Self-Sabotaging Habits: Confess them to help (everyone) beat them!

explodingmango
explodingmango Posts: 171 Member
in Motivation and Support
I decided to start this thread since I found one of these that I have, and I've been really struggling to break it over the past few days. I thought that if I confessed it publicly, then maybe it would help other people struggling with the same habit as well as making me feel more like now I HAVE to fix it - and if others do the same, perhaps the compilation of habits could form something of a troubleshooting guide.

So, confess the little bad habits you fall into that build up to sabotage you!

As stated, I'll start - I tend to log 10-15% more than I've actually measured that I've eaten. This is to compensate for the fact that I can't always measure everything (though I test myself regularly to make sure I'm reasonably good at estimating, and I do err on the side of over estimating when I can't measure) and the fact that there can be some degree of error in calorie counting tools.

In and of itself, that's not my bad habit. My bad habit is that I remember this and use it as an excuse to have an unlogged small snack from time to time.

This isn't too bad most days, when it's just one or two things under 50 calories. But on weekends, when the boredom eating impulses set in? Those "it's just one small snack, my overestimation SURELY offsets it!" moments add up big time.

So I'm trying to knock that the heck off. I'm trying to beat it into my head that if it is food, I should not put it in my mouth unless I intend to log it.

Now it's your turn. What's your bad habit that's offsetting your good ones, and how do you plan to work on beating it?
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Replies

  • llbrixon
    llbrixon Posts: 964 Member
    I gained back all the weight I lost last year. Bad habits, bad food choices.

    I like snacks in the afternoon and Fried Cheese Doodles or Vinegar Flavored Tostitos and they finally caught up to me.

    Also for the past few months, I started eating a big bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast (probably 2-3 portions).

    I ate lunch out to often.

    I stopped my walking each week.

    What also made it easy was being able to wear the same clothes!

    I need to learn how to conquer these weaknesses.
  • uleij
    uleij Posts: 6 Member
    I can't moderate sweets either when they are in my house. So I just don't keep them in the house. I stopped off at the store the other day and I don't usually feel tempted but I bought a bag of those caramel chews. I thought, they are individually packed and I can portion them. Negative! I was very sick to my stomach. I don't feel bad about it, i try to follow 80/20 and I'm more like 90/10.
  • wolflady1972
    wolflady1972 Posts: 21 Member

    <3 hi back on the wagon again.... don't have any support my friend is an enabler , constantly trying to out do .everything is competition. She hides her key to treadmill. She's so spiteful . I need friends to keep strong and focused..... HELP ;)
  • kathskelly53
    kathskelly53 Posts: 119 Member
    My weakness is bread, cannot seem to do without, doesn’t matter what sort wraps, thins anything. Would be better for me to have a cookie, but I have to make a sandwich and try and fool myself that the filling is low calories. Going to try today to cut it down.
  • tracylp6178
    tracylp6178 Posts: 70 Member
    I'm an afternoon snacker, I do great all day until I get home from work. I was getting myself stuck in the bad habit of grabbing a box of cheese it's or chips and sitting in front of the tv for that free hour I have before I need to start dinner. I started having a serving of Metamucil weight management right when I walk in the door. It curbs my "hunger" and I also started buying 100 cal mini bags of popcorn. So at least my Portion is restricted if I can't fight the urge to snack. Seems to be helping
  • skymningen
    skymningen Posts: 532 Member
    1) I do not always log accurately. I try to portion off food for work, I guesstimate if I eat out. I just do not want to restrict myself too much. I also know what my favourite snack weights per "portion", so I just eat it and calculate (it is literally 9-10 g per peach gummy treat, I kept weighing them out for a long time, but it's just so convenient to log them as 10g each )
    2) I undereat. I am slowly getting better with it, but I still do. I want to gain weight (and muscle), but on the other hand, I am scared of gaining fat. And I want to have my bf see me at least once at my lowest weight - we are long distance (Not to impress him, at all. I am fairly sure he is going to tell me I really should gain some weight back. And he will be right. But I kind of need exactly this knowledge, that he is going to prefer me with more muscle, so I can stop being scared of gaining fat. It is stupid. But it is true.)
    3) I worry too much about the future. It makes me sad, which makes people around me sad, which makes me more sad. It is me who needs to break that circle by going back to the fun-loving, humorous me that I like so much more (and everyone else also wants back).
  • Brittfitt16
    Brittfitt16 Posts: 7 Member
    aeloine wrote: »
    There are foods that I delude myself into thinking I'll be able to control. This week I bought a bag of individually wrapped chocolates thinking that I'd be able to ration them.

    Woke up one morning on a pile of wrappers and a chocolate hang over.... I guess you could say I *browned* out :wink:

    My fix is to NOT keep chocolate in the house.

    I've totally been there
  • orangegato
    orangegato Posts: 6,572 Member
    My kids stay w/ me every other week from Thursday to Sunday evening. We go out to eat a lot and one of the places that they actually like the food at is a craft beer bar/restaurant. I will often get a pint of a craft brew w/ dinner or a flight of 4 oz pours. And we usually start w/ fried cheese curds as an app.

