Ok, so last night, I had an unfortunate encounter with my old archnemesis... A block of Sharp Cheddar.
I don't know what it is about sharp cheddar cheese, but left unattended, I can eat an entire block... and have before. Last night, I got a huge craving for it and ate 480 calories worth, or half a block, without even thinking about it. I know what did it-- the restrict/binge cycle. I hadn't eaten nearly enough food all day, and my body decided it didn't like that. I'm lucky I only ate half the block. While it didn't put me even near the limit for calories, I felt really guilty about it.
Today, I woke up craving it again. Despite my better judgement, I decided to revisit it and do it right... and this is when I discovered the trick to my binge foods:
I cut a 2 oz. serving (2 oz of cheese and a cup of apple juice served as my breakfast) into 4 pieces. And then I told myself I'd eat each of those pieces in several bites, savoring them, with apple juice in between... and it worked! I came away completely satisfied, and now I don't want any more!
It's kind of exciting because I thought I'd just have to avoid binge foods for the rest of my life, but I think today was the first step to change the way I eat them to make binging less likely. It's weird that it took me almost 30 lbs into my weight loss to figure this out, but I'm excited that I've learned something for the rest of my life.