Very interesting - we have the “Never” group coming out as very small. Maybe “Never” is too strict - perhaps I should soften that to “Rarely” to get a more accurate sampling.
Very rarely. I worked hard to lose 54 lbs and it’s hard work to keep it off. I track calories every day and am a total health food nut. Fast food, fried foods, packaged baked goods - 0 in over a year. I don’t really miss it and I loooove being thin.
I never over-eat. Never ever; not even on Thanksgiving.
I do occasionally under-eat out of sheer laziness.
A) a small amount occasionally,
with
B) a large amount occasionally (christmas, big meals out), but much less than once a week. Maybe once every two or three months.
If I have eaten more the day before I will usually eat less the next day. For example, on Boxing day (day after Xmas) in my family we skip breakfast and lunch and have leftover cold meat (ham and turkey) and pickles for dinner. The next day we have Turkey curry for dinner, and the day after that is Turkey soup, no other full meals.
If I’ve been out for a meal I’ll usually skip lunch that day and the next, if I have icecream for pudding one night I’ll skip lunch the next day. This is because I feel less hungry, not a conscious thing.
If you count about 20 grams dark choccie a day overeating, then (b). However, I’m more than willing to have sushi and a mandarin instead of a cheese sandwich for lunch because I know I’ll probably have my little chocolate fix after dinner. So I sort of make room for it in my caloric intake.
Don’t get between me and the 75% cocoa chocolate, baby!
A medium amount occasionally. That’s usually because I went to a restaurant and they gave me the amount of food that they give to everybody else. Or, I had lunch and went to a matinee and got popcorn.
I don’t snack. Well, a little. If I’m going to have a late lunch, I’ll have a snack to get me there. I’ll have some pretzels or nuts between lunch and dinner, but I’m not a “sit on the couch and gotta stuff my face” kind of guy.
I’m somewhere between A and B, I think, but I really, logically, I can’t be since I would be gaining weight and I am not, so I must really be closer to E on a long-term average. Like kimera and Trunk, I eat more when I go out than when I eat at home.
Somewhere between a and c. The occasionally is not every week, though - more like once or twice a month. Basically, whenever people come to visit me, I eat more than I usually do. But considering the fact that I am constantly aware of what I am eating (somewhat over-obsessed sometimes), I may be overestimating how much I eat when I do let go.
Susan
I’d say a large amount occasionally. Maybe more often than I’d like to admit.
I say this because when I’m consciously trying to lose a few pounds (and thus watching what I eat), I am always aware of how pleasant it is not to feel like Ms. Bloaty “Toot Toot” McTightPants on a regular basis. And it’s not really about buying bigger pants (although I suppose I could - I love an excuse to shop); it’s merely about not eating until I’m absolutely stuffed, and then continuing to eat just because it’s there (and in my office, it’s ALWAYS there), until I feel really . . . gross. And then eating some more.
Funny, though–I don’t tend to recognize the gross feeling as much as I tend to recognize when it’s gone.
Does that make sense?
Why yes, it makes perfect sense. That’s probably where I am, with a little susan foster sprinkled in there (naturally).
I very rarely overeat. I suffered a very long stretch of poverty, and was a walking stick for years. In the seven years I’ve been married, I put on 20 pounds from just eating well once a day, and it seems to be staying there, not increasing. Now I look healthy. I can eat anything, and have never counted a calorie, or looked on the package to find out how many calories are in a kind of food. When we eat at restaurants, the portions are so large that I nearly always come home with a box of leftovers. I just have no more room to finish them at the time, and can’t force myself to do it. I can’t think of why I’d want to, if I was stuffed already.
At the end of last year, when I finally realized I actually had an eating disorder, my answer was D. But I was puking a lot of it up. Not enough to keep me from gaining weight though. (Not all EDs are about being skinny.)
Earlier this year, when I though I had a handle on things, my answer was C. I let myself binge once a week or so (yes, vomitting afterward). Hah! I thought I was doing so well! I was still gaining, though more slowly.
