They say quitting smoking is incredibly difficult, but I think getting your eating under control is harder - imagine quitting smoking, but you have to have one cigarette every day for the rest of your life. Just one - no more, no less. I think that’s what getting your eating habits under control is like - you can’t quit food. You just have to figure out how to keep it at a healthy level. That’s why everyone is stressing “sustainable changes” - if you live for chocolate, you will not stop eating it for the rest of your life. You just need to find a way to fit a reasonable amount into a healthy diet.
Unfortunately, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.
Luckily there’s no one food that I can’t live without. I love junk food of all (well, most) kinds. I binge indiscriminately. I even eat things I don’t like (Doritos) because they’re there.
The other problem is that I will go 20 hours without eating anything and then I’ll eat an entire day’s meals right before I go to bed.
Some times, I’ll go days just picking - an apple here, a banana there. Then, I have days where I don’t stop eating.
I love ginger ale and when I got really sick in January, I stocked up on it (it was on sale). I got sick again this month so I kept the stock up.
I’m not used to having it around all the time so when it’s gone, it should be fairly easy to get used to it not being here again.
Luckily, I actually enjoy healthy foods (I say as I eat my original flavor Cream of Wheat). I’m also one of those people who actually CAN cure a sweets craving with fruit. I also like bland foods (I prefer Rice Krispies to any sugary cereal)
My eating habits are atrocious. I know I’ve mentioned them on the Dope before.
So, I’m focusing on eating my 3 meals per day. I remember my high school biology teacher saying that you only have to do something 14 times before it becomes habit. If he’s right, I only have to do this for 2 weeks before it will become the norm for me.
I find it necessary to give up sweets altogether simply because I know about my lack of self control. The reason my dream bothered me so much is because I KNOW that if I’m faced with big piles of twinkies, or something similar, I’ll eat them all until I feel like death warmed over. The dream hit too close to home.
There are other things I need to stay away from, because of control issues.
No more cereal. I am a cereal junkie and when faced with a box of Rice Krispies, Cheerios, etc, I will eat it all in one sitting. No Special K diet for me. I have a real soft spot for Special K.
That’s the only one I can think of at the moment. I’m sure I’ll think of more as I go along.
My boyfriend’s dad had a heart attack scare last spring. Since then, he’s been enforcing a very strict diet on himself (his wife tried for 30 years to get him to eat healthy). He isn’t allowed any sweets, soda, white bread, etc. He eats his 3 meals and has trail mix (the kind without chocolate in it) if he has a craving for junk food.
He was over 230, but I’m not sure how far over.
He is now 197.
He is at least 6’ tall. I am 5’2" and I weigh 20 pounds more than him.
He is my inspiration and dammit, I am GOING to weigh less than him again!
You need to learn how to eat properly, not just eliminate things from your diet. Most people have lots of misconceptions about food and diet, and the answer to that is education and good choices.
Eating three meals a day is good, but proper snacking is an important way to regulate your hunger. It should be a part of any sensible eating plan. Completely denying yourself something you crave is probably not a good long term plan. Eventually you will succumb to temptation and you need a diet plan that allows you to do so. Otherwise you’ll feel deprived, which is no way to go through life.
Portion control, filling healthy foods, monitoring your hunger, exercise, occasional indulgence, these are all parts of a sustainable diet plan. Denying yourself whole classes of food probably won’t work in the long run.
What is really working for me is online calorie tracking. It’s true what they say - knowledge is power. There is no food I’m not allowed, but if I want to eat chocolate (and I do, oh yes), I can have one or two pieces and stay in my budget. If I want to have McDonald’s (which I don’t very often), I have to go exercise. Eating erratically is completely out, too - I have my three good meals for the day and snacks in between, because if I go into the evening not having eaten enough in the day, I’ll spend the whole evening cruising the house looking for something to satisfy the craving. Counting calories also makes you accountable, which is huge in changing your relationship with food.
I am trying to count calories too, but am having some difficulty determining the serving size (some goes by grams…how am I suppose to know how heavy is the food I have just ordered?). At any rate, I am using www.livestrong.com
I have plenty of things to snack on. I have fruit, yogurt, cheese, nuts.
I like all these things so it’s not really depriving myself to substitute them for junk food.
Besides, if I don’t have the junk food in the house, my boyfriend (who doesn’t binge at all) wont have any to eat either. 
Oh, serving sizes - the bane of my existence - I have to google and guesstimate a lot. Then there’s the yoyos who put out a package of individually wrapped things, and give the serving size in some measurement that isn’t an individually wrapped package - that really leaves me 
. The program I use is weird about serving sizes, too - I’ll do a custom food, and it will change the serving size next time I select that food to something odd.
I’m 12lbs down so far since starting a healthy eating plan on Jan 4th. That’s about the amount of weight I gained over November and December, so I’m back to where I was in the Fall. Got about 35lbs to go. I also use Sparkpeople to track my caloric intake and exercise. Tried forming a private team with three other women my age who have about the same amount of weight to lose but only one of them was active and I haven’t even seen her online in a week or so now.
Oh well, I’m still carrying on by myself. I need to step up the exercise a bit more - that’s not as consistent as the eating. But getting the portions under control was my top priority and that’s going very well. The other thing I’m doing is taking pictures from behind (most of my weight gain is dorsal for some reason) to show my progress. My goal is to put together a weight loss montage and upload it to YouTube. I love watching those videos - very inspiring.
Woo hoo, ran a 10K at lunch today. Actually, I ran 6.75 miles, but I don’t think that’s completely accurate. Legs are tired but I felt good. This, to me, is more important than any particular number on a scale, but fortunately they’re related.
