
My husband "should" be able to remain faithful to me in any situation, but would I want to put him in a room alone with a naked hottie who wanted to sleep with him?
Yeah, probably not, and that doesn't mean I don't trust him. However, I trust my husband not to put himself in situations in which the temptation is likely to occur.
If I found him alone in a room with a naked hottie, I would be pretty suspicious though. I wouldn't praise him for not cheating on me, despite the temptation. I would be yelling at him for being so stupid as to put himself in a situation where cheating would be so easy.
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Food isn't exactly the same, but it's actually pretty close. If hubby and I were swingers or otherwise had an "open marriage" and didn't define extramarital sex as cheating, my reaction to finding him with a naked hottie might be different (it might depend on whether I knew she was going to be there - or whatever "rules" we had between us).
As a Christian, I can tell you that isn't going to happen. But my food morals are a bit looser. If I catch hubby with a chocolate bar, or even find myself with one - it's not the end of the world, as long as I learn from the mistake and learn quickly.
When it comes to marital fidelity, I don't want hubby or I learning from mistakes - I'd rather avoid the mistakes in that regard completely.
You have to decide whether you want to have an "open relationship" with food. Which is easier for you, learning from mistakes, or avoiding them (no matter what you decide, you'll probably be doing some of both - but you've got to determine which is more important, more effective, or easiest to you).
You may be able to get over it. But it will take time. Desire is a curious thing.
Right now, while my mother is visiting, I've got several foods in the house that I would never have ordinarily, because she likes them & wants them during the holidays. Some of them I bought for her beforehand & kept in the freezer & cupboards till she came. I thought of them as "my mother's food" & that kept me away from the stuff. Also, it was out of sight and I wasn't walking past it & eyeing it daily on my counter.
What's giving me more trouble is a can of Planters Mixed Nuts (unsalted, since I retain water like a three days' dry sponge). Also, the Jell-O sugarfree mousse caramel pudding. That **is** my food, but I'm only supposed to be eating it in controlled portions. I am having to watch myself to make sure that I mind my portions. And these foods are giving me a lot more trouble than the chocolate bars, potato chips, ice cream & cheesecake. For some reason, the restrictions trouble me more than the outright ban on the others.
I think you have to ask yourself why you feel the need to eat it all at once? It's going to be there tomorrow isn't it? For me I had to tell myself that about a LOT of stuff. Overall I have cut out most temptations but my hubby still eats his fudge bars and other foods he likes that I can't have. I tell myself right now I can't eat that- but it won't be like this forever.
Since it's only you I wouldn't even bring the stuff in the house. Maybe later when you feel more in control, but for now I wouldn't even try to deal with temptation.
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I don't like to have things like some sweets in the house because usually if i wake up in the middle of the night, i'm going for it. Sometime I'm not even awake totally and the next morning i find the wrapper next to the bed and and i'm like "crap"!!!! So I keep those things out of the house.
I think it should get better as one's journey goes on and progresses.
I just don't keep things around that I have had a tendency to binge on. Because inevitably even if I don't binge on them, I still overeat them and it brings on the same feelings of shame that I used to get when binging.
For example, for my birthday I bought a 6 pack of 60 calorie sugar-free Jello pudding cups (woo hoo, right? Don't knock it - I really wanted cake, but the pudding tasted gooooood). I ended up eating all 6 of them in a day and a half. Now, the calorie damage was minimal and I didn't eat them in one sitting like I would have in a binge, but I found myself making excuses to "just eat one more, then I'll stop" until they were all gone. It was too similar to my old binging habits. So it'll be a long while until I bring something like that into the house again.
You don't have to prove your self-control to anyone by torturing yourself with foods like that in your house. Your self-control is already being demonstrated by not buying it in the first place.
This is something I'm still in the process of working on. It was much easier when I was in college and had an apartment to myself, but now I'm married and live with a man whose eating habits are not the same as my own.
I've come up with two ways to deal with this. One is that I tend to buy him the food that he likes that I have no interested in, as opposed to the foods we both like. My husband is one of those people that has certain foods he really loves, and as long as he has one of them, he doesn't care what it is. So he's down with having more Hot Pockets than, say, Chex mix in the house.
As for other things that do need to be purchased, one of two things happen. Either my husband just takes the whole thing with him to work (that's what the Chex Mix is for anyway), or when it is home, I keep it out of sight and enlist his help to help me keep it limited to just a handful and not more.
The point of this long post is that you may just need to try what works for you. If cheese is your thing, but you don't want to be banned from it forever, try bringing home the smallest amount of cheese you can and come up with a plan for how you'll eat it (ie, a certain amount each day). I've found that small amounts is helpful because if I do lose control over it, the calorie amount isn't as high and it helps keep me from the self-hatred that inevitably comes along with a binging session. I've found that the small foods method works for me about 80% of the time.
self control vs controlled environment?
