so far so good. Was tempted to overeat cookies, but I actually ate one serving. I also had some carrot cake today, and being accountable kept me from binging on that. woot. woot!

"what I got to tell myself is HOW IN THE WORLD is stuffing myself with cookies and icecream going to help with his refusal to sit down and eat at a decent time consistently? it's not."

This is exactly the approach I'm trying to take now with my stress binging. I'm under a lot of stress this week because a job I thought was going to start gradually suddenly got pushed to starting this week! So rather than a nice gradual week long training to ease me into it, I had a 3 hour training with the manager who kept getting interrupted by her cell phone for "calls I just have to take" .

I was totally considering buying junk food and binging last night, but I stopped myself and said, "wait a minute. How is binging going to make me less stressed about the job I have to do this week which I feel very ill prepared for? How is it going to prepare me better for the job?" The answer is just like yours - it's not! So that helped me stay on track and avoid binging on junk food yesterday.

I think that along with eating lots of whole foods and walking every day is hopefully going to help me get through this stressful week in peace.

Tam

I agree, Munchy. This is what I've been doing the last week and it's helped a lot. Every morning while I'm taking my walk, I go over in my head, meal by meal, what I'm going to eat for the day. That helps keep me focused on what I will eat and not look around for alternatives.

However, my personality is suited for that, as I tend to do much better when I preplan something carefully and don't do well with "on the fly" type of stuff. I can handle "on the fly" in situations where I know I won't fail, but when it comes to food, I know I will ultimately fail (i.e., binge) if I don't plan out my meals.

So I think this would work for some but not others .

Tam

That's actually really interesting because I think it matters how we each individually define a binge. For me, having 1 serving of something unplanned isn't necessarily a binge. For example, I ate pretty much on plan yesterday but was very stressed out and ended up having 1 oz of unsalted pretzels, which was not on my menu plan. But the serving was measured and came in place of some fruit I usually have in the evening, so I don't consider it a binge.

I guess for me, a binge is a very specific circumstance - when I actually go out and buy packages of junk food and sit and eat from them across several days, usually just at night in front of a string of classic movies.

Jendiet, please don't misunderstand, as I'm totally not saying that my definition is more correct than yours at all. It's just interesting how each of us defines a binge.

Tam

tammay, yes, it does make sense to ask yourself HOW is the binge going to help. I loved a saying someone on this website had "The only problem food solves is hunger". I know stress brings on binges, and I am glad you are realizing there is a better way to handle stress.

I agree a binge is different for everybody. I am quite familiar with the binges you described, as that used to be how I binged when I was binging on 5000 calories and purging. However, I have simplified it because I was going into a binge not realizing for me what constituted a binge, and why it was so.

After the first three cookies (1 serving) several needs should have been met. 1. The taste, 2. The craving, and 3. The hunger (blood sugar hunger). After the first serving, what am i getting out of it? That is when binging comes in.

I have found I love to have cookies with tea. Might be northern upbringing, but a cookie with tea is the best. I could completely ban myself from them, which would cause an obsession and definitely a binge, or I can learn how to control the factors that would cause me to binge.

here are some things I have found that helps.
1. Write down that I am going to have 3 cookies with tea in my journal, or at least have a mental note of the exact plan.
2. take the cookies from the package and put the package up immediately.
3. Have the tea poured and ready. If the tea isn't ready the first two they won't get to go with the tea. (this is the same with milk)I have found myself reaching for more because I ate the cookie before the tea.
4. sit down. I frequently binge standing up (in the flight or fight response)
5. If I get the desire for another one, I ask myself "why?"

