The urge to stuff myself
 

Hi everybody
I have this uncontrollable urge to stuff myself a few days after I have been on plan. I usually do this when I am not hungry or just a little hungry and can take care of it with a banana or piece of fruit. It's like I can't stop thinking about it until I am stuffed. It causes me to gain rapidly and it is such a downer. What can I do to stop this cycle?

I have this problem too, I think it's a reward mechanism or a sense of false security along the lines of "I've been good for such-and-such time, time to reward myself or it won't hurt just once"

I've found that either 1) caving a little bit, like having ONE slice of pizza and giving the rest to my upstairs neighbours or fiance

or 2) rewarding myself with something other than food, ie: make up or some fun activity

works pretty good for me.

Try sitting somewhere quiet and exploring what you are actually feeling. Like naming your thoughts and the sensations in your body "stomach sensations, chest tightening, thought that I have to eat food, thought that the only cure for this is food, thought that I must make this sensation go away."

Talk to yourself and say "these physical sensations cannot hurt me. I can handle them. These thoughts about food are not the truth."

Happens to me, when it does I tend to write down everything I am thinking at the time. I think that feeling stems from some insecurity or other emotion that I am simply not dealing with correctly.

On top of that I go out and do something for myself as a treat that is completely unrelated to food. Like go buy some make up, predicted/manicure, new nail polish etc. Trying to rewire my brain to think rewards don't equal food.

Oh man I can totally relate here. Something that has really helped me is that I HAVE to write everything down BEFORE I eat it, no matter what. A lot of times, just getting the tracking book and opening it up is enough to make me change my mind.