I just want food

erindarr88

I’ve been doing this since about the end of February, the beginning of March, had some bad days, but a lot of good days. Some days I just want food. I just want to stuff my face. Like I’ve done good all day today and I want to call and order a pizza. I’ve lost around 15 pounds so I’m almost to my halfway mark to my first goal of 40 pounds. How do you manage those days you just want to binge? I journal, I meditate, I do yoga, but sometimes it’s overwhelming and none of it helps. Tips and Tricks appreciated!

AnnPT77

First, are you cutting calories too hard for your current size, or over-restricting foods you particularly enjoy (that you could moderate)?

If you've lost 15 pounds in roughly 6 weeks, that would be around 2.5 pounds a week. That's pretty fast loss unless you're pretty near to 300 pounds or more. You might consider a slower loss rate to better manage the impulse to binge. Sometimes a moderate loss rate can get a person to goal weight in less calendar time than an aggressive rate that causes deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the action, or even giving up altogether.

If you're telling yourself you can't have certain foods, but they're things you could eat in moderation, maybe consider fitting those in in reasonable portions before the binge-urge builds up. (Most of us have some trigger foods we can't moderate. For myself, I either don't ever buy those so don't have them in the house, only eat them once in a while at a restaurant, or buy the occasional single-serve package, depending on what's viable.)

Beyond that, a thing I do is bank some calories for occasional indulgences. That means eating a little under goal most days (maybe 100 calories-ish), to eat more on the occasional day. This will probably not work if a person is already at a really aggressive fast loss rate, because cutting even 100 more calories is too punitive.

Some people estimate their maintenance calories, and eat at maintenance one or two days a week. (That's a variation on "slower loss rate".) Some people do 5:2 fasting, i.e., eat at maintenance 5 days, and only around 500 calories on two days a week. (5:2 doesn't suit me, but it helps those whom it suits.)

Personally, I never order in anymore. If I want some indulgent thing, like a pizza, I'm going to get dressed, get in my car, and drive there to get it. (I'd walk, if it were closer than the maybe 8 miles to where I usually get pizza. In summer, biking to pizza, eating there, and biking home is viable. The point isn't to burn off the pizza calories, the point is to invest some of myself in getting the pizza - not making it near zero effort like ordering in would be.)

Every once in a rare while, I actually do get a whole pizza and eat the whole thing. Ideally, I eat lighter the rest of the day, but if I don't . . . oh, well. While I was losing weight, I made it a point to have a good estimate of my then-current maintenance calories (calculated from my own logging/loss data, not MFP's estimate). I could then figure out how long I was delaying reaching goal weight if I ate (for example) a whole pizza. Sometimes it was worth it, sometimes it wasn't. (Doing that math put it in perspective for me, no matter which way my decision fell.)

Now that I'm in long-term maintenance (heading into year 8), I do calorie bank 100-150 calories most days, but it may take around a month to bank a whole pizza's worth of calories. Therefore, if I eat a whole pizza I know I absolutely have to balance it out someplace. I never think in terms of "making up for it" by cutting back big time afterward or frantically doing extra workouts, because that's not mentally healthy or effective in my case. Mostly, it's that if I do this too often and my weight drifts up a bit, I'll need to run a small deficit for a while to drift it back down. Sometimes that's worth it (I eat the whole pizza), sometimes it's not (I eat a little pizza and freeze the rest, or something like that).

Reading between the lines of what I've written, I'll make a thought process explicit: Whatever I do, that counts as a decision, and I'm responsible for the results, bottom line. I want to preserve my healthy weight, and my long term best odds of good health and independence as I age. Since reaching a healthy weight, it's obvious to me that that's a huge quality of life improvement. If I want my future self to be happy, I need to manage that big picture somehow, and I need strategies that will work permanently.

Different people are going to find different approaches most realistic and beneficial. I'm always going to tell people to find ways to lose weight relatively easily, rather than super fast - things they can keep up forever to stay at a healthy weight . . . because "forever" is the real prize, the difficult and elusive goal, the holy grail in some ways.

What works for you will be different than what works for me: We can only give you thoughts and ideas for you to consider.

Best wishes!

FibroHiker

Planning my days ahead of time helps me a lot with the cravings. I plan an entire day with snacks so I know I can eat when the hunger strikes.

It does help that I cook a lot. I make dinner almost every night and make extra for lunch the next day. This helps me two ways: I have portion and calorie control for my meals and I don't have to plan or prepare my lunch for the next day. It also allows me to eat more frequently by controlling the calories in my lunch and dinner meals

There are plenty of days when I don't want to cook. For those days I have my easy substitutes: street tacos, burrito bowls, or sushi nigiri from my favorite restaurants. Have a list of those acceptable substitutes that won't derail your progress.