I have two modes

emilysusana

I know that it’s a problem, the all or nothing mentality. My reason tells me that moderation is easier than extremes. But that doesn’t matter... I can’t do it! I can lose or I can gain... I can lose really well! I know how to do it and I’m good at it. I can gain phenomenally well. I’ve struggled with this forever, in everything. It’s my nature. I try moderation and my body says, okay, good, we’re done losing then?

I know there are a lot of people on here who have moderation down. I’m glad for you all. My husband is amazingly good at it, and I’ve picked his brain so many times to try to figure out how to make his system my own. But it’s his brain. Mine works differently. So I’m really more interested in hearing from anyone who has figured out how to harness the all or nothing tendency. Is there hope?

seska422

You don't have to moderate. Elimination is perfectly valid as long as you still intake your nutritional requirements. You do need to figure out a comfortable way of eating at a reduced calorie level forever since smaller bodies use fewer calories. If you don't moderate, that means that you need to continue avoiding whatever you avoid when you lose weight.

Your body can't gain weight unless you provide excess calories. When you reach goal, keep right on tracking your intake. Don't relax. Maintenance is just like weight loss except that you have a few more calories in your budget.

NorthCascades

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat. If moderation doesn't work for you, there's one thing better than moderation, and that's knowledge of self. Which you clearly have. You do you, and don't think twice about it.

trinati2001

My body is similar to yours. What I do is put boundaries in place. I was doing amazing before Halloween and I knew the day would be bad....but I couldn't get back on track for the rest of the month. Well I wouldn't let myself get back into the 200's. I just made my way out of them. So after Thanksgiving I was up 5.5 lbs and at 200.2. I hit my upper limit and now I'm back on track and losing.

Just make sure you limits aren't too far (you don't want to do too much damage before you start losing again).

maureenkhilde

Have you written down what you cannot do in moderation? Yes I know, you know it in your head. But take pen to paper and write down what foods I cannot eat in moderation. Are you willing to give them up entirely? Are you willing to say I can only have them if we go out to eat?

Is it most foods, or is it your trigger foods?

I absolutely go insane for Chocolate cake in almost any form. And I cannot eat it in moderation. So I have not had any at all since I started in May 2018. I have had some other sweets yes. But not that, as I recognize I cannot settle so better to have none is the way I look at it.

Only you can decide what you can eat in moderation, and what items have to be on the maybe someday list but not in your near future.

AnnPT77

If you define yourself as someone who can't, you definitely can't. At least try to think of yourself is someone who's working on learning how . . . then work on it.

If you can lose, you can reach a goal weight. If you can lose and gain, you can manage your weight up and down within a few pounds' range. That's what weight maintenance is, and you've already said you have the basic skills down (losing and gaining). The new part is keeping that losing/gaining happening at a reasonably slow rate, and staying within a few pounds' range. Maybe you can do that?

Best wishes!

elisa123gal

I was reading another thread and a few people said it took them a year to get maintenance down. That during that time they'd regain more than they wanted and had to lose again.

So.. Forget the mindset that you are "all or nothing." With that, you become just self fulfilled prophecy and you'll fail.
Tell yourself you're figuring things out. Since you can lose easily.. just set your limit for regain at five or ten pounds..and get back to losing when you hit that limit. Over time to lower the limit ..so in the end you're bouncing up and down 3 to 5 pounds..then you'd be like everyone else who maintains. You can do this!!!

dawnbgethealthy

I have a friend like that. If she eats one forkful of pasta she says that she has done it and might as well eat 4 plates of pasta. I have never understood that. I guess that it is a mindset. All or nothing. Stop at 500 calories of something that you could easily binge 3,000 calories on. At least you have had a taste. Or never eat that food again. For me, it is better to not deprive myself, but just to allow myself a reasonable amount of something and stop at that.
It sounds like you really do want to moderate what you are eating. I think that is the first step, wanting to change. Change never comes easy, but without change everything stays the same.
We are all on the same journey here, making better choices for ourselves.
Best of luck.
Stay strong : - )

amy19355

emilysusana wrote: »

I know that it’s a problem, the all or nothing mentality. My reason tells me that moderation is easier than extremes. But that doesn’t matter... I can’t do it! I can lose or I can gain... I can lose really well! I know how to do it and I’m good at it. I can gain phenomenally well. I’ve struggled with this forever, in everything. It’s my nature. I try moderation and my body says, okay, good, we’re done losing then?

