This pretty much sums up what I would say for me as well. I have had binge eating disorder for 14 years now. For most of that time I've brought "trigger foods" into my home thinking this time I will be okay and eat like a normal person only to find the entire bag/container/dish empty before I ever felt full or that I'd had enough. Finally I just stopped. If I binge on an item now it goes into the "no more" pile in my brain and I just consider it like a food allergy...can't have it. What is it they say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. That is totally me with certain types of food. Now, all that being said, I recognize that IE works for gobs of folks with BED. It just hasn't for me, so I'm trying a different approach. But, I agree NO FOOD IS BAD! It's just food; however, how I interact with it is either an asset to my health or not and I am trying to choose those that encourage my interactions to be more of an asset.

If there's a place I'm dying to go to its on special occasions like birthday, anniversary or other celebration. I make reservations, I'd never wait in a line!

People don't have to cook to be foodies. Anyone who enjoys well crafted food can be a foodie. On the other hand I've never understood people who don't cook. If I don't cook then what would me and my family eat? Take out? Sandwiches? Frozen or pre packaged food? What do people who don't cook eat?

Since we are on to celebrating food now, i want to share my trip in France last year.

I don't have a lot of money so i can't indulge as freely as those who do. To keep my tight budget under control and basically to enable me to do the trip at all, i did a cycle tour of France for two months. I can't tell you how many kilometres/miles i covered but it was a lot. I pushed (literally, stupidly) my loaded bike up four mountain passes and rode up the fifth before i was totally knackered and sick of them.

I started out unfit and weighing close to what i was at the start of this current diet. i finished up at about 160 pounds i think - if that is close to 70kg.

I had a wonderful wonderful time with food. I wish food in our country was like food in France. I was so sickened to be coming home to Australia from the point of view of food after that experience, though food here is regarded as very good. It is if you have a lot of money. But your average restaurant, cafe, and bakery is very very ordinary by comparison with France and most likely not a few other european countries. But i would think the situation in Australia is similar to that in America. An abundance of cheap nauseating food while the good stuff is out of reach for a lot of people.

Anyway back to France.

The desserts and pastures. OH MY GOD. There is no need to binge. One a day (which is more than ideal admittedly) is so good you want to savour the memory for the whole day. YOu don't need to keep mindlessly stuffing your face with more.

I think my most favourite dessert experience was a slice of strawberry tart offered to me by some others in a restaurant in a roadside eatery in the Pyrenees. It wasn't even in a village. I stopped to have a drink because it was damned hot. I sat with this family group who were just polishing their plates i can't remember what they'd just eaten but they said it was very good. They were having a four course meal for about 15 euros, set menu. As they were a large group, the whole tart arrived. The creme was frangipani creme which one of earth's special gourmet delights. I won't detail it all. But after that a whole huge block of local cheese was brought to the table. Unlike the foreign tourists, i was told, French people don't feel the need to devour the whole thing. They are able to just take a taste and be happy. They have to talk about it of course. They love to talk about food.

But moving on from super stunning sweets, of which i had quite a lot, I have wonderful memories of duck magret (which is a duck breast dish) with a whole stack of veggie stew along with it. What a beautiful meal and only just after i'd been through my very first french formal garden and medieval castle in a tiny village. Oh what a total delight that little place was. the restaurant had been recommended to me by the cashier in the local supermarket where i'd recently stopped for supplies. http://travel-tips.s3-website-eu-wes...-Hautefort.htm

The supermarkets! Oh What a joy!. But wait, a cheese shop! A sausage shop! Shops just to sell one type of food! What amazing things they do with food over there.

One day i thought i'd stop into one of the sausage chops - properly called a charcuterie - a beautiful word as well. I told the woman i wanted something for my lunch. She hacked off a bit of very fatty sausage salami style thing they'd made. I later at it sitting under the http://www.ila-chateau.com/caze/Millau-Viaduct.jpg milau viaduct.

I could write for pages about the pleasures of food in France on this trip. But as has been pointed out, French people are not obese. They are getting fatter, its true. And middle aged people are frequently more round than thin though certainly there are still many thin people.

So my point is, No i don't have a point. Food is one of life's great pleasures. There is no need to punish ourselves with it by eating bad food, or depriving ourselves of quality food. But the price we must pay for really enjoying good food, is moderation or restriction of some form or other. That is my opinion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...ampaign=Buffer

Very Germaine article for the discussion.

I found through whatever combination of luck and happenstance I've become more of a resister type person now. I wasn't before. Probably appetite hormones have changed. But it does offer some validation to getting off the sugar, junk wheel long enough to get better control approach can work for some and might even be a necessity.

I know for me when I was in the middle of eating it every day and so hungry all the time I needed to step away to ever be truly successful.

Interesting aside on France: highest per capita consumption of saturated fat in Europe. Lowest rate of heart attacks in Europe. Of course it doesn't prove anything, just interesting.

Pattience - if you haven't already read it, I recommend you read French Women Don't Get Fat. I think you'd enjoy it.

I believe Samantha18 recommended it earlier in the thread, but after I read your post I just wanted to mention it again in case you hadn't seen it and/or you have not read it.

Wannabe, I hate cooking but do cook. You're right, otherwise, what would we eat?!

I'm lucky (?) that my children have only a limited range of food that they like to eat so I just cook the same things over and over. They're the type who simply refuse to eat if a food is unfamiliar to them (yes, I've tried over the years to expand their range but it never happened) and of course, I want them to have proper meals so cooking familiar food it is.

I'm similar too. I'm not that adventurous with food and enjoy only what I know and am familiar with. Familiar food is pleasure. Other types out there, wouldn't know till I try, I guess!