If after having the cookies and tea, and going back to my normal day LATER, I decide I want to repeat the process, and there are calories in my bank. I go ahead and do it again.

so I have been thinking about a treat all day today, and today is carrot cake. I made some yummy chai tea, and I measured an exact serving of the cake, and i gave away the little piece that fell off that was over the serving. (I tend to eat up the little pieces that come off the perfect slice), and I sat down with tea and thoroughly ENJOYED one serving of the cake.

this is a huge accomplishment--usually just the sight of cake of any kind and I become this Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde monster, and it's the cake against me, and the cake is evil and I'm the little angel trying to be good, and if I can just overcome the devil....blah. blah. blah.

It's a piece of cake, sane people eat it all the time. I have the frozen kind, so I KNOW it won't spoil. So no reason to hurry and eat it up.

And it went really good with the vanilla chai tea which will also help my blood sugar stay stable after I eat it.

I have dinner on the stove, and am planning a very nutritious meal around my scrumptious little snack.

IN my mind is where this battle is taking place, disordered thinking. If i want cake, it is bad, so I only get one shot at being bad, so might as well make it worth it. Like a little thief in a store casing out a joint. Just know you are going to get caught at any moment, so make the spoils good. I have literally shoved 3 cookies in my mouth at one time when I heard someone coming just so I didn't get caught.

THIS is the reason I keep failing, not the snacks being in the house, it is the way I see and respond to the snacks. I have children and a very thin SO, snacks are their way of life. So the snacks will be there to stay, so I must change ME.

YEAH, i remember when I was 65 lbs thinner, and I was eating only healthy organic food, and there weren't cookies, cake, and icecream to contend with, but every meal was a battle as people would be offended I wouldn't eat their food, and every restaurant trip was stressful. Except, I lavished the elitism my life style brought to me. I lavished being the thin one, eating the "rabbit" food. finally, one day I just SNAPPED. I gathered a bunch of junk food and ate it till it hurt, til I just wanted to vomit from all the bad stuff I put in my body, and I suffered from that point on. TWO YEARS, since beginining my journey to healthy organic eating, and undid two years of STRICT dieting. It took about a year to really catch up and gain weight OVER what I had been before I started being really strict, but I went back and forth between binging and strict dieting--to finally hopelessness and was at my heaviest from 2006-2010. Except I didn't gain much weight in between.

Then I realized in 2010, I must use moderation. I used a lifestyle that almost OKed binging because there was only a small period of time when you could eat and you were fasting other than that time period. I got pregnant shortly after losing 23 lbs with this method!

tried and failed several times in 2011. Went through **** in 2012, and fell back into my old severe patterns.

Here I am in May 2012, and I am having a small victory over something that seems silly to others but is causing life changing thinking in this moment. I think I can actually be free of this disordered thinking.

It might help that as a nurse I learned the terms "Ineffective coping mechanism".

for me my diagnosis would be "Ineffective coping mechanism related to stress as evidenced by binge eating". yep that's me.

The solution. Find a new coping mechanism. Writing about food? Writing about why I think food is so good or bad, or just plain evil. Taking accountability for my actions. Either way something new is taking place in my heart and mind.

well, you think you have a handle on it, then something like dinner almost setting your kitchen on fire trips you up.

I rescued the food--note to self, while nursing baby do not leave 13 year old to watch the dinner. But it really shook me up to see smoke rolling out of the pot!

Plus, my lovely roast would have been ruined. it wasn't thank God.

But I shook like I had low blood sugar for several minutes after it. I decided to eat a mounds to help with that, they are frozen, so hard to really scarf them down. yet, I grabbed another one, I removed myself from the kitchen because I know the blood sugar shakes would subside as the sugar entered my blood stream, it needed just a few minutes.

That is another culprit for the binging, the blood sugar shakes. I will do well and then come home from some strenous activity, and i will be so foggy headed and shaky, I'll grab something and then another, and another. Before I will have realized what I have done.

another day, no binging. I really am glad I was able to lay down and sleep off the migraine. It probably would have been worse if I hadn't.

ok, today is going to have special problems, well maybe not today, but it will affect tomorrow and the next day, I will be limiting my carbs to 50 g for 2 days, as per the carb cycling mentioned in the magazine. apparently, one day on is not enough to trigger the insulin response and fat burning mechanisms. We'll see. I'll give it a whirl.