I know there are a lot of people on here who have moderation down. I’m glad for you all. My husband is amazingly good at it, and I’ve picked his brain so many times to try to figure out how to make his system my own. But it’s his brain. Mine works differently. So I’m really more interested in hearing from anyone who has figured out how to harness the all or nothing tendency. Is there hope?

I think I am an all-or-nothing kind of person. The fewer choices I face, the easier to stay focused on the goal. In other words, I try to make it easy for me to always have what I want when I want it and the way I want it.

So far, on the food side of fitness, what is working for me is meal prep.

I get the satisfaction from ALL the advance meals waiting in the freezer for my desire.

Ditto from the ability to indulge my desires for ALL I prefer to eat, ALL the time, (if I so choose).

Ditto in the nutritional knowledge that supports the daily ‘doing’ of my Way Of Eating.

Exercise wise, I use the Fitbit and a daily 10K step goal. Walking is accessible to me nearly ALL the time. At home, I do body weight exercise in front of the tv where ALL the floor is available to me.

Maybe my approach has some nuggets of ideas for you!

Good luck.

FlyingMolly

Moderation is ideal if you can do it; it’s useless if you can’t. I saw this article on another thread and found it extremely helpful in understanding why I struggled for so long with something as simple as “eat the same stuff but less of it”: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-happiness-project/201210/are-you-abstainer-or-moderator

I’m an abstainer. I realized it once I tried keto, which had never sounded the slightest bit appealing to me because it doesn’t include Cheetos. But I committed to trying it for a month, and it was soooooo much easier for me to just say “No” than to try to figure out how often it was okay to say “A little.”

I’m coming up on the 1-year mark and while I do take (deliberate) breaks now and then, I have no desire to go back to “normal.” I like having more structure. It’s comfortable for me to just say bread and pasta are off-limits, rather than trying to wrestle with appropriate frequency.

If you’re like me, a restrictive diet could be your best friend, as long as it’s nutritionally complete. Start taking an honest look at what you can’t stop eating, then look for a diet in which you just don’t start.

kshama2001

maureenkhilde wrote: »

Have you written down what you cannot do in moderation? Yes I know, you know it in your head. But take pen to paper and write down what foods I cannot eat in moderation. Are you willing to give them up entirely? Are you willing to say I can only have them if we go out to eat?

Is it most foods, or is it your trigger foods?

I absolutely go insane for Chocolate cake in almost any form. And I cannot eat it in moderation. So I have not had any at all since I started in May 2018. I have had some other sweets yes. But not that, as I recognize I cannot settle so better to have none is the way I look at it.

Only you can decide what you can eat in moderation, and what items have to be on the maybe someday list but not in your near future.

Ha! I just made my OH a chocolate cake. He said maybe we should freeze some so it doesn't go stale. I said that's not going to be a problem.

It wasn't even GOOD chocolate cake and frosting, but it turns out it's a trigger food for me, and I wanted to eat until I felt sick.

@emilysusana - I've learned there are many foods I can moderate, but some I just need to abstain from.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-happiness-project/201210/are-you-abstainer-or-moderator

...When dealing with temptation, I often see the advice, “Be moderate. Don’t have ice cream every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you’ll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan.”

I’ve come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the “moderators.” They do better when they avoid absolutes and strict rules.

For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation–and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson, who said, when someone offered him wine: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.”

Ah ha! Like Dr. Johnson, I’m an “abstainer.”

I find it far easier to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. When I admitted to myself that I was eating my favorite frozen yogurt treat very often–two and even three times a day–I gave it up cold turkey. That was far easier for me to do than to eat it twice a week. If I try to be moderate, I exhaust myself debating, “Today, tomorrow?” “Does this time ‘count’?” “Don’t I deserve this?” etc. If I never do something, it requires no self-control for me; if I do something sometimes, it requires enormous self-control.

There’s no right way or wrong way–it’s just a matter of knowing which strategy works better for you. If moderators try to abstain, they feel trapped and rebellious. If abstainers try to be moderate, they spend a lot of precious energy justifying why they should go ahead and indulge.

donjtomasco

emilysusana - ditto. I am all in or not at all. If I can't stay on a program I go the other way. Same with working out. If I can't get on a stead 3-4x per week program, I just don't do it. I am glad I read your post since last night I decided it was time to lose the weight again. I have a predictable 20-25# range and it would actually take some effort to exceed my high weight that I always rebound to when I get in the dreaded rut. I can lose the 20 then max out. I can talk myself a great game and listen to others, but I am all in or all out and always trying to find a way to moderate this extreme but it is more my personality and how I live too. It is what it is.

cmriverside

You're certainly not alone.

