Yogurts are surprisingly high in calories. And the granola idea is a great one. I hope that it will help Congodwarf.
I would have thought about it. 
Probably wouldn’t have moved it, though.
No I think it’s just his stomach growling, being hungry does that
I do. I was just using those numbers as an example. I was pondering how binge eating affects a person. One of the natural thoghts of this was, if I only binged on one day, as opposed to consuming the same number of calories continuously over a given period of time… would it be possible that constant overeating is worse for than a single one-time binge.
E3
I’m pretty sure that it is. Most diets recommend an occasional “cheat day”. I seem even remember a fairly popular (and successful) fad diet some years back where you starved yourself every other day and binged every other day, which screwed your body up enough that you lost weight.
I do this too. At meals I have a raw salad or soup, or high density vegetables first, then I eat my ‘main’ course, which I have pre-measured out and put on a plate, no eating from a main bowl or out of a box. Usually the first course has gone a long way toward filling me up and sometimes I don’t even want all the rest of the meal.
I do like a snack with protein in the afternoon though, for me it seems to work better than low-cal carbs like pretzels or popcorn.
It was hardest the first few days, now after a month I keep under 1600 calories a day and I can’t say I really am hungry. Sometimes I still get that ‘want to eat’ feeling but it is different than hunger…it is almost like a restlessness. It actually reminds me of craving a cigarette when I quit smoking. I have to wait it out like a craving. I realize now how much of my eating was just habit and not responding to hunger at all. I think I am lucky I didn’t gain more weight than I did!
I’m with all of you who love the carbs. I get started on the Honey-Nut Cheerios and I can just keep going. I find oatmeal is a satisfying substitute for me.
From the other side - I lost 54 lbs and I actually did give foods up.
Foods I gave up completely:
Fast food
Sugary soda
Butter
Packaged baked goods
Foods that are allowed rarely:
Real baked goods
Full fat cheese
Alcohol
Fried foods
White bread, white potatoes
It’s been 15 months, I don’t miss the unhealthy foods at all. I’ve switched almost completely to a whole foods diet (at least 5 servings of vegetables, 2 servings of fruit, whole grains, low fat dairy, some kind of protein at every meal). I lost the weight I wanted to lose and I’ve been maintaining at exactly the same weight since March 2005.
I think it’s very important to prepare yourself for maintenance. In my experience with failed permament weight loss efforts in the past, it’s easier to lose weight than to keep weight off. From the day I decided to change how I ate, I was planning how to lose weight and keep the weight off. Maintenance is exactly the same hard work as weight loss for me - I record my food in a journal, I just allow myself more calories a day.
In losing weight I have found cereal is a real problem, as it is quick & sweet and can be delivered more or less continuously with little preparation. If I have a box of cereal I will tend to eat it before anything else. Dry cereal with milk is also a problem because it’s easy to eat massive quantities and people have no idea how many calories are really in bowl of cereal. In a one medium sized bowl serving with whole milk you can easily be consuming 400-500 calories in each bowl.
Look at the side of the cereal package at the calories in the dry cereal weight. Presweetened cereal really doesn’t add that many extra calories (vs non-sweet) because the dry cereal is so calorie dense already. If you shake out their “recommended” serving size of 3/4 to 1 cup people are often surprised how small that is compared to the amount people often ladle into their bowls in addition to the milk.
There are two cereal maintenance strategies that work (for me)
1: Don’t have dry cereal in the house & instead use low sugar Quaker oatmeal (120 calories low sugar vs 160 for regular sugar) instead. It needs boiling water and has to sit for 3-4 munites but it’s just as satisfying.
2: Use the large shredded wheat biscuit cereal and use one biscuit (not 2) (80 cals) with one cup 2% milk (130 cals) and a package of Splenda. 210 calories and it fills you up like a larger bowl as the “sweet milk” quantity is the same. The shredded nature of the cereal and the extra step involved in crumpling up the biscuit, also tends to slow down how fast you can easily refill your bowl and lets your brain catch up to your stomach.
I think this is the most underestimated diet factor on the planet; if you eat fast, the ‘full up’ signal arrives a little while after you have actually had sufficient, often leaving you uncomfortably bloated.
I don’t have a weight problem at the moment (although it would only take a small slip in my resolve for the spiral to begin), but when I eat out, I usually deliberately pick something that is not suited to rapid eating; mussels are absolutely perfect for this - an enormous pile of food arrives on the table, but you have to pick it apart; by the time you’ve eaten the lot, you’re pleasantly sated and you haven’t actually noticed that you have only actually consumed a couple of handfuls of food.
How about this one? 
If only that had been the end of it for me. I ate so fast that when I got my signal, I would declare that by gosh I can’t possible be full yet — I just started eating! So I would press on, adding burden on top of weight. 
That’s basically my technique. I can go through a whole box of cereal (sans milk, I like cereal dry) in a sitting. Easily 1500-2000 calories. :eek: Now I just plain never, ever buy it.
It’s the basic “never shop hungry” and “stick to a list” thing. If I only have decent food at home, I won’t binge. I don’t forbid my self anything but if I want a dessert, I’ll get a single serving of something really yummy instead of a big box of something mediocre. (like Whole Food’s chocolate mousse or key lime pie instead of a box of grocery store ice cream drumsticks)
I also do the aforementioned “fill up on bulk foods first” trick. When I need to lose weight for a race, my favorite trick is to have a half pound of vegetables before every meal. It really helps me stay full.
Actually I’ll tell you a secret that worked for me and out the kibosh on the nighttime hungries . If you get one of those big bags of Dole salad (the entire bag is meant to serve 4 med side salad portion), throw in some diced carrots or onions or beets as you wish. Put in a big ass bowl that you can cover.
Use rice wine vinegar - It’s not cloying sweet like supermarket balsamics, and not nearly as powerfully acidic as grape vinegars. It’s a light, fragrant vinegar you can put right on the salad and you don’t have to cut it with calorie dense oils. Calories are negligible.
Put a lid on the salad and shake it up thoroughly.
Now get a Stouffers lite entree you like with rice or pasta and cook it up. There are a bunch that work well for this, esp the rice ones. Put the hot food right on the salad and eat it up. It’s so yummy! The entree combines with the salad to make this marvelous taste treat and God is it filling! If you can’t manage the entire bag of salad use half.
The entire meal
Salad bag (50 cals)
veggies (50-100 cals)
Lite Entree (250 -300 cals)
Total calories 350-450 and you are stuffed!
The only caveat is that you’ll look a bit like Jethro Bodine eating directly out of this big bowl so this is not usually something to be done in front of company.