When you started your diet did you:

a. started that day and purged all your junk. Go through your cabinets/fridge and throw away all unhealthy food regardless of amount or cost.

b. Set a date to start, and ate all the unhealthy food to get rid of it before that date, then starting when it was gone. Not wanting to waste food, waste money since you bought it.

c. Left it there, hid it in a cabinet/ back of fridge/whatever...wanted to start eating healthy, don't want to eat it but don't want to throw it away either..not really sure what to do with it.

d. Gave it away to a food bank.

e. Other

We don't live by a healthy/unhealthy attitude. We use portion control and common sense. So, when we got going, we threw nothing away. Instead, when I'd want an Oreo, I'd take 1 or 2 and put the rest away...or an ounce of Doritos. We buy less of that type of stuff now, but if we want it or it is in the house, we just fit it in on occasion. That's just us, others may have other ideas! Good Luck!

Kind of a combination between A and B...I technically didn't start that day because I ordered diet to go and it took a few days to get the order. I continued eating some of what I had on hand until the order arrived and then tossed 90% of it...I kept a few frozen dinners, some canned food in my emergency kit, and condiments.

I have set myself up for failure many many times doing B because by the time the start date rolled around I'd give up and buy more junk food.

e. Other. I started my diet rather abruptly with no preparation at all. My husband ended up eating all the junk.

E. other. As crazy as it sounds, we have never bought a bunch of junk. I have 2 kids, and I always wanted them to eat as healthily as possible, so no soda or bunch of unhealthy snacks at home ever. (Occasionally chips, ice cram, etc. as a treat, which we still do). My problem has been portion control.

More of a combo of A and B for me too. I ate as much junk as I could then threw out the rest so I wouldn't be tempted.

a. I started throwing it away/also gave a lot of it away too. My mother loves to give me tons of chocolate and junk so I just give it away to friends now!

Now I'm at the point where I can manage portion control. I have a bag of chips I bought weeks ago and maybe once a week I'll have a few, but most of the time I forget about it actually.

I've thrown stuff away and I've also kept stuff and used portion control. I've also ate everthing and then started the next day. This last time (almost two weeks now) I had some Starbursts left over and rather then throw them away, I stuck them in the freezer. I haven't broke into them yet but I may at some point or I may not.

E. I gained most of my weight on too-large and too-frequent portions of healthy foods, and mostly whenever I dieted, I would use a counting method (calories, exchanges, or points...) so no foods were off limits.

When I was single, I would sometimes do pantry purged, for example when doing low-carb, but now that I'm married, that doesn't work so well.

Hubby and I eat quite differently, so I can't get rid of everything I'd rather not have in the house.

We have designated three separate spaces in our pantry. My food, hubby's food, and shared food. I have a wheat or gluten issue, so we make sure that my food and the shared food is wheat-free.

I will occasionally throw out food to prevent bingeing if it's a trigger food that hubby won't eat ( donating only if the container is unopened). If it's something hubby might eat, I'll just ask him if he wants it, and if he does, I'll move it to his side of the pantry.

I'll go with E as there wasn't a ton of junk food in the house. My bigger issue was portion sizes not junk food. I do like chocolate and there's usually some in the house, including now, so there wasn't really food that needed to disappear.

I wouldn't throw away food though, I'd give it to someone or save it for later instead.

This is exactly how I handle it. If I really want something, I measure out a serving and put the container back. I try to concentrate on healthy foods, but I eat whatever I want in appropriate portions.

Since I still live with my family, they continued to eat the junk food, whereas I bought new and healthy food for myself. Nothing went to waste - though, saying that I DID throw away some of my chocolate since no one else likes peppermint chocolates. Living in a house where there is junk food makes it hard, but it has enabled me to have a lot of self-control (:

Combo of A and D. We didn't have a lot of junk, per se, but we did have more processed foods than I wanted around and really just more food in the pantry than we really needed - lots of "stuff" that it seemed wasteful to get rid of but in all honesty I didn't think we were ever really going to get around to eating (due to changing tastes, for example, or no longer eating pasta as often...that kind of thing). It was bugging me to have cupboards so full of food, but so little of it was anything I wanted to eat anymore.

I threw away anything remotely junky, no guilt, and haven't missed it. Anything that wasn't junk and wasn't out of date went to the food bank. I feel so much better - my pantry actually has empty shelves, and is just more reflective of how the whole family is eating these days. We shop more frequently, and purchase less at a time (bulk purchases and Costco-size packages are a thing of the past). It's kind of like a fresh start.

It's been a gradual change, for me. Kind of a combination of throwing out things I no longer had interest in torturing myself with... and kind of phasing them out of my lifestyle.

E. With calorie counting I allow myself to eat whatever food I want as long as it falls within my calories so there was no reason to get rid of anything.

I will say though it's not like there's stockpiles of junk laying around usually there's a box of Oreos and a bag of chips that last the whole month.