I have a whole long list of foods that I cannot moderate. I know if I buy them - one package is one serving. I've tried for over ten years to "learn" to moderate. I'm much better off not starting on them at all, and I don't bring them home. I can't drink alcohol either. Same lesson there. Some people can drink moderately.

rainbowblu

For me it's alcohol.I can't have 1 drink,I'll try my very best to finish the bottle.So,I ELIMINATED it,EVERY week that I gained weight was a week when I drank too much!

.Now,I can binge on chips and sweets,-for those things I just don't bring them into my house and 90% of the time I won't get dressed to go get chips. If I crave cake I'll make a single serving mug cake or I'll get a single slice from the bakery and share it with DH or my kid.Controlling my environment worked best for me.I only bake whole cakes/pies for the holidays,and I encourage people to take the leftovers home,if they don't I'll bring them to work to share.

HoneyBadger302

I can be a bit this way as well - in most areas of my life to be honest. For me, I can't abstain, but moderation tends to fail over time as well - so I've found my own variation of IF (if you must give it a fancy name) works best. In order to appreciably lose I still need to track my food/intake and stay in my range, but even without that, I will have a steady, albeit extraordinary slow, downward trend - but things stay trending in the right direction at least.

I had to look at my lifestyle, natural eating patterns, trained eating patterns (like I HATE throwing food away - it feels like the ultimate waste), and what has or has not worked in the past, and realized this was the best bet. It also feels sustainable for the long term. I allow myself flexibility, because that's what my life demands of it - but basically I have a couple smaller "snacks" (coffee+creamer and a ~200 cal snack) and one bigger meal a day.

Definitely not something that would work for everyone, but it works really well for me. I let my big meal flex a bit if there's a lunch out with coworkers, or on days I'm especially extra active or hungry, I'll allow another small snack-meal in there. None of what I do is true fasting persay, but that's the closest buzz term for what I've landed on.

Take some time to figure out what works for YOU. Consider all aspects of your life and your own eating tendencies. Try a few things, but modify it to fit what you need and what works for you. Just because certain eating plans or ways are touted by this or that group, doesn't mean you have to adhere to exactly what they say, either.

FitAndLean_5738

That's actually very common. For me, the time of day and the type of food switches whether or not I am a moderator or an abstainer.

After 6pm, no sweets whatsoever. If I eat sweets after 6, I'll go overboard. In fact, I only eat sweets immediately after my lunch. That's the only time I'm able to actually eat a moderate amount.

So if you can't eat a food in moderation, ask yourself if you'd be willing to cut out the food forever. If you are, go for it!

kshama2001

FitAndLean_5738 wrote: »

That's actually very common. For me, the time of day and the type of food switches whether or not I am a moderator or an abstainer.

After 6pm, no sweets whatsoever. If I eat sweets after 6, I'll go overboard. In fact, I only eat sweets immediately after my lunch. That's the only time I'm able to actually eat a moderate amount.

So if you can't eat a food in moderation, ask yourself if you'd be willing to cut out the food forever. If you are, go for it!

Lol, I'm the opposite - I cannot moderate sweets after lunch but I can after dinner.

janejellyroll

cmriverside wrote: »

You're certainly not alone.

I have a whole long list of foods that I cannot moderate. I know if I buy them - one package is one serving. I've tried for over ten years to "learn" to moderate. I'm much better off not starting on them at all, and I don't bring them home. I can't drink alcohol either. Same lesson there. Some people can drink moderately.

My husband was giving the dogs their treat yesterday and he remarked how easy it would be if a giant would show up once a day to give us an appropriately sized portion of our favorite treat and then put the container away where we couldn't get it no matter how much we whined.

jennk5309

I have traditionally had the same problem, but am hoping I've finally figured it out.....my tendency had been to give in and eat whatever I wanted once I knew I wasn't going to make my calorie goal for the day. I failed so might as well have cheesecake too, right? I would stop tracking and figure I'd start again tomorrow. What I'm doing now though is.that I keep tracking every bite even when over my calorie goal. Eventually it pains my psyche to see the numbers and I stop eating. I may be over my goal for the day but I still am usually at a deficit, which means weight loss even if it's not at the speed I would prefer.

One day at a time in a deficit means progress if not perfection.

dawnbgethealthy

jennk5309 wrote: »

I have traditionally had the same problem, but am hoping I've finally figured it out.....my tendency had been to give in and eat whatever I wanted once I knew I wasn't going to make my calorie goal for the day. I failed so might as well have cheesecake too, right? I would stop tracking and figure I'd start again tomorrow. What I'm doing now though is.that I keep tracking every bite even when over my calorie goal. Eventually it pains my psyche to see the numbers and I stop eating. I may be over my goal for the day but I still am usually at a deficit, which means weight loss even if it's not at the speed I would prefer.