    My calorie count bar graphs look terrible w/ these huge spikes in calories consumed every other week.

    I don't think we will stop going to such places. I have to either limit my calorie consumption by avoiding alcohol, reducing alcohol intake or reducing food intake. Have to make better choices. Or I could try to burn off some calories as well.
  • aeloine
    aeloine Posts: 2,163 Member
    orangegato wrote: »
    My kids stay w/ me every other week from Thursday to Sunday evening. We go out to eat a lot and one of the places that they actually like the food at is a craft beer bar/restaurant. I will often get a pint of a craft brew w/ dinner or a flight of 4 oz pours. And we usually start w/ fried cheese curds as an app.

    My calorie count bar graphs look terrible w/ these huge spikes in calories consumed every other week.

    I don't think we will stop going to such places. I have to either limit my calorie consumption by avoiding alcohol, reducing alcohol intake or reducing food intake. Have to make better choices. Or I could try to burn off some calories as well.

    Look into getting the kids out and about with you. If you go on a hike or ride bikes before dinner, you'll earn some calories back and might even make healthier choices because you just worked for the meal.
  • Elaine352962
    Elaine352962 Posts: 288 Member
    I cannot control eating just one biscuit - I eat the lot. I don't buy them too often because they would call me into the kitchen shouting "Eat Me". At the moment I have started buying Pombear crisps, they are the lowest calories. I attend Weightwatchers meetings and I smartpoint everything I eat. Milkybar mousse is another thing that I snack on (I savour every mouthful (4smartpoints). Why do I not have the willpower to say NO to these temptations? Any suggestions on how I can overcome this addiction?
  • TheEmi
    TheEmi Posts: 40 Member
    My eating is out of control once I get home. I'll start with a reasonable snack, which becomes a marathon of gorging until dinner is done. Also, I haven't been accurately logging the binging because it is embarrassing to admit in my diary.

    It is disappointing because I'd made it under 150 lbs for the first time in over 2 decades. I am now that much further from my end goals because I am not reining in this habit that I previously let push me to almost 250 lbs. Things will get better! Just really frustrated in backtracking.
  • cshern
    cshern Posts: 55 Member
    I have the same shameful habit of bingeing. Also, lying in my diary is another one.
  • ObsessivelyObsessingObsessions
    ObsessivelyObsessingObsessions Posts: 116 Member
    For me, it's thinking that the one thing I do today won't result in a long term problem. It does. It always does. At one point I had lost 75lbs and I ran constantly. So the thought that I could be bad one week and then go back to "good" the next week and see the water weight disappear became really ingrained in how I viewed my eating habits. However, what wound up happening is I would always do one thing... so that one thing became a collection of one things that would ruin all my hard work.

    I also have a terrible time turning down the foods my boyfriend brings around. He's a MUCH bigger guy (he's tall and built like a linebacker) and so he can eat and barely show anything. Whereas for me, I eat one cheese cracker and suddenly I've eaten 1/4th the cheese and I've gained 3lbs, whereas it was just a quick snack for him. I have to really start looking at how I'm not thinking of things in a collective manner. I also need to start making my choices more independent of his habits. He's totally supportive of this and if I'm honest, this has been my failure. Not his.
  • ent3rsandman
    ent3rsandman Posts: 170 Member
    Sometimes I have a bad day of eating and attempt to compensate the next day. Sometimes it works, other times it sends me into a yo-yo like pattern that leads to a sort of binge-fast cycle. If it's only a few hundred calories over my calorie goal then I've learned to forget about it and just move on. Sometimes it's 1000, though. :/
  • Johns_Dope_AF
    Johns_Dope_AF Posts: 460 Member
    Ordering candy online
  • tmanfromtexas
    tmanfromtexas Posts: 928 Member
    SisterSueGetsFit wrote: »
    One word- Booze.

    X2

    Plus I look at the calories I have burned that day and say cool I can have a drink or I can have extra (fill in the blank). I quit looking at that until the next day and that has helped plus laying off the Tito's vodka lol. Damn I love Tito's Vodka.
  • aeloine
    aeloine Posts: 2,163 Member
    TheEmi wrote: »
    My eating is out of control once I get home. I'll start with a reasonable snack, which becomes a marathon of gorging until dinner is done. Also, I haven't been accurately logging the binging because it is embarrassing to admit in my diary.

    It is disappointing because I'd made it under 150 lbs for the first time in over 2 decades. I am now that much further from my end goals because I am not reining in this habit that I previously let push me to almost 250 lbs. Things will get better! Just really frustrated in backtracking.

    Here's what I do: when I know that the binge is BAD but I'm too embarrassed to log it, I just add 1 or 2 thousand calories. I know that I binged and that I'm forcing myself to be accountable, but it's literally just one line item in my diary, like anything else. Log it and move on.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    My confession is that when I read cookie and candy discussions here, it takes me less than 48 hours to binge on cookies and candy. I must stop reading those discussions.
  • sbrown6
    sbrown6 Posts: 334 Member
    Peanut butter is my cookie butter^^^

    It’s is my kryptonite for sure.

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