Well, I made it 8 days of clean eats.

Then my boss & I went to lunch today. I ordered chicken & veggie stir fry, which seemed like one of the healthier choices. . .swimming in oil. Of course, between a) being hungry from having eaten totally clean for 8 whole days and b) guilt over the starving children in Africa, I ate the whole thing. I'm guesstimating, but probably around 1300 calories?

So, no dinner for me tonight. . .and I guess tomorrow I just start the whole thing all over.

Sigh. I will never lose this weight.

That is not true and stop thinking like that! But of course, I feel the same way. What are we going to do?

Losing Wieght is hard... or else everyone would be skinny. I try to concentrate on my exercise part. I have a hard time eating right, so I try to regulate it more towards myself. I love food to much to give it completely up, so I compromise with myself. You just need to find a way that works for you.

We all have off-plan/treat meals once in while, don't beat yourself up over it. One meal isn't going to ruin your diet. I never skip another meal because of an off-plan meal. If I had an off-plan lunch, I would still eat my normal breakfast and my normal dinner (and, if I were hungry, my normal snacks, although a lot of times I find I don't need them). The only thing I would forego is my low-cal pudding snack in the evening. I might have one of my lighter dinners (e.g., a salad with lean protein instead of meat loaf or pasta), but I'd definitely still eat dinner. It's not good to skip meals.

Also, you really shouldn't be hungry after 8 days of eating clean (eating clean does not mean starving yourself). You aren't going to be able to continue this diet long-term if you are hungry all the time. Maybe it would be helpful if you posted what you eat normally and asked for suggestions on what you could eat that would be more filling.

When I first started, I thought I would never lose the weight either, but it turns out that if you just stick with it, the weight absolutely will come off. A treat meal once in a while is also okay; I probably had one at least twice a month while I was losing weight. One thing that really helped me was to set a long-term goal. I told myself that I would stick with my program for four months and if I didn't see results by then, I'd try something different. That really helped me get past the short-term set backs. By the time four months rolled around, I was clearly making progress.

I didn't even know that this forum existed but I saw the post on the new posts bit and it is the first one that I've seen that shouts "that's me". Su-Bee I am exactly like you and I don't know why i do it either. I'm in a better patch at the moment with "clean eats" but feeling down about some things. I know that I'll eventually do what you've done today. I know this because I'm 35 and I've done it for the last 18ish years.

Nothing I have done has worked so far and like you (albeit I'd bigger than you) I'm overweight but not rolling down the aisles fat. Well I can't carry on doing what I've been doing cos that's got me nowhere. All I know is that in the past when I've had a day like you've had I've just gone sod it and carried on eating. I reckon that I'll have to learn that that was yesterday and I have to do something different today or nothing will ever change. You can do this.

On a different note you finishing your plate is not going to help starving kids in Africa. They were never going to get sent the food on your plate this lunch time so send a donation instead of wracking yourself with irresolvable guilt! Good luck. I'd love to know how you're getting on cos our profiles are quite similar and you seem to have similar habits to me. I came here hoping I'd meet people like you.

Doughnut, your message is EXACTLY what I needed! I logged on just now b/c I am having exactly that impulse - I had a big, off-track lunch, and now I am sitting here at home saying to myself, "Well, I already screwed up today - maybe I should just have something ELSE to eat." Not that I'm terribly hungry, or anything - just, feeling the urge to eat.

I have always been like this - when I am eating healthy, I have no problems, but once the first bite of something bad crosses my lips, the rest of the day is a write-off. It's particularly bad with sugar - one bite of something sweet, and all I do the rest of the day is crave sugar. It's like that one bite just sets me off, and the only thing that re-sets me is going to sleep and waking up again the next morning!

So I am reading your post, and I am saying to myself, it is 8:30 at night. . .there is no reason for me to eat now. . .and it's not THAT long before I can fall asleep, so if I can just make it until bedtime, I can make it through THIS day with no more damage done, and that will be a success!

I just hope my husband comes home soon so he can distract me before this urge for food-for-food's-sake gets the better of me. . .

