I'm pasting something from a website mentioned by a 3FCer, IsabelFoxenDuke.com. I bolded my favorite part.

"Most of my clients think that emotional eating is a curse. That it’s an unfortunate defect they’ve been blighted with, and they were dealt a bad hand in life when it comes to food and weight.
“Poor me! I’m sick of this! Will this food problem ever not torment me?!”
Or something along those lines.
But here’s my take on it…
I’m not sure emotional eating is a bad thing. In fact, I think it might be my guardian angel.
I know this is the part where you think I’m a crazy person, but hang on a sec.
Emotional eating is an attempt to deal with a tough problem, feeling, or situation we don’t otherwise know how to deal with, and often don’t even know that we have without some kind of symptom to remind us.
That twitchy feeling that makes us want to go shove brownies down our throats, is like a genius alarm bell, that if responded to appropriately, reminds us to clue into what’s bothering us, before it becomes a more serious problem.
When we strip away the judgement of our emotional eating, and stop calling it a disease, a defect, a problem in and of itself;
we can finally see it for what it is:
An alert that something in our life needs our attention. Something completely unrelated to food or our weight.
Some people never deal with their problems, because they’re never forced to.
They never leave the job they hate, because they’re not getting fat over it.
They don’t have the tough, but necessary conversations with their partners, because things aren’t “bad enough.”
But emotional eaters have a gift;
a unique opportunity torecognize when some aspect of their lives needs some T.L.C. A.S.A.P.
Emotional Eating is a reminder to love yourself harder, show up for yourself, and give yourself what you really need.
Be grateful for the reminder. It might be saving your ***."

Interesting mars. It is true, I just never would have called it a gift. Certainly a symptom or sign rather than the problem itself.

I broke into the 120s today yay! That gives me so much incentive to eat well!

I think that's the problem for many, Amethyst. We view emotional eating as something to be suppressed, when it just might be an irrepressible part of ourselves worth listening to, a 'friendly'. We're all so hellbent on getting to goal and that effectively blinds us to other things.

Hi, dropping in here as a quasi-newbie, I've had an account for ages but haven't visited this site in over three years!

Maybe being around kindred souls will help. I have such a problem with binge eating, and it seems like I've tried so many things: cutting out all sugar, then limiting it, talking to a food addiction therapist, trying pre-packaged meals, Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, gah. And still it's a problem.

So, hopefully I'll peek in daily to see what's about. Right now I'm trying to 'detox' off sugar -- not even all sugar, just processed sugar in its most direct form -- and it's been awful. I really want to get less binge-y before I go back to work, where chocolate and cookies are constantly around (and I kid you not, unlimited chocolate and cookies, it's awful!).

That's all for now. Off to eat an orange to hope the natural sugar helps a bit!

Sugar detox is miserable, it really is. Hang in there, I never could see anything clearly until I gave up my candy habit, even though I wanted to put my eyes out while going through it.

Feel free to rant and rave, we get it.

Edited to add: I saw your other post about sugar, where you were talking about an addiction to alcohol versus an addiction to sugar, and why you can't feel the same way about the two things. It's because you're not addicted to alcohol, but every fiber of your being does NOT want to give up sugar. That's why it seems so clear to you when you think of alcoholics, but not so clear at ALL when you think of your sugar habit. Know what I mean?

I'm sure alcoholics feel the same horror, and internal struggle, and urge towards RATIONALIZATION and hair-pulling and screeching, when imagining a lifetime of no margaritas with nachos, no glass of wine with pizza, no beer with popcorn... as I feel when I contemplate completely giving up Swedish fish -- like for real, for real, for REAL giving them up.

It's why I've not been able to embrace the concept of NEVER. Because the horror. Because the entirety of life is just too huge to contemplate without the comfort of my Swedish Fish. However, on a one-day-at-a-time basis, I can't remember the last time I had those suckers. Because they make my life a living ****, and really, who needs that? I'm the same way with jelly (and jam and marmalade) of all things. I don't spend much time contemplating the big-picture concept of a Life Without Jelly, because that just sounds friggin' insanely TERRIBLE. But every day, I make a decision not to eat jelly (and fortunately, with every day that goes by that decision does get a bit easier).

Do you know what I'm saying? I'm kinda tired, I may not be communicating my thoughts well, so if none of this makes sense give me a pass, I didn't get much sleep the last few nights.

Mrs Snark, You are making a lot of sense & your post addresses some of my recent struggles. Last spring I gave OA a try. it was wonderful in many ways but the deal breaker for me was committing to abstinence, in other words a life without sugar. I'm still diving into it more than I would like, but each time I notice its effects with more awareness. Progress!

rabidstoat Welcome! I have the same problem at work, maybe not as often. If I'm not mentally prepared I can be blindsided by treats in the break room. I try to avoid the break room, and when I use it, I try--and the operative word is try--to remember to stay focused on eating the healthy, delicious food that I brought. And I breathe through my mouth so I can't smell anything tempting.