As an addictive personality, I can relate to the dreams you’re experiencing. I had them when I quit drinking (15 yrs) and when I quit smoking (13 yrs). With them, you cut them out completely. Don’t have the first, won’t have the second. But with food, you can’t cut it out completely. Makes it very hard for me. But I’m doing it!
254.2(!!!) That was AFTER we went to a nasty wonderful Mexican food restaurant yesterday for lunch. The ‘secret’ was to eat half of what they gave me, then take the rest home for dinner. (Oatmeal for breakfast, too), I think a lighter person might have to stretch the meal out to three meals, but you still get to eat wonderful food, you just have to stretch it further…not to mention the cost savings.
There’s a Vietnamese restaurant here that sells Pho for $6. It’s a lot of food, and I remember polishing it off, plus a couple of eggrolls. Now, I’m pretty content with eating half of it now, and warming up the rest for lunch the next day. $3 a lunch is pretty hard to beat when it’s healthy, and someone else makes it.
We went out for Indian food last night - I should have looked up calories before we went. :smack: I’m not giving up naan and butter chicken, but I would have eaten less had I realized that butter chicken (there’s a bit of a hint in the name there, now that I think of it) was chicken, cream, and butter. Oh, maybe some ground nuts, too. Thank God I had a long walk yesterday - kept my calories close to my budget for the day.
It has only been 5 days since I started my very strict diet. So far, it’s actually going pretty well.
I have no junk food in my house, which makes it a bit more easy. I don’t have my own car so when my boyfriend is at work, I can’t go buy anything (the store is too far to walk) and I also have no money. I wont use Adam’s money to buy junk food unless he wants it.
As pathetic as this makes me seem, these 5 days are actually the longest I’ve maintained any diet with cheating.
I haven’t had one of the binging dreams since that first one. However, I did dream that I was Tiffany Aching and Granny Weatherwax was being mean to me. I think I need to stop falling asleep listening to audiobooks.
Last weigh-in: down 3 more pounds. I’ve now lost 66 pounds since last June. Amazing.
That is amazing - good for you!
Weighed in at the doc yesterday - 263 which is 19 pounds down from what I remember weighing in late December. It had been 3-4 pounds lower at home earlier in the week so I think that was perhaps a fluke. On the plus side I did a comparison with the new home scale and it was within a half pound of the doc’s scale.
I had a bit of a setback, exercise-speaking. I started PT for my knee (left) and shoulder (right) on Thursday. Mostly just evaluation the first time but they gave me a couple of exerciese to strengthen stuff. Well, I did the leg bit in the morning yesterday and it was fine. About 1 PM I was walking upstairs and felt OW!!! in the left knee on the stairs. That’s happened before, only perhaps one or two less exclamation points before. So I was limping for a few minutes and it got better… then it got a lot worse. I wound up spending much of the rest of the afternoon lying down, with an ice bag, and chowing down on ibuprofen tablets like they were M&Ms (OK, I didn’t overdose… but I did bump the dose up to prescription strength). Typo Knig had to bring me dinner in bed. He’s a keeper!!
I tried using a cane but, see, you need to hold the cane on the side of the good leg. See reference to shoulder, above.
Today it seems better - just hurts all the time, but I can at least move! I don’t think I’ll do the leg exercises until I see the PT again though.
Dadgummit, I wanted to start exercising again. I’ve been afraid to, with the increasing knee / shoulder pain. You know it’s bad when you want surgery!! (on the knee… not sure it’s indicated on the shoulder at this point, and the orthopedist was cool to the idea on the knee but the PT thought there was probably something an arthroscope might help).
Pigged out, food-wise today. We had some leftover turkey breast meat and while it’s a fantastic low-fat meat, the stuff to do with leftovers usually isn’t!! A potpie recipe from Epicurious.com. Which wouldn’t be all that bad (per serving nearly 500 calories) but I had some dough from the 5 minutes a day bread cookbook and that put me over the top… 2100 calories for the day. I’ll be good tomorrow.
Yeah, what she said!!!
207, no change, but at least it tends to confirm that last week’s effort is on the level. Will have to try to maintain a suitably Lenten discipline. 
Not to mention, even if you do eat the whole portion of pho, it’s really not that bad, calorie-wise. I like mine with the leanest beef they offer, the broth doesn’t have any calories to speak of, and the noodles aren’t too awful. Plus, with a good pho broth recipe, and all the extra stuff (lime, peppers, basil etc.) you really feel like the taste buds get a great workout - in short, a very satisfying meal.
It can’t be overstated how amazing this is. Weight maintenance is the hardest thing of all. Good for you!
Oh man, I’m getting so itchy for Spring to happen so I can get back out on the running trail. I’ve been doing exercise DVDs daily but I’m dying to know what my pace would be looking like right about now. My goal is to run another 5K this year–I’m getting tired of looking at the picture I took in 2008. I want a new number!
I am actually succeeding with healthy living as a graduate student and I can’t even believe it. I’ve lost 8 pounds this semester, so I’m pretty much back where I started last Fall. I have lost 55 pounds and am working on the final twenty. I have not missed a single day of exercise in 6 weeks. I was really worried for a while because the weight was coming off pretty slowly, but it’s averaged one pound per week so I guess I’m good.
I lost a pound and a half this week, and promptly embarked on a terrible diet today. I still probably won’t go over my calorie limit, but it’s so weird how I get this urge to self-destruct whenever I have progress.