Since May, I when I joined Weight Watchers, the answer is between A and E. It’s more like, a small amount once a month or so. It’s not easy, but seeing 21lbs (so far) come off is a great incentive.
Never overeat. I lost a bunch of weight and then gained some back while pregnant, and I’m trying to lose it. I would overeat if I wanted to spend longer dieting.
In Fran Drescher’s book, there’s a conversation she has with her mother, in which her mother says (to paraphrase): “I eat until I feel sick, and then I stop. Sometimes.”
I really strongly identify with that.
A) Occasionally, a small amount, but probably less often than once a week.
I never gorge. I have, on a very few occasions, been uncomfortably full, but that was rare before --and never after-- I started to lose weight about a year ago. I’ve always been a healthy eater (sweets make me sick to my stomach, and I loathed white bread even as a kid) and never really overate. I didn’t get fat from food indulgence but from a combination of lack of exercise and getting older while not scaling my diet back to fit those conditions. It’s not really overeating when your portions were healthy portions in the past, but that does tend to catch up with you and slowly increase your weight.
I got back into exercising again, which made me realize how far I’d let myself slide, and slightly adjusted my diet, and I lost basically all the fat I’d gained.
Once a month, when the hormones kick in and I’m in “this chair looks delicious!” mode. I have snacks built into my diet (one midafternoon and one before bed), so I’m hardly ever hungry enough to realize I’m not hungry any more, if that makes sense. I do generally lose about ten pounds every semester when I’m at school, since the food sucks*and sometimes it’s too much work to leave my room. Then I have oatmeal for dinner.
*They don’t salt their mashed potatoes and you have to ask for butter. I live in Wisconsin for god’s sake. I feel like my cultural identity’s been betrayed.
Option A, but modified to be about once every other week.
If I’m feeling bored or upset, I’ll often find myself headed toward the kitchen. This normally happens just once or twice a week, and most of the time as I’m reaching for a snack to soothe my boredom or jangled feelings, I’ll note it, make an effort to figure out if I’m actually hungry or am eating from boredom or upset-ness and I can stop. I’ll put the food down and go for a walk, fold the laundry or, if I feel really compelled to consume, drink an enormous glass of water so I at least feel full.
But sometimes I’ll willfully let myself overeat. In other words, I’ll walk into the kitchen, think, “I’m doing this because I’m bored, not because I’m hungry.” Then I’ll think, “You know what? I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway. Bring on the cookies!” Fortunately, after a minute or so I’ll catch myself and stop, so I rarely wind up overeating much more than the equivalent of an extra piece of cake or something similar, but it’s still overeating and it has caught up to me. I’m working on shedding the extra weight of my mini-indulgences - my husband and I hope to start a family soon and I’d like to be in as good a shape as possible when I get pregnant.
Slightly too much on an almost continual basis. Savoury snacks such as chips’n’dips are the killer. Portion sizes are a tad too big at evening meal time. Don’t often binge, but it would be a fool who stood between me and a barbecue; fresh scorched meat has an unlimited “oh, just one more then” appeal to it. But I never get sick on it, though eating to the point of goat-stuffed-python torpitude isn’t unknown.
I almost never over-eat. Even on Thanksgiving. It is one of the worst feelings, so I try to avoid it. I gained weight due to middle-age and inactivity. But I’m changing my ways.
I have a tendency to binge-eat to bursting point and then feel terrible for doing it…
I will eat and eat and eat until I’m full and carry on eating if food is available. So I keep a minimum amount of “food stock” in the house which means I CAN’T over eat.
Seriously, if there was a packet of biscuits in the house, I’d eat the lot in one sitting. Wierdly, if food is available, I will actually get panicky about it and eat it ANYWAY which gets rid of the panicky feeling but is replaced with MASSIVE guilt.
(I used to weigh 225lbs… Very strict dieting has got me to 133lbs. I intend to remain there!!!)
