I really love beans-- garbanzos, lentils, split peas...

I have very healthy recipes for all of them-- just beans and veggies-- no added meat, no added fat.

But, I have a hard time not eating too much. Tonight I made a scrumptious lentil soup and I ended up downing three bowlsful. Recently I made a chick pea dish and ate twice as much as I had planned.

Beans are so healthy, but do they border on a binge food? I mean, there is a limit to how many beans you can eat, but my limit seems pretty high.

I've been so good about staying away from everything I'm not supposed to eat-- but do I have to put beans on that list?

I can easily overeat things like grapes, cherries, baby carrots and peas. They have higher sugar content so I can see why I like them so much! I don't put them off limits, but I do buy them off the salad bar to make sure I only get one serving.

I go through the self check out lane when I buy these or else I get very strange looks and comments from the cashiers.

A while ago when i was trying WW (which did not work for me) this was brought up, how many 0 point foods can you eat without counting them, and it was decided that if you feel you've gone over board (like, say, 9 cans of diet cola) to count them. so if you feel like you are over eating, limit it!

personally I wont buy pistachio's or almonds because I would eat 1/2 a container the first night.

Beans are very good for you and in no way should you take them off your meal plans. They are not extremely high in calories either 1 cup of beans ranges between 150-250 depending on the variety.

What you need to do is serve yourself what you have decided to have and then put the rest away, immediately. Do not give yourself a choice of more servings.

Have you looked into any distraction techniques (drinking water, doing the dishes etc..) before you eat any more?

PS sorry I am not in the 100 lb club but I thought it was important to chime in that you need beans. EAT BEANS.

Yeah, beans are awesome for you. I'm not sure what plan you are using, but I allow myself plenty of beans and just make sure I keep under my allotted calories with them. It seems to me that when I get a lot of fiber, my weight loss the next day is a bit higher than normal. I usually go down .2-.4 pounds a day, but after a lot of fiber, I can drop .5 or even a whole pound and not get it back.

I think you can choose to do whatever works out for you.

Some foods I have problems with and find it easier to just stay away from them, or not have them at home - but the funny thing is, which foods those are changes. I ate granola, a little bit, most days when I was losing; but now, I can't seem to stay out of the bag if it's around. When I was losing, I couldn't keep chocolate at home, now I can.

Whatever works.

How are you determining that you're eating "too much?" How and by what reasoning are you making that determination? Are you eating until your stomach hurts? Are you exceeding your calorie allowance or your food plan? Is your bean consumption causing weight gain or inhibiting loss (and are you looking at more than one day or even one week to determine this, to make sure that it's actually real weight being counted and not just the weight of the food)? Are you exhibiting any ill effects (other than gas - don't worry about that, the more regularly you eat beans, the better you'll be able to digest them).

There are a lot of healthy foods that I do have to avoid or drastically limit, but I don't base the decision solely on quantity. It's the effects that are important, and I try many other techniques before deciding to ban them.

For me, beans are easy. I do tend to overeat them, but a few tricks help that from being less of a problem. Whether I buy them dried or canned, I prepare a small enough quantity that if I eat the whole batch, there's no worries. Or, I make a large quantity (in the crockpot) but before I have a single serving, I portion them out into serving containers and freeze all but one. Again, choosing reasonable serving sizes for each portion.

I also tend to prepare them "brothy" or with a lot of added low cal veggies (like onion, celery and bell pepper), so that it's not just beans, but also cooking liquid and non-starchy veggies to dilute the calories per serving. For me two to three times what I planned usually isn't a disaster (I just cut somewhere else). Three bowls of a bean soup leaves me a little overfull, but it doesn't seem to hurt my weight loss at all, so I wouldn't worry about that. Is it hurting you in some way, or is it just embarassing or uncomfortable to lose control even in such a minor way?

Every year I gorge on Ranier cherries. I'll eat a pound or more at a time, at least once a week until the season is over. Luckily the season is short (only about three to five weeks). It's not the smartest thing to do (especially since I have IBS, and any drastic increase or decrease in fat or fiber causes painful symptoms). It tends to be good for weight loss, because the fruit is replacing foods higher in calories and fat and lower in fiber, but I end up with abdominal cramps and sometimes even diarrhea.

As far as it goes, it's not the smartest choice in the world, but it's also not the dumbest. I'm not doing any permanent harm to my body and it's sort of fun to have something so special to look forward to, something I love so much it's worth a little discomfort.

I go through this to a lesser degree with other seasonal fruits - watermelon, lychee, honeycrips apples, and most recently cocktail fruit (not fruit cocktail - cocktail fruit or cocktail grapefruit is a pomelo/tangerine hybrid - looks like a deep green grapefruit).

There's enough water and fiber in fresh fruit, that I don't worry much about those overndulgences (they also tend to be self-limiting, because after the first stomach ache or two, I learn to be more careful).

