Haven't posted in this thread for a few days, mostly because there's been nothing to report. I've done a good job at sticking to eating what I should. A couple of times I've wanted something sweet and a tiny piece of chocolate has taken care of it- I consider it okay for me to have a square from a chocolate bar, I've been munching off the same one for a month now and half of it is still there.

We also finally got to the store yesterday (the roads were terrible for a few days, we'd originally intended to go on Tuesday), so I have all manner of nutritious choices to pick from. The past few days were basically eggs, clementine oranges, peanut butter, cheddar or string cheese, and whatever healthy leftovers and frozen veggies I could scrounge from the freezer. We now have a type of apple I haven't tried before, grapes (love grapes!), raspberries (love raspberries!), carrots, cucumber, 2 kinds of tomato, zucchini, and 2 kinds of lettuce to pick from! Plus I picked up 2 new kinds of tea to try and we have stuff for me to make dinner for the next few nights, both recipes are things I've never made before. Made the first one last night and we loved it, hoping for the same success tonight

Going to the store was kind of hard though, didn't help that I was hungry. Although normally I'm not super into candy and sweet things, the holiday season is a time I really associate with desserts. There were so many tasty looking, festive treats at the store! Would have picked one for myself for dessert to go with my "free meal" in a few days, but they all came in big packages. I just want one. Swung down the Christmas candy aisle to get some Reese's PB trees and ended up putting a bag of Gingerbread Twix (interesting!) and a bag of peppermint nougats in my cart as well. My hope was that my husband would want to try the Twix as well, but he thought they sounded gross. For the peppermint nougats, I was thinking maybe eating one could replace my little square of chocolate if I really want something sweet this month. Problem is, the bag was really big! Before we checked out, I put back both bags and instead grabbed a small bag of Brach's Holiday Mix, which has a rather pretty variety of different hard candies, I think in assorted flavors (only tried on so far!) I picked them instead because a) hard candies last longer in your mouth, b) the bag is small, and c) I don't think I have ever in my life overindulged, or been tempted to overindulge on hard candy. Carefully selected my first piece yesterday, it was raspberry flavored and quite enjoyable Resisting the siren song of all the holiday treats and emerging with just a bag of hard candy (and the PB trees, which are for Christmas with my in-laws) is pretty good I think!

Does anyone else here in the thread find that tea helps them with eating what they should? It's definitely helped me. Tea doesn't have any calories, so I can pick whichever variety pleases me and there are basically countless options, especially if you get into the world of tea blends made by small companies. Sometimes I'll add a tiny bit of milk or Splenda to the tea, but my default for years has been to drink it as is with nothing added.

Anyway, enough about me. Fiona, good job resisting, especially when facing your most difficult food related emotion! That must have been hard. I hope the book is correct and the desire to binge will wane the longer you resist it.

Thesame7lbs, nice work resisting eating what you shouldn't the evening of the book club! How have you done since then?

Rhiko, how are you doing?

Jubilee, welcome! I am pretty new as well, but everyone has been very nice. Identifying the emotion that leads you to overeat I think is an excellent step towards changing that, good job!

I'm doing good. Thanks for asking I've managed to not eat after 10pm all week and I've not binged or indulged

I also drink tea in place of eating... I have one after 10pm now when I feel the urge to eat. I have light blue milk (NZ) that is also 98% fat-free, so in all my tea is only 14 calories max because I like a double shot of milk lol

Thanks for the welcome, HuggerBunny. Sounds like you did great at the store! I am envious that you have no problem with Reese's peanut butter products. That bag of trees you mentioned would not have made it home intact in *my* car!

I did pretty well eating out with family tonight at a Mexican place: not a single chip! It was great because I've never left that restaurant without feeling distended.

J.

Fat fat fat and not the good kind either. All started with one little taste and not sure why all the way back to just before thanksgiving I binged all vacation and then did well this last week and binged all weekend.