One day at a time in a deficit means progress if not perfection.

I agree. Track it no matter what.

jean133mjg

I use whatever hasn't worked as new information to change to a new detail in my plan.I try not to think of myself as a failure, that I have to be all in or all off a diet. I'm not a failure just because something isn't working for me. Adjustments to my plan are good to help me reach my goal. Hope this makes sense. I wish you the best. Just keep working at it. Don't expect yourself to be perfect just persistent.

SummerSkier

this is a REALLY good thread. It is somehow comforting to see that so many folks are "just like me" and I am not some sort of freak. Of course nothing is ever black and white but the theory of abstainer and moderator is something I had never heard. I am probably more of an abstainer altho I would love to be a moderator. I know that there are just some foods I cannot purchase or one package = one serving. I also know that it is constantly changing. I have found that foods can CROSS OVER one way or the other sometimes. Sort of like have you ever gotten really sick after eating something and you NEVER want to eat that again?

HSnyder1984

jennk5309 wrote: »

I have traditionally had the same problem, but am hoping I've finally figured it out.....my tendency had been to give in and eat whatever I wanted once I knew I wasn't going to make my calorie goal for the day. I failed so might as well have cheesecake too, right? I would stop tracking and figure I'd start again tomorrow. What I'm doing now though is.that I keep tracking every bite even when over my calorie goal. Eventually it pains my psyche to see the numbers and I stop eating. I may be over my goal for the day but I still am usually at a deficit, which means weight loss even if it's not at the speed I would prefer.

One day at a time in a deficit means progress if not perfection.

I do this I'm going to try very hard to change to tracking no matter what

kshama2001

janejellyroll wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

You're certainly not alone.

I have a whole long list of foods that I cannot moderate. I know if I buy them - one package is one serving. I've tried for over ten years to "learn" to moderate. I'm much better off not starting on them at all, and I don't bring them home. I can't drink alcohol either. Same lesson there. Some people can drink moderately.

My husband was giving the dogs their treat yesterday and he remarked how easy it would be if a giant would show up once a day to give us an appropriately sized portion of our favorite treat and then put the container away where we couldn't get it no matter how much we whined.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three periods in my life when weight loss was really easy. What all three had in common was that I did not have unrestricted access to food:

1. Boot camp: three meals a day of food that wasn't particularly good, and had to be eaten quickly, with a mandatory two glasses of water.
2. In the wilds of Costa Rico - no high calorie/low satiety foods available.
3. One other time that's to complicated too explain, but I was not doing the shopping or cooking.

"Intuitive eating" only works for me when my choices are very limited, lol.

cmriverside

Yeah, and the irritating thing is when I want pie. I can't make a pie, and I can't buy a pie because one pie is one serving. So I go to a super expensive pie cafe and spent $12 for a slice of pie and a coffee. That's the only way I can have pie.

And I love pie. *sigh*

cmriverside

...but it's really really good pie.

Worth the $$ and more importantly, worth the calories.

dawnbgethealthy

HSnyder1984 wrote: »

jennk5309 wrote: »

I have traditionally had the same problem, but am hoping I've finally figured it out.....my tendency had been to give in and eat whatever I wanted once I knew I wasn't going to make my calorie goal for the day. I failed so might as well have cheesecake too, right? I would stop tracking and figure I'd start again tomorrow. What I'm doing now though is.that I keep tracking every bite even when over my calorie goal. Eventually it pains my psyche to see the numbers and I stop eating. I may be over my goal for the day but I still am usually at a deficit, which means weight loss even if it's not at the speed I would prefer.

One day at a time in a deficit means progress if not perfection.

I do this I'm going to try very hard to change to tracking no matter what

Definitely HSnyder, track everything. I have found that some things have even less calories than we think, and some have way more than we think. 2 tablespoons of coffee cream is good for me, but if I don't measure I end up with like 6 in each cup and I drink 2 cups of coffee. Seems small, but 8 extra tablespoons every day adds up over the month. Tracking showed me how many calories my typical rib dinner was. Ouch. Now I have it only once per month instead of once per week, saving like 4,000 calories or so per month. On the flip side, 2 tablespoons of full fat sour cream really doesn't have that many calories, so making a dish creamy and tasty is worth it.
It is a journey. Tracking is like a road map to better health and mindful consuming. Informed choices.
We are all in this together.