When I eat well, I sooner or later long for something sweet. What's working pretty well is to use artificially sweetened protein treats that I buy from Nashua Nutrition, or Quest bars, available singly in a lot of markets and vitamin/health food stores. The Hot Chocolate works best because it doesn't call out to me 24/7 like the Quest bars do.

Last but not least, is anyone following the gut bacteria saga? I'll try to link it, but in a nutshell, some microbes in our gut are sugar dependent, others aren't. There seems to be credible evidence that some sugar-dependent microbes can send chemical signals to our brains to make us crave sugar, thus ensuring their survival.

Well I didn't eat well but I ate low cals. Protein shake, grapes, chocolate bar, lentil salad, diet coke, gatorade G2. Hopefully the scale doesn't hate me tomorrow for eating chocolate and crap. I don't know what came over me when I saw the chocolate bars donated to my work I just grabbed one without thinking. And sugar free crap. I gave that up a long time ago. I decided I'd rather eat healthy...apparently I'd rather eat low cal crap right now. Not liking where that is heading.

Today's a bit better on sugar withdrawals, though I've been just so tired lately. Luckily I have this week off so I napped and read and watched TV all day. So far I've not been tempted into foraging outside the house for sugar (or resorted to eating sugar direct from the package, which I half-feared I would do!). I'm not really monitoring calories or even food groups much, but ate decently healthy today, aside from too few vegetables. Hrm. Maybe I should eat some veggies later tonight, I didn't actually have any today, yikes! Three pieces of fruit, though.

Hello all. I'm new to this thread but it sounds like the folks here struggle with many of the same things I do. My weight was down to 145 at one point and then I overate myself back over 165 (not the first time this has happened). I tend to be very dedicated to a lifestyle change for a period of time, up to 6 month, then I plummet off the wagon and it takes me too much time to reign it back in. I'm going for a moderate approach this time in the hope that I'll be better able to stick with it. I've been good over the past week plus and was determined to start this in December so it wasn't a doomed New Year's resolution thing.

Hi to the new folks!
Not my proudest moment today and of all things, potatoes...
I cooked a pot of potatoes because I knew they needed to be used up. Had a couple when they finished cooking, which was fine. Ran to the gym and did a half-hearted workout. My head was not on straight tonight and locked myself out of the house and I was feeling weak. So that sucked. Got home and cooked more potatoes for no reason. Since I don't have a microwave I had to reheat them on the stove, in oil, which I would prefer not. Then (here is the not proud part) first of all I was not hungry and second of all, I was standing over the stove eating out of the pan.
Ugh. It also put me over my cals for the day. I have no idea why I ate them except they were there. If I had put them away before I went to the gym this would have been avoided, but I had literally just finished cooking them.

SIgh.

I totally binged today. 5 chocolate bars and a bag of chips. Who does that?

(Raising my hand) AmethystJean, you are in good company I'm afraid!

Not sure if this fits, but it's pretty common to experience an 'out of the blue' binge during and after a diet. My diet was 7 months of super low calorie, low carb. It felt fine most of the time, didn't feel terribly deprived at all. Yet one day, about 3 months after phasing off, I found myself in the junk food aisle robotically throwing things into my cart that I had never craved even at my high weight. Every time i reboot to knock off 10-12 lbs, this happens for a while and then stops as soon as I quit restricting calories and just eat whole food to the point of taking away hunger.

Wishing my fellow 3FC posters & lurkers on this thread the best in 2015!

I can really relate to the binging on random stuff lately. I've eaten about 5,maybe even 6 full tubs of ice cream in the last 6 or so days. Like i rarely ate sweets even at the height of my overeating, I've always been a savoury/salty/fats person.

Can u give me an idea of what eating whole,healthy foods until you are full looks like in a day? Maybe quantities and examples of meals? So i can try this out to see if this out of control period can be reigned in. Cause I am really slipping further, don't want to restrict but still have plenty of weight to lose.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

I can raise my hand for that question. I made cookies about a month ago for an event and kept a dozen of the cookies here for my family. I had the intention of eating a few here and there. Well I ate the whole dozen besides the two that my son ate and not over a period of time, but within the course of 2 days...ugh.

Same here--I bought a lot of holiday candy to give as gidts. It ended up "some for you, some for me" even with storing it all in the trunk of my car! In preparation, i bought protein cookies. But they were "too good" and I scarfed them as well.
Some of it is the temptation everywhere, and some is stress, and some of it is the short daylight--that always drives me towards sweets. Gah!