However, I'm more careful with dried fruits, because the potential consequences are much more severe. I've learned to buy them from bulk bins so I can buy only maybe a quarter pound at a time. I have a bunch of plastic tupperware style containers that hold only 2 ounces (about 4 tablespoons), and I weigh and portion out dried fruit into those - usually with a half an ounce of nuts, which I also have to buy carefully. We buy those at a Big Lots type store in single-serving packages (and a single serving is actually about 2 to 4 servings). Combining the dried fruit with the nuts into a teeny container, and eating super slowly helps - but during some times (like PMS/TOM) it's safer just to keep them out of the house.

Use every trick you need to, in order to maintain a healthy diet/weight loss, but don't eliminate unless you have to.

Off limits, not really, but there are some I really have to be cautious around. Avocados and nuts come to mind. They're good for you, but they have the potential to have me eat too much of them. And too much comes so fast!

I stay away from nuts, they're so goooood LOL i portion out almonds in tiny little bags for snacks, that helps. The "candy fruit", as in watermelon and pineapple, i have to limit too -- i could gobble the whole thing up! although, if it came down to a whole watermelon vs a whole bag of chips, well you get where i'm going with this...

Ubergirl, I hear you on the beans. They're a food I tend to overeat also. I can only (safely) eat them when they're sprinkled in a recipe, NOT the bulk of the recipe itself. Same thing goes with nuts. I STRICTLY use them ONLY in recipes - a handful in a salad, a tsp of chopped walnuts in a baked apple, etc. I NEVER eat them just on their own.

Guacamole - I eat that once in a while and portion off a very small amount. I'd have no problem eating the whole bowl.

Sweet potatoes - they're like candy to me. I eat them once in a while and only if I make just one at a time. Otherwise I'd most likely devour the whole bunch.

Kashi Go Lean cereal - I ate it for months and months straight - and then I started hitting the box. Buh bye Kashi Go Lean.

Grapes, cherries, even butternut squash at times I've overeaten. When that happens, I take them out of my diet for a while and then reintroduce them later.

Healthy foods is loaded with calories, make no mistake about it and can definitely get me into "trouble" at times. That's why I need the combination of the healthy foods WITH the calorie counting. Though sometimes that's not even enough to stop me from overdoing it. I'm always re-assessing, always making new rules, always taking some foods out of my diet. I'm just always on top of it, always recognizing that things and myself don't always stay the same.

I don't know how healthy it is. I don't think it has much nutritional value. Popcorn is my enemy. I cannot have it in the house. It is dangerous not only because the nutritional info/serving size info is hard to nail down. I mean who eats unpopped popcorn? Yet that is how they measure the nutrition on the label. The popped nutritional info varies widely. Last but certainly not least, I can easily mindlessly overeat popcorn regardless of whether or not I portion it out.

To a much lesser extent, I have to watch nuts, but not keep them out of the house.

I don't have any healthy food off limits...I do have everything portioned out in little snack baggies though to keep be from going over board with things like cherries, grapes, etc.

Down here making a pot of beans on Monday is sort of a tradition and usually over rice. When I do make them I have a salad first and then eat the beans. This keeps me from getting up and getting more

Well, I'm GLAD to know I'm not the only one who can go overboard with beans. It's the recipes where beans are the bulk of the recipe that I have problems-- as a bean-lover, I have a lot of really delicious recipes. I'm using PAM instead of olive oil now, but otherwise, these are foods I've always loved.

I don't eat nuts at all. I have noticed I have to be careful around some root vegetables and butternut squash....

What I really seem able to control well: non-starchy veggies, lean proteins-- mostly fish and chicken broiled or poached. Whole grain bread. Single serving items, like 4oz cottage cheese, single serving cheese, yogurt.
I'm pretty good with fruit.

The next time I make beans, I'm going to try to make single serving portions and freeze the rest. If that doesn't work then they're going on the off limits cart for a while.

Even if I do tend to go a bit overboard on certain veggies, it's not all that big a deal because of their low calorie count - zucchini, broccoli, turnips, string beans, leafy salads, spinach, cukes, tomatoes & cauliflower comes quickly to mind. I enjoy them thoroughly and stick to those, especially during the week. The starchier ones - they very often do me in and I need to avoid them, mostly.

Fruits I also do better with the single serving type ones - ONE apple, ONE grapefruit, ONE pear, I don't go back for yet another one of those, as opposed to picking at cherries or grapes or cut up melon.

You gotta know your pitfalls - and how to avoid and work around them.

I loooove beans but I don't have a problem going overboard with them. But I also wouldn't consider 1/2 cup my limit. If I eat slowly, they're just too filling to overdo. I can do it if I eat too fast, but that equals stomach ache!

But of course our trouble foods are individuals to all of us. It's more the strategies that we may be able to borrow from someone that are useful.