I would measure more by the weekly caloric average than one meal. Its ok to have a few high days among some low and average days; keeps your body guessing and takes the rigidity out of weightloss and your daily life, and it still works. As long as you consistently have some low days, you can have a few higher days and still be good. My weekly average has been between 1700 and 1800 calories per week, but in that week I may have a few days with 1500 calories, some with 1900 and I even had one with 2200 calories last week; I've still been losing about 1 to 1.5 pounds per week.

Su-Bee did you make it through? I'm glad if my post helped. Yours really helped me. I'd just posted on the UK forum about how slowly it was going and was feeling really down and then saw your post which helped because I could relate to it and that made me remember why I came here.

I have two really bad eating habits that I need to change if I'm going to succeed after all these years. The first is not to go "s*d it, I've blown it I might as well eat everything I can find" and the second is that if that does happen not to say "that's the end of this diet then". I know all of this in my head it's just I seem to have a really hard time putting it into practice.

The bit you said about one bite of sugar and it's a free for all? I can really relate to that. I'm not a great proponent of diet books because I think most of them are a rip off. However, there's a book called "only fat people skip breakfast" by Lee Janogly which is all about sugar and how to avoid doing what you and I do. It's fabulous - the only diet book I'd ever recommend.

Well thanks to finding this site I've had an unexpectedly great week so I'm off to change my tracker

I made it through, Doughnut, and it was all because of you! It was HARD, though. I actually CRIED because I wanted to eat - wtf?!? I woke up this morning RAVENOUS, had a single bowl of oatmeal, and was absolutely fine until lunchtime. So that is the difference between starting a day off right, and starting one off wrong, at least for me!

I'll have to check out the Lee Jangoly book - I've not heard of that one before.

Congrats on your great week and your weight loss - is that 4 lbs just this week? Amazing!

You made it - yay! I was just off to the kitchen to have a snack I didn't need when I checked in here, saw your post and now I'm not going to - thanks. That's another problem I have - sometimes I have a really great day and blow if for the sheer **** of it. ??? And your wtf? Tell me about it, it's like how can I be in so in control of every aspect of my life and then get reduced to a gibbering wreck over a biscuit?

I lost 3lbs this week. I started on 27th December and only lost a pound the first week. Joined this site last weekend I think and then 3 lbs gone since last Wednesday. Am well chuffed

SuBee, it happens to all of us... When I overeat though, I don't skip my next meal ever, it just puts me in that WTF mode and I'm so ravenous that I WILL eat something bad... so I eat again, a protein and a clean carb and lots of veggies, and chalk it up to experience... As someone said, just look at your overall weekly caloric intake, it's all in the big picture...

Here's my wtf for today -

Weight yesterday was exactly the same as it was the day before - so the off-plan eating did not cause the million-pound gain I was fearing, which is awesome.

Then, yesterday, I ate like a little angel - calories even came in a bit on the low side - and today I am up a whopping *2.6* pounds! Huh?!? I am blaming it on starting my period and on doing leg weights yesterday, which in the Ladies who Lift thread they say often causes the muscles to retain water - I don't know what else it could be, b/c no way did I consume an extra 6,000 calories in my sleep! But WOW - that is a LARGE overnight gain! I'm okay, b/c I know no way it can be a "real" gain - but it is still a wtf moment!

And Doughnut - CONGRATULATIONS on staying out of the kitchen! I know how hard it can be! Sunday night, I again wasn't hungry, but I was in the kitchen opening cupboards, checking the fridge, moving stuff around - my husband asked what I was doing and I said, "Looking." Why is it that we go for food like that when it is not really what our bodies want???

Sue, keep in mind that what you eat can take days - sometimes even a week - to show up on the scales. What you ate yesterday may not even be completely digested when you weigh in the morning, so today's weight isn't really an accurate snapshot of how yesterday's food affected you.

Likewise, when the scale goes down, it's not simply a result of what you ate yesterday ... it's the cumulative effect of everything you've been doing for the past week or two.

I sure wish my 2 weeks of clean eating and 30 minutes of cardio every morning would show it's cumulative effect!!! LOL

It will! Did you know that when fat cells empty out, they sometimes fill up with water? And until your body dumps the water, the scale won't move, even though you've already lost the fat? A weight loss researcher at Columbia Med School told me this - he said that often what we think of as a 'stall' or 'plateau' is just water retention. Ever lose two pounds overnight? That's a water whoosh!