I have big issues with cravings and temptations and have bingeing tendancies. My bingeing has subsided with time (exercise helps I think for a stress reliever and staying busy) but cravings and temptations still plague me. The internal dialog that goes on is really frustrating and distracting and I'm so tired of being preoccupied with food. Will this eventually subside? Will I eventually be able to look at a temptation and choose to forgo it and that be the end of it? *Normal* people don't have these issues...and I'm not sure why I do...maybe I need to talk to someone about it, but I have a feeling it's just going to be something that I will always battle and just have to learn to accept and make the best decisions I can when faced with them and if I fall down, get back to work the very next chance I can. I know that if I stay on track at least 85-90% of the time I will not regain my weight but it's just a slippery choice, but a strict NO CHOICE policy on certain temptations is not realistic for me. Anyway, the point of my rambling is to ask how people have seen these internal dialogs change and if maintainers have found that they start to subside or become less frequent.

The way to get free of the cravings, temptations, and maddening internal voice over sugar and white refined carbs is to quit them. So long as they are in your diet at all, they will continue to plague you. That's simply the nature of the beast.

But you can put it to the test and see whether this is true for you, quite easily. Commit to testing it out for 30 days and see what happens. Quit sugar, honey, white refined flour, white rice, etc. for just 30 days; if your cravings and temptation and "internal dialogue" disappear, then you will have found the culprit and it's physiological. If they don't disappear, then you know you've got some kind of emotional work to do.

Yes, it will. However, I cannot tell you how long it's going to take, I think it's a very personal thing. I can go weeks without having to deal with it and then all of a sudden I get whacked with it full force. But the ability to resist does get better with time. For me, the key factor is exercise. Without exercise, I would not have any will power to resist food.

It hasn't gone away for me yet. Funny thing is, I quit smoking and drinking around the same time I started my healthy diet, and I could never ever imagine drinking or smoking again. I really have no desire...but whoa baby, the first taste of sugar and I'm a crazed woman. I can't stop until I'm ill. Thankfully I have manage to maintain my weight loss through a very hard time of struggling with the beast. I've been off sugar again (TOTALLY) for 10 days and the cravings are gone again, and life is back to normal. I was thrilled to weigh in at 139 this morning which is at the low end of my maintaince range. Now, to not give in and celebrate with the devil...lol

I will be honest, even after 6 years of maintenance, it didn't go away for me. I never had a binging problem, but the preoccupation always exists. Before I gained the weight (I was around 19 when that happened), the thoughts never existed. It was sort of like "recovery" ~ you can be "recovered" but never go back to what you were before. At least for me.

I never binged either (in the way some people here struggle with it) I just overate. Free food, especially sweet stuff, was something I could never say no to; I work in a job where these appear in the workplace a lot.

If there is a tray of sweets in the room it still "calls" to me. Even more than before I lost the weight, maybe. I am still amazed that "normal" people don't seem to hear that. But I am more conscious of that desire and that is what helps me deliberately say no, that's not for me. It's slowly becoming more automatic, but I still have to go through the process. And I practice calorie counting still so I know when something fits into my plan and when it doesn't.

I joke that I understand now why men's eyes are drawn toward women's chests because that's exactly what happens to me when there are sweets in the room! Last week I was talking to one of my colleagues who was sitting next to a giant tray of baklava for a student club event, and I could hardly pay attention to what he was saying, seriously.

Mine has subsided, it's just the occasional low murmur. I notice it in places like Starbucks when I go get a tall skinny latte. I have to walk past the pastry case and my internal voice will start up with "pastries! pastries! pastries!" So, I kind of play a game, mentally, what WOULD I get if I were going to order something. Oddly, that seems to do the trick for me.

When I started, I put some foods on my "forever no" list for various reasons. These foods include: sugary soda, packaged baked goods, most pastries (with the exception of the occasional home made item), most fried foods, fast food. Making things very clear - black/white works for me. It is easy for me to think "no, I don't eat that" that to to try to do the mental bargaining, calorie strategizing required. Not to mention the munchies/cravings/urge to eat more more more that sugary/white carby treats set off in me!

I still make the occasional bad food choice, but it's never pastries

(to clarify - I really don't miss these "no" foods. Food that I would have missed dearly and struggled with living without are NOT on the list)