Mainecyn-- There you are! Hang in there, you've done it before, you can get back into a good pattern, I know you can!

Thank you Mrs Snark, I have made it thru today so far and doing better. It has been a horrible couple weeks. I feel terrible emotionally, and physically. Its one of those things that we have all thought, "Why did I do it, what started it, what made me binge?" I cant remember, I don't know what caused it except for opening my mouth and shoveling food into it. It honestly was the worst binge episode I have had to date so far.

Mainecyn, I'm sure it wasn't as bad as you think. Take it one day at a time.

I've been pretty happy with December so far. Not started exercising so far, but I'm going to do it today. Food wise, I've been doing well. Mainly I'm cautious about Christmas and New Years, but I'll take them as they come.

Well, I ended up having to modify my Atkins very low carb diet because it was making me severely depressed, but I'm happy to report that (A) the addition of a serving of muesli at noon seems to have cleared up my depression, and (B) I resisted the urge to follow up the first time I had the muesli with a binge.

When I went to the grocery store to buy more muesli (since I'd been eating my husband's supply), it was such a strange feeling, to be buying carbohydrates, I was sorely tempted to pick up a bunch of cookies. But I didn't. I'm not even sure why, except that using Kathryn Hansen's Brain over Binge technique for nearly 20 days straight is beginning to have a momentum of its own.

No one is more amazed than I am that I have made it this far without a binge...

Mainecyn, I'm sorry to hear you had a rough time after Thanksgiving! I enjoyed leftovers longer than I should have, too.

Another check in for me! I've done a good job resisting cravings and sticking to my plan. Today is the day once a week when I get to have whatever I want for a meal! I'm going to have 7Up, mac and cheese, and will bake reindeer shaped peanut butter cookies later tonight. I also told myself I could have one of the Reese's PB trees I purchased a few days ago, but I'm not really craving it and don't want to eat it just because I can. Sweets never were my downfall (I've thrown away so much candy over the years and missed out on so many desserts that I saved for later but were eaten by someone else) and I do NOT want to turn them into my downfall!

Four nice things weight loss related have happened for me this week. First, I hit 203 pounds, so 17 pounds lost. I've lost 3 pounds since November 19th. Not bad considering I admittedly haven't been sticking to my healthy eating plan as much since it's the holiday season. My goal is to be down to 200 on January 5th. The second thing was that pants that were only a bit loose on me before now will not stay up without a belt. The third thing is that I'm down 2 holes on my belt from when I started this! And the fourth thing is that the mother of a child I provide therapy to asked if I'd lost weight, she hadn't seen me since the very end of September. Admittedly, I find it embarrassing when people comment on things like this, but it's good to know that my efforts are showing some.

Wow, today was a stupidly bad day for eating, and it's only afternoon.

I've eaten about 4 times since I woke up, and not all of it was healthy food. Even the healthy stuff I ate were big portions. I don't know what triggered this ridiculous binge today but I'm trying to keep myself busy for the rest of the day so I don't eat any more.

ILoveVegetables— Sorry to hear about your rough day, but hey—you get all kinds of credit for coming here to post about it! If you possibly can, next time try to post before the overeating happens...

HuggerBunny— Good for you on your weight loss and also for resisting cravings! Your once-a-week meal sounds nice! I bet those reindeer PB cookies were good. You're a lucky woman that sweets are not your downfall: I would not be a fat person today if sugary treats had never been invented. =laugh=

mainecyn— I'm so sorry you're goin' through a difficult time. Do you have someone with whom you can talk about what's goin' on? You know you can write about it here. I'm new on this thread, but from what I've read so far, you seem like a very special person. =warm smile=

Jubilee77— I hope you'll come back soon and tell us more of your story...

Mrs Snark— So what's new with you? =grin=

Rhiko— Good for you that you can stave off the urge to eat with a cup o' tea. I do something similar in the morning to get my day off to a good start: I have two big mugs of Mexican coffee. But I'm afraid my coffee has rather more calories than your tea, because I put real cream in it: it's allowed on my low-carb diet. I also drink hot chicken broth as my "dessert" after dinner. Give that lovely cat a nice rub for me!

