I'm so glad I found this post. I feel like I definitely belong in here. So many of you are so inspiring and encouraging!! It's wonderful! I tend to be an emotional eater, and I can be guilty of craving sweets. I also have PCOS and hypothyroidism.. along with a NS eating disorder. (Varies from under eating to over eating!)

I'm just about to start week 3 of my diet, and as of yesterday I was down 10 pounds. I didn't weigh today because I did eat dinner at my aunts house last night, and she kept shoveling food on my plate! (Italians!! lol)

Anyway, so nice to meet you all! Looking forward to reading about your journeys!

ladyfat Way to go on 18 days!!!!!!
It sounds like you already know a lot about what works & I am looking forward to reading about your mini-rewards. What a great idea! I think rewarding the behaviors we want to keep could be a super-effective counterweight to the rewards in those addictive behaviors that seem to control us. Love your idea about the indirect reward via your dog--I'm sure she won't mind a bit

spangled! Good for you for 3 weeks in & 10 lbs down! That sounds like a quadruple challenge with your aunt's cooking! Great idea to give the scale a day off Sometimes I will wait 2-3-4 days. Today I am getting over my Carb Day excess and am trying to drink lots of water and get in a little extra exercise.

Here's to a great week for all of us!

spangled Meant to add..good on you to recognize how emotional eating contributes. I often overlook this. Big stressors and day-to-day smaller ones, both can be big drivers of unhealthy eating, understatement! I am working on being more conscious of my feeling state and not trying so hard to have it all be 'just fine'.

I like this piece. He has an exhaustive list of references about food addiction, many if none all of which are in peer-reviewed journals. He believes, with solid reason, that life-long abstinence from triggering foods is the solution.

http://authoritynutrition.com/how-to...ood-addiction/
Kris Gunnars
"1.You frequently get cravings for certain foods, despite feeling full and having just finished a nutritious meal.

2.When you give in and start eating a food you were craving, you often find yourself eating much more than you intended to.

3.When you eat a food you were craving, you sometimes eat to the point of feeling excessively “stuffed.”

4.You often feel guilty after eating particular foods, yet find yourself eating them again soon after.

5.You sometimes make excuses in your head about why you should eat something that you are craving.

6.You have repeatedly tried to quit eating or setting rules (includes cheat meals/days) about certain foods, but been unsuccessful.

7.You often hide your consumption of unhealthy foods from others.

8.You feel unable to control your consumption of unhealthy foods, despite knowing that they are causing you physical harm (includes weight gain).

If you can relate to 4-5 of these, then you probably do have a serious problem with food. If you can relate to 6 or more, then you are most likely a food addict.

Processed junk foods have a powerful effect on the “reward” centers in the brain, involving brain neurotransmitters like dopamine (2).
The foods that seem to be the most problematic include typical “junk foods,” as well as foods that contain either sugar or wheat, or both.
Food addiction is not about a lack of willpower or anything like that, it is caused by the intense dopamine signal “hijacking” the biochemistry of the brain (3)."

Thanks for sharing that information, mars735! I can definitely relate to all of those....

I'm still a bit in denial, but I'm slowly having to admit to myself that abstaining from trigger foods might just be the only solution. I'm also going to see a therapist about this, I scheduled an appointment for next week. It's a bit scary, but looking forward to it as well. I'm so tired of struggling.

Sending you good wishes, equanimity. I think I know what you mean about being in denial about it. Last year I had decided that I liked & could handle the roller coaster of restriction-binge for sweets. It did not work. Now that I've tried abstinence, I feel free of cravings & more peaceful about food, over all.

I'm not convinced that abstinence applies to all addicts as I have a friend who gave up smoking over 15 yrs ago. He has one now & then on vacation, and seems to be okay with it. Of course he could relapse and then we would say moderation did not work.