I never was tempted by ice cream. This summer, I went on a cruise with family. Of course I dieted to get in tip top shape. I did okay on the cruise but discovered I like ice cream after all. Fast forward to this fall, we have a store here that makes the best ice cream, should be sold by prescription only!

These challenges & pitfalls are out there but it's always possible to move on and use them as "data" going forward. Today is a fresh start, whew!

Hi Davina,
That's a good question about what & how much to eat. I should say that I am more in the compulsive over eater end of the continuum, and have gotten more bingey since the diet I mentioned. I wouldn't want to add info about my WOE as a recommendation because we are all unique. [Also, tmi but I am post-menopausal and so no longer experience the intense cravings of PMS! I never conquered those so have no info to offer about those times other than they will self-correct and probably aren't worth worrying about in the big picture!]

The amount will be highly individual, and probably fluctuates. On work days I need a lot more food than on days off, even though I don't consider my job super active. It's a little bit of a struggle here--there is that panicky feeling of wanting to "get back on track" and cut amounts, but has proved to be self-defeating, time and again. And yet I still long to be the ultra-disciplined eater, undereating to a tiny clothes size--you'd think a 61 yr old would be immune from this, but nope! Sometimes I wonder if I like to do this in order to binge without the worry. We're complicated, aren't we!

Cutting to the point, here's my food intake on a recovering day, and theoretically the same as I would eat every day:

B coffee, Designer Whey shake 10 oz (Target), 2 egg omelet with some canned tomato or salsa. (I don't like things fried in oil so use a non stick pan, no oil)

L Great big salad with shredded crunchy veggies. I'll use the salad bar at Whole Foods if necessary, even though it costs. I'm fanatic about organic, fresh produce--tastes yummy. On the salad will be things like shredded carrot,beets, scallions, cherry tomato, arugula, red leaf or romaine lettuce, radish, CHICKEN or EGG or TOFU, and good quality olive oil that tastes fantastic. Also either Balsamic vinegar or Walden Farms italian. I love my salad--that's the key. Getting over a binge, I'll add a small avocado, a big one is okay too. The point is to invite one's palate back to healthy food, not to "correct"! For me that avocado is key, and I probably would binge less If I ate one every day.

Dinner: Grilled chicken breast fillet, 8-16 oz measured cooked. Or a bone in breast is fine--as much as desired. I have been known to eat an entire ready-cooked roasted chicken. (I buy good quality, pasteure-raised chicken which I really can barely afford, but it's probably no more expensive than binge food). It's easy to just grill a breast in my counter-top oven. Unlimited veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, and something orange like delicata squash, butternut squash, dressed up if need be with things like coconut oil, pumpkin seeds, garlic powder, etc.

Snacks vary a lot: navel orange in season, and I always have on hand some protein stuff like HB eggs, Protein-based Hot Chocolate or shakes. Cauliflower made as 'mashed potatoes' -tastes better than the real deal, imo; Cauliflower Foo Yong; it's fine to eat an entire head of cauliflower or more. Any of these things can be in unlimited quantities and dressed up with onions, good olive oil, etc. More chicken is ok too.

I'm not a creative cook as you can see, yet feel really great on these foods. It's low on carbs as that has worked well for me; you may do better with more carbs--suggest starchy veggies, fruit, possibly nuts or grains that you like if you LOVE them! (sticking to plain roasted, salted, or raw nuts, no fancy flavors, lol).

I steer clear of processed food except the protein treats. Read labels and be especially careful of foods that sound wholesome but make you crave more--virtually anything at Trader Joes that's already prepared will contain too much sugar and salt and will make you want ever more, imo.

It's okay to stuff yourself on these foods if that gets you away from feeling hungry. There's no magic amount, and the particular foods are what I like and return to. I'm picky about each item, lol. I would watch how your foods make you feel over time--satisfied, unsatisfied, craving more, foggy-brained, happy, etc. It takes some trial and error.

Finally, I never fail to drink 2 liters of water a day. I even get up early to get the first liter in, (and out) before work. I don't understand why, but everything seems to follow from this--when I skip it, my appetite can get out of control, and I just don't feel right. To accomplish this, I use Mio flavoring--"better living through chemicals" lol. I also drink as much coffee as I like through the day. I happen to like it black, but sometimes enjoy instant Tasters Choice with whey shake as lightener.

If you find this works for you, I'd suggest writing down what and how much does the trick, so that you don't have to re-invent each time. You can try to use a tracker like myfitnesspal.com to learn what you calorie range might be, but in reality, we binge eaters tend to use it to over-restrict, so it might be best to avoid, or approach with caution.

Are you still awake davina? I hope this helps & feel free to PM me, too.