Yeah the issue is that I think I'm in the camp that has trouble resisting chocolate cake. It's not about willpower, per say, but about learning discipline. It's an every day struggle for me to have a little bit of cake or to not overeat at dinner. Would it be easier to cut whole groups of things out? In the short term, yes. I can't stick with it, though.

I remember when it came out. I don't know why i haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Maybe i picked up enough info on it through other ways. But i have a background with the french and know how they eat. I had a french boyfriend for a few years. He taught me about food. I also ate a number of meals at his parents home in Lyon, the gastronomic centre of the French food.

A meal with them went like this:

Salad - mostly lettuce with a baguette on the side. The french eat salad as a first course or as a whole meal. I can't remember if there was butter there or not. Frequently they do not eat butter on their bread.

Meat and vegetable. It could be a small piece of steak and frites or another vegetable but my favourite main dish was quenelles which is a type of sausage made with chicken or fish usually and served with a napolitan type of sauce. No cheese. I love those things. I regret i did not have them this time in france. Its best done in a home kitchen.

Dessert which could be a small tub of yoghurt or choice from a cheese plate. You just have a small taste size piece of cheese. Or if we'd brought some gateaux we'd share those. Or maybe the mother would make some sort of milk dessert but i think most people don't cook desserts anymore too often.

Obviously a glass of wine was served with it.

The mother was pleasantly plump, only slightly overweight and in her 50s i'd say. The father in his 60s was tall with a belly but not huge by any means.

They led fairly sedentary lifestyle.

First of all I want to go on vacation with Patience doesn't it sound wonderful?

I spent a fair amount of time in Europe when I was working and had people in my group in Brussels. So at least a couple times a year I went for a couple weeks including a weekend where I did some excursions. I simply loved eating there. Lots of courses, small bites, paired wines, beautiful colorful vegetables, tiny bites of chocolate with wonderful rich coffee.

The little cafeteria at the office had a salad bar of sorts but with steamed vegetables so instead of greens you'd have thin green beans or asparagus and carrot threads with vinegars and a splash of olive oil. Delic. They had a chef and he absolutely cooked with pride the daily specials were amazing! One weekend I went to Bruges which is like a fairy tale city winding cobbled streets, canals. It was brisk and sunny like late October I think and I walked and walked and walked up and down the streets exploring soaking it all in and was just starving, wandered into a little hotel and they seated me alone in an alcove overlooking the water, all antique furniture, tapestry drapery. They served me several courses with the wines and ended with that coffee and chocolates. I can absolutely remember how perfectly happy and pampered I felt.

Another time I woke up early and took the train to Paris. They were sold out of the coach seats and I spent $30 or something more for the first class or whatever they called it, what a lovely experience, for breakfast they brought me a chocolate croissant with that coffee that I savored. In Paris I walked all day up and down the streets, bought a few fashion items on Champs élysées down from the Arc de Triomphe. Found a little cafe and savored lunch, had a marvelous dinner on the train on the way back with the essential little bottle of wine. On another day trip there I shopped for a picnic near the Eiffel Tower and bought a raspberry tart, bread, cheese wine. Ah my.

I do have the book about French women and food and read it years ago. I'm going to get it out and read it again. Surely all the walking and being really hungry is the backdrop against which the intense food memories stand out.

And people there are generally very trim.

Yes indeed food meshed with the other memories is definitely pleasure!

Shannonsnail, very well said. I believe you put into words what I was trying to say, but missed. This is exactly my case as well. Thank you.

Locke I truly don't know if this is my unique thing or it would happen with others. Once I got past some point my relationship with previous trigger foods changed, physically and mentally.

Just throwing that out that it can happen, although it be a freaky isolated thing. So once I reached that tipping point, it has gotten easier to avoid not harder. Frustrating thing though everyone is different.

I have not had time yet to read the entire thread but just want to throw this out.

I try to remember that food will be pleasure for a very short time, literally minutes for me. The pleasure that I get from having a mobile healthy body lasts much longer!

Exactly! Plus, at least for me, now when I eat food, it still tastes great and I know it is good for me. And that is a lot more pleasurable and enjoyable then when I knew it was bad for me.

And then my body feels so great after. Plus I was stuffed before but now I am truly no longer hungry. I can tell folk, the no longer hungry is a million times better than the occassional stuffed but mostly always hungry way I used to be.

Ok so now I want to go on vacation. If you haven't read French Women Don't Get Fat then you should. Sure, there are some diet tips in there (spend a whole weekend eating leek soup? no thanks) but I get the point of it and have incorporated a lot from that book into my daily life and have sustained it for several years! For example, I walk to the market every single day. I do not shop only on the weekends. I walk there every day, see what's fresh and buy only the things I need for tonight's dinner. I can't tell you how many miles I've accumulated on my pedometer doing just that for.... gosh I think I read that book over 7yrs ago, before I even got married. It talked a lot about enjoyment.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my brain and some of the habits I've created are not written in stone. I enjoy food of all sorts, I don't disclude anything in my diet unless it's lamb liver or other organ meats, I'm not particularly picky. I've stood out from my family for a long time, I don't come from a long line of obesity, my whole family, parents, siblings, husband, child, extended family are pretty much all naturally intuitive eaters so I am surrounded by very good examples of what I need to be like. They're all thin, healthy, active and live a long time and they don't omit anything from their diet. I need to fit in with these people and I'm just excited that I've found a way to eat that allows me to be part of the human race finally.

I know when I used to go to fast food I would feel disappointed afterward. I am not saying that feeling was right or wrong, it was just there. My wife would not criticize but I saw the disappointment in her eyes when I brought the cup home. And I totally understood it. It was based on love and caring.

So now for instance we go to a place called Elevation Burger. Get a grass fed lettuce burger and share one fries that they cook in olive oil. Happy with the changes. Still love the food and feel better afterward physically and mentally.