Food addiction is so much messier, since the triggers vary a lot among individuals. I 'know' what are my problem foods and they mostly contain sugar. But i have been drinking an almond milk product lately, with no problem, I just noticed that it contains some cane sugar. So it's not like one drop will re-activate cravings! Maybe 1 tsp of ice cream could, though, lol.

If you decide to go ahead and tackle abstention from your trigger foods, I endorse the suggestion made in the article about holding off a bit on dieting. It's just too much to tackle all at once. This is my experience--it's so much easier to get over cravings when you are not hungry. Once the cravings subside, you may not even need a formal diet.

(not that luck has much to do with it )

That article was an interesting read! Thank you for posting the link, mars735!

spangled I just realized someone posted it on this thread a couple of months ago. I think it was ladynredd. Then I shared it on my FB page, and just noticed it and thought it would be good here. I'm glad I forgot & reposted it because it makes a lot of sense! thanks again ladynredd!

Interesting. I personally don't want to abstain from my favourite foods but rather would prefer to work them into my calorie count (whether my calorie goal is maintenance or loss) and eat them. Interestingly, I've had a loaf of bread in my house for 3 days, that I have before eaten just in one day, and way beyond what I needed. I actually portioned out too much of it for my brunch meal (but an average amount of calories for that meal for me, would've been 570) and started feeling full and the last bite I just felt disgustingly full and actually spat it out and gave it to my dog (sorry, TMI? haha). I think you get in touch with how you feel about food when you stop overeating for any long period of time.

When I first started this attempt at loss/not bingeing, I actually worked into my calories eating a pint of Ben & Jerrys for a meal. I accidentally messed up my calorie count for some reason (I thought it was 200 cals per portion not 280) but hey that wasn't a huge deal in any case. I've moved away from doing that now, but I'm not opposed to it, if I really feel the need for ice cream.

Anyways, I'm at 19 days not bingeing. The scale hasn't moved for about 4 days, which is frustrating, but I'm just trying to continue on. What you don't eat can't make you fat.

Hey gang, and welcome new people to the thread!

As always, I see bits and pieces of myself in all of your posts.

Mars mentioned that "peaceful feeling" she gets when abstaining from a trigger food -- and for me, this is one of the greatest benefits of breaking the binge cycle and abstaining from trigger foods. It is easy for me to see that when I eat my trigger foods -- even when they don't trigger an actual binge, they DO trigger alot (alot!) of noise inside my head. Alot of struggle and angst because when I eat those foods I have to exert so more control and expend a ton of emotional energy to stop eating them and not to actually binge. And I find that internal noise SO horribly unpleasant and exhausting.

For me, the more I rely on my habitual eating style and just eat my 'regular stuff' (which doesn't include trigger foods), the more peace I feel inside. It is sort of auto-pilot eating and I always wonder if this is what it feels like for people who never had a binge problem, because I generally feel content and not obsessed by food or food choices when I do this. It is truly LOVELY, all that quiet inside my head! And all that energy can be expended elsewhere.

I notice that I have sort of unconsciously created various 'threat categories' for my trigger foods, and the ones that I know are the strongest threats, I stay away from completely. Jelly/jam and Swedish Fish fall into this category and I can't remember the last time I had them.

I never say never to myself, because nothing is truly off-limits forever, but actions speak louder than words in this case -- I haven't eaten those high-threat-level items in a very long time. I may occasionally dip my toes in the Lake of Fire that is a bag of Fritos (a lower-level trigger food for me) but I have been staying far, far away from the b@d@zz that is a jar of raspberry jelly. The price is just too high.

Mrs Snark This is soooo helpful! Thanks for drawing this distinction so clearly for me. It totally fits my experience. I aggree about actions vs words, but in this case, your words are powerful in getting to the core of the moderation vs restriction dilemma. Thank-you Thank-you Thank-you!

ladyfat I gotta say that I don't think I could eat a pint of ice cream every day without wanting a quart, right after eating the pint, and wishing there was something else to go with it, cake cookies, etc. We are all unique but discussing & sharing our variations-on-a-theme helps to clarify what wrks and doesn't work for each of us. Thank-you!