I had a surprising moment in the Co-op grocery store today: I was waiting for the office to approve my exchange of Familia muesli w/ sugar added for the kind with no sugar, and just as they handed my box to me, I realized that I had been standing right next to the basket of my favorite huge organic cookies, and hadn't even given them a glance. And I knew that's where they were always located, on the shelf in front of the office, because oh boy, I used to binge on those puppies: I used to buy like half the basket at once. I just can't believe it, how quickly my binge behavior has gone away...even with my adding the carbos to my diet, I only think of them as a daily serving of muesli, not anything else!

Fiona, sweets aren't my downfall, it's savory carbs. Pasta, breads, rice, potatoes, crackers, chips, tortillas... I love them all. I'm not following the Atkins Diet or anything, just cut out the above as well as sugar (not counting sugar from fresh fruit), then once a week I can have a meal plus beverage and dessert of my choice and once a meal I can have some other non-meal treat. I also allow myself a small square of chocolate or a small piece of hard candy if I really want something sweet, that happens maybe 3 times a week. So far so good!

Since going onto a medically supervised diet on Nov. 1, I've been binge free. That doesn't mean I haven't had the impulse to binge. I just didn't act on it. I'm hoping, as time goes on, this will lead to a retraining of my behaviors and a permanent change of habit in response to the impulse to binge. I dream of the day the binge impulse is gone forever and I can have a normal relationship with food. I do have to admit, being low, low carb right now and getting sugar out of my system really has improved my mood. I just feel better in general.

Hi. I'm new to the thread, but I've been lurking for a while, and I want to say that I admire you all and can relate to your struggles with bingeing and the urge to binge.

Problem for me was it wasn't just Thanksgiving, that day. In fact, I did ok that day because there was everyone watching. I ate later that night after everyone was off doing other things..then the day after until this Monday I binged every single day. I mean eating half a pie, make a batch of pancakes and eat the entire batch myself, bags of chips, candy, cereal, that was just one day. I did this every single day until this Monday. I ate all my normal meals, but I also ate this amount on top of it each day. I ate so much each day I became physically sick and spent lots of times in the bathroom, or would be doing ok and then have to rush to the bathroom. I suffered from upset stomach, acid reflex, diarrhea, and constipation. Its not been pretty.

Thank you, this is why I keep coming back to this board and this post with you all. I tried to reach out to my husband over and over. I tried explaining to him that I wasn't just over eating, that I was binge eating and explaining just what it was like and that I was having such an unbelievable time being able to stop eating things I shouldn't and stopping the amount I was eating. I explained the gaining weight, etc.

My husband is a sweet, caring, loving man, but he doesn't get it no matter how many times I tell him and try to explain it is not just over eating or eating the wrong things that I'm addicted and I binge, he goes, "Your a strong person and you either stop eating or you don't". He thinks its STILL is just about over eating and gaining some of my weight back. I just can't explain to him and he doesn't get the addiction or understand its an addiction he cant wrap his mind around it..yet he is aware of addiction as 30 years ago he had addictions of his own as a teen.

So, why can't he understand that food is just as addicted as drugs? He is never going to understand any of it I've run out of breath trying to explain to my DH, I could slap him in the face and say "I have a disease" and he still wouldn't get it. When I binge its not just eating a little bit of this and that, its cleaning out the cupboard, the fridge, the freezer, eating it all in one setting, everything..and its for days. Its no different than a drug addict digging thru the trash to find some they threw away, I've done it myself for food I tossed and then changed my mind.

I have done well this morning but have had two times I've been tempted to eat what I shouldn't, things that would start a binge. I have made it to today, day 5 binge free.

I am not sure where the energy and confidence has gone like it did the first time but the binge is fighting me and not letting go.