I have most of my food planned, the only thing I am lacking is dinner. I'm cooking them my salmon patties, which are not low carb, and I think I will make me some salmon rolls or something like that.

I have decided that if i eat at my maintenance calories or below, i'm not going to call it a binge. There have been times when i felt out of control, and many would classify that as a binge, but i find it counterproductive to label it that. Plus, i strongly believe that the body like homeostasis and it is therefore natural to crave your maintenance level of calories. Eating at that level isn't a mental disease (but binge eating is, to me anyway). Sure it may be off plan and i may feel guilty, but i won't call it a binge.

surfer girl, that makes sense because YES your body is derailing your dieting attempts at ALL times. The body does not understand dieting. So yes you naturally CRAVE MAINTENANCE calories. We have to outsmart our hunger cues/insulin responses in order to break through this.

When I was doing intermittent fasting, my meal was always so LARGE. I was trying to fit all the days calories into the one big meal, which isn't going to happen, hence the weightloss.

well, I had to deal with the blood sugar shakes, with the low carbing, felt a little scary, BUT.

I had 3 eggs and 1 small cucumber, I also had 1 1/2 slices of peaches, and 10 sm pcs dark chocolate. the shakes abated. it didn't take much.

So, I'm pretty sure I am going to add coconut oil to my low carb days. Coconut oil is EASILY used by the brain and does not need insulin to be converted into energy. So in order to avoid the discomfort the blood sugar shakes bring, I will start with 1 tsp in each of my cups of tea.

My blood sugar was 88 when I started to feel the fog and shakiness. Which is actually 10 pts lower then it normally is during the day. Maybe a good sign my insulin resistance is responding to the low carb menu.

whoa, the low blood sugar episodes were very frequent today, but you know what, I know they pass, and they don't worry me. they are just very uncomfortable, I hate being grouchy and feeling like part of my brain is missing.

well, I ate about 64g carbs, less NET, but i'm not doing the net thing. My goal was 50g carbs. So I didn't make it, but I'm learning.

That cup of cantolope was so refreshing, I don't think I could have skipped it. I really don't see anywhere I could have cut back, I ate the lower carb veggies, the cantalope was 13 g carbs, the dark chocolate pcs I had were 6g, I made the salmon patties a lower carb version. blah.

we'll see if 60g is ok to shoot for. I have to stop being an all or nothing person!

I'm going to drink a glass of tea and take my sleepy time meds, and hopefully I will get a good's night rest.

well, the hunger hit again, and I made myself an egg, mozzarella, baby spinach, and mushroom mini omelet. Hunger is severe when you are breastfeeding. I get so mad at my body. Listen, you got more than ENOUGH "stores" to work with, use that to make breastmilk!

I really think there is a huge insulin connection with my binges. I have read the carbohydrate's addict book several times because it JUST MAKES SENSE. That is totally me in those pages. I know it is insulin hunger. This is a maddening hunger that accompanies a sugar crash. It is very common if you are insulin resistant, which that is the way I got gestational diabetes, I had a problem to begin with.

I have done the CAD several times, and I usually see results, but this last time, I did not.

The intermittent fasting works for me because there is no food, no insulin spike at all or at least just a tiny one. My blood sugar stays more stable (I don't get the shakes from not eating)

I'm trying this method, because i HAVE to keep my body guessing.

I woke up to a new low, and I actually woke up NOT wanting to scarf carbs. My b/s was 86, which normally I am very uncomfortable with, my morning sugar is usually 97-105.

today is day 2 of my "2 day diet" as described in the magazine. i didn't make 50, but I am going to try to make it today.

Hope everyone is enjoying a binge free lifestyle

no binging here, just did a zumba workout with yoga after, and I feel really great. Not hungry so much as thirsty.