This is the first big cave ive had since I started all of this.

My mother made gean bean casserole and instant potatoes for her dinner tonight. I saw it in the fridge, and having not eatten all day (with work and other obligations there wasnt time, I know its not good), I went "im going to have one bite". That one bite turned into about a half cup full of each! I couldnt even believe it. I know feel disgusting, and extremly guilty. The first few bites where good but the rest wasnt, espically since I know how horrible it is for me.

Food to me is like a drug is to an addict or alcohol to an alcoholic.


I just feel like the worst person in the world. I cant even believe i just ate that crap. I was wondering when it was going to happen...

This is a journey girl and it appears you have done quite well. The important thing is to keep going. Just because you chip a plate doesn't mean you broke the whole set of dishes.

Why don't you add up the calories (even if you have to estimate) to figure out how bad the damage actually was. The instant potatoes would be pretty easy to figure out. With your moms help, I bet you could come close to estimating the casserole. You could:

1. Let it go. You did what you did.

2. Decide you are taking XXX number calories each day for the next five days to compensate.

You are doing soooo well! You are to be congraulated!

A cup of food, even a cup of pure butter, won't derail you unless you let it. Shrug it off and stay on track. As long as you don't go off plan all the time you'll still make great progress. Also, remember that starving yourself triggered you to eat things you didn't really want to eat and ward against future occurrences by feeding yourself the foods you want to be eating before you get so famished that your self control goes out the window.

Oh. I just looked at your ticker and saw you've already lost 68(!!!) pounds. Keep kicking butt and taking names.

What is gean bean casserole? One half cup each? How many calories are you talking about? One serving of instant potatoes (1/2 cup?) is only 80-100 calories, unless you drenched it in butter or gravy.

And you hadn't eaten all day? So even if it was one cup of butter, that is 1628 calories, which is not that many calories if that's all you ate.

Please don't feel bad and just start tomorrow as a new day! Here's an idea, keep a little container of almonds or other unsalted nuts in your purse/work desk/glove compartment at all times. If you haven't eaten all day you have a quick healthy energy source!

So you didn't' eat anything all day and then are beating yourself up for eating something that may not be the healthiest? Your overall calories can't even be close to what they should've been today.

In the future, plan plan plan. Prepare the day before, take food with you, etc.

Wow, I totally relate to going crazy one day and sabotaging my self for the entire day after doing ok for most of the day. The afternoons and evenings are the very hardest for me, always have been. Yesterday I ate everything in sight and started eating again at night. It was a complete meltdown. Today I have done very well although I ate pretty late and don't know if that will keep me from liking the scale in the morning but we'll see. I think the slogan keep on keeping on is important, no matter what. Every day is different and tweaking my food a bit here and there changes every day too. Some days I love what I have and have not eaten and some days I am not sure and other days I just hate it. You are doing fine and right on track. This is what wt loss is all about for most of us....not always perfect but pretty good.

I used to be a nighttime eater. I've started putting myself to bed at a decent hour and have managed to 1. get more sleep, and 2. stop the midnight snack attack.

It's my personal philosophy that stepping off the wagon is necessary every once in a while. I mean, if you followed your plan flawlessly until you got to your goal weight, just kept postponing those cravings and habits, they would all rush back at you when you stopped "dieting" and started maintaining. You shouldn't be "falling" off it, though, if you're going to splurge, it should be in full consciousness and confidence that you still have control.

If you keep eating when it doesn't taste good, you're probably just eating to punish yourself for the first few bites. And you say you were "wondering when it was going to happen"...you need to recover your self-esteem, girl! Failure is not inevitable. Naturally, if you hadn't eaten all day, instinct tells you to eat the first thing you see that looks good. Maybe you could ask your mother to put her casseroles and such on the top shelf, and you can put your healthier items at eye-level so they're the first thing you grab.

Doesn't sound like a big deal. As others have mentioned, we all need to learn how to deal with these moments. Just use it as a learning experience (i.e., make sure you are eating steadily throughout the day so that you are not ravenously hungry) and just move on. Dwelling on it as a "failure" doesn't do anything to help your cause on the long run.

Yes, this was one HUGE change I made several months ago. I love sleeping with the rest of the world and not being called to my cupboard instead.

If your mom uses the standard recipes, you ate about 300 calories.

If you're saying that's all you had for dinner (especially after not eating all day), you made a huge mistake alright - but it didn't have anything to do with what you chose to eat (except in that it wasn't enough).

I'd really encourage you not to see eating as evil. You beat yourself up over absolutely nothing. Even eating a full cup of butter would have been reasonable, given not eating all day. Food is fuel, and if you skip meals you will set yourself up for true binges that will be a lot more than 300 calories. It isn't "evil" it's your body's way of making you fuel your body. Just as if you held your breath, you would eventually pass out and breathe - if you don't eat, more primitive "survival" areas of your brain will kick in and make it very difficult for you not to eat.

Also, I'm a bit concerned about your statement that you know how horrible they were for you. Green bean casserole and mashed potatoes aren't exactly low carb health foods, but they're not that nefarious, either. It makes me wonder if you need to educate yourself a bit about nutrition. I'm very carb sensitive, and green bean casserole and mashed potatoes wouldn't be my best choice, but there are hundreds that would be worse. There's quite a bit of fiber in the beans, and the mushrooms in the mushroom soup (as processed as they are) still have some good nutrition in there. There's also calcium and proten from the milk. White potatoes, especially dehydrated with no peel aren't the best carb choice, but they beat out a slice of white bread.

My biggest concern is that you saw such a small mistake (which I'm not convinced was a mistake at all) as a giant failure. Expecting yourself to never make a mistake for the rest of your life, or even just the rest of your weight loss will set yourself up for failure (or very miserable success).

You deserve to treat yourself better than that.

I know this probably isn't helpful...but green bean casserole may just be the best food to ever come out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. I mean it rules. It really does!

And I doubt you derailed your whole eating program. Just step back on the wagon today. You'll be fine!

What else did you eat yesterday? Lets figure this out. You said you had nothing all day....does that mean no sit down meals....or absolutely nothing?

If you seriously fasted all day and ate only 1/2 cup of green bean casserole and 1/2 cup of instant mashed potatoes, and nothing else...you were starving yourself. Like Kaplods said, (looking at a couple on-line calorie counters) what you ate was probably a MAX of 300 calories for the day. I HOPE you had something else. Oh, and green bean casserole was rated anywhere from a B+ to an A- as far as calories vs. nutrition. Not a bad food at all.