I'm new to this thread so I hope that's alright, but I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I struggle with this daily and will often end up bingeing hard. I have tried to curb it but it's been a tough last 6 months and I've regained about 10 pounds. I truly feel addicted to certain foods and struggle daily not to give in. I know people say "Oh, cravings go away!" but I've been losing weight for 4 years now. They never go away. I wish people understood that.

Yeah, it was definitely a stop-gap measure to help me get more into normal eating and transition away from bingeing at least 3-4 times per week. However, it was interesting to do as there is a point where it didn't taste as good anymore (I still ate the whole thing, just noted that). I also ate a box of Klondike bars one day as a lunch (720 cals, slightly higher than a normal lunch but well within 1200-1800 cal range I'm in). And felt slightly gross afterwards.

I'm really trying to take an "oh well" approach to this go around at attempting to stop bingeing. It didn't taste that good? I ate too many calories? I ate too early? I ate in response to mind hunger and not mouth hunger? Oh well.

I think a big turning point this cycle was I had my usual "freak out" day where I thought: NOTHING IS WORKING! I CAN'T DIET THIS WAY! I HAVE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING! THIS ISN'T WORKING!!! …. (mightaswellgobinge!). So I did my usual freak out and journaled what I thought I needed to do instead and why it wasn't working and my thoughts, but, I didn't binge. Which, I mean, is the only sensible choice - if the diet I was on wasn't working, then fine, go ahead and change the diet, but there's no need to binge in between. My mind also calmed down a lot after a few hours and I marvelled at the difference.

Mrs Snark & Mars - I definitely understand what you're talking about regarding the "peaceful feeling." It's like your mind stops shouting at you about food all the time. I do enjoy the taste of some junk food, but left to my own devices (without a voice in my head urging me to binge), I probably would eat a bag of potato chips (maybe not all of it, even), a small pack of skittles, and maybe a bowl of ice cream. Okay, that would leave me overweight if I did that every day, for certain, but at least it's not two bags of chips, pack of dip, giant pack of skittles, other candy, pint of ice cream, etc etc etc… So the binge comes from something other than my "like" for food. I literally binge because I want the URGE to binge to end, not because I want to binge. I find that always an interesting distinction to try to make when an urge hits.

And back to the peaceful feeling, yes, it is fabulous when the urges diminish (as they do when I don't act on them). ANother interesting thing is my ability to have in the house (and not eat constantly) foods I previously would binge on or be "haunted" by. I had a loaf of bread in my house for 3 days, I did eat it over 3 days, but in portioned out meals (weighed and counted and fit into calorie count) and I wasn't at any point yelled at by my brain to go eat more bread! In fact I even wanted another type of food for lunch and then thought "oh, wait a minute, I bought that bread! Don't I want that?" and realized, no, I didn't, not at that moment. So that is a much more peaceful relationship than being haunted by it. f

Wow. Sitting here reading all your posts and I can't even describe how I feel. Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences. Realizing that I'm not the only one trying to deal with this... that others feel exactly the same way about food...
The mind that's incessantly (sp?) shouting to eat, eat, EAT! Eating one thing and as I'm eating, already thinking about what else I can eat. Terror.

Mars735, thank you so much for your kind and supportive words. Once I truly understood (through studying the habit change process and being mild through mindfulness) that small steps are ok, everything became much and much lighter.

What a journey, eh.

ladyfat I meant to congratulate you on your binge-free stretch!

I love when someone else describes something in which I can recognize myself--that feeling of validation in knowing someone else out there is experiencing the same thing...When you described being haunted by certain foods in the house, & freaking out and casting about for another diet after a binge, & made the distinction between wanting to binge just to get rid of the urge as opposed to wanting to enjoy the food itself....All of that is so me! I'm so glad you are experiencing some of that food peace--even around trigger foods. That's strong work, indeed!