Doritos are not meth.

STANDING OVATION!!!

I REFUSE to cut certain food out just because they might be "bad." I like to keep a tub of chocolate icing around my house so I can eat a spoonful or two when I need to quell my chocolate urge. Have I ever opened the top, grabbed a spoon and eaten half the tub before I batted an eyelash? Certainly! But I also used to eat a couple tacos and a box of mac & cheese for dinner. By myself. In one sitting. I realize that giving in to those tempations might mean I don't reach my goal as quickly as I might like, but it also means I won't (generally) gorge myself on crap foods all the time. That's just me.

So glad you spoke up!

Hey dear, you can try to talk sense into them until you are blue in the face, it will not work. There are actually people that believe this gibberish to be true. Maybe they are lying to themselves or simply are trying to force their will on others and believe they know it all so it must be true. Simple fact of the matter is, you know the truth and you are taking steps to help yourself. One thing I will tell you is, trying to argue this point is going to mess with YOUR serenity.

Dont sweat it. I feel bad for all the people that die every year because they believe this or someone else has convinced them that they can overcome addiction with willpower. But all we can do is all we can do. We walk the walk and if someone wants what we have, they will ask us how we did it.

Congrats to you for making the choice to get help with your addiction. Welcome to your new and wonderful life. :flowerforyou:

Standing up and clapping. I couldn't agree more. :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :drinker:

And just for the record - I never eat Doritos. Not because they're like meth but because they make your breath stinky :sick:

I actually saw that the originally OP was trying to say just because you eat a cupcake dont feel guilty its not the end of the world. It may have been a backwards way to go about it, and touched a lot of cords with those of us who are trying to manage our addiction on a daily, minute, meal by meal basis. It is sad that food addiction is treated like just a lack of will power, but people with true sex addiction also get treated the same way like its a joke. I think because unlike drugs and alcohol which is easy for someone to be flippant and say, "just stop!" You cant do that w/ an ED. All they can say is well do it in moderation,. Easy to brush under the rug and blame the individual for somehow being weak and lazy. If you dont know the pain of hiding, lying, and stealing to get your high (whatever the vice maybe) you cant understand. I hit a low with my addiction and couldnt go any further. I feel so much lighter now that I have opened to the world my dirty little secret. Food is indeed a drug.

I definitely agree with the OP about not beating ourselves up over a single cheat. That is self-defeating, and can lead to the kind of self-loathing that causes us to binge to "punish" ourselves.

The part I disagreed with was when she said " food can not own or control us. We have power over our own minds. You are not addicted to chocolate. You are not addicted to carbs." Clearly some people ARE addicted to carbs, or chocolate, or gluten, etc.

I think the respondents to this post can sort of be classified into two groups (though there are other ways to classify them as well): addicts and non-addicts. The non-addicts are responding positively, because they completely agree with the statement that they are not addicted, and they know that they just need to develop better eating habits and exercise better will power, as so many have advocated in this thread.

Those of us who HAVE addictions (food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, etc), however, know better. We understand that addictions are NOT just a matter of willpower, and we get frustrated when people who have no true understanding of addiction make ignorant statements to that effect. We know the danger of thinking that "with enough will power alone, I can manage my addiction and indulge in moderation." Some of us have watched many people die from that line of thinking.

My only wish in this thread is that people would actually accept and come to understand that just because they are not truly addicted, and they could learn to change their bad habits, that doesn't mean that nobody else has an addiction that cannot be conquered by will-power and changing habits alone. I know that this is an unrealistic expectation. But if perhaps ONE person becomes more open-minded with regards to food addictions, then having some people think I am a complete *sshole is worth it.

I’m hesitant even as I write this, because I don’t want this to turn into some horrible flame war thread, because I write this with good intentions and not to judge or bully anyone. But it’s been on my mind for some time so I want to write it out…

Everywhere I look on this site I see threads or comments where people are losing their damn mind because someone brought cupcakes into work, or their mother-in-law made pasta for Sunday dinner, or they had to drive past a Taco Bell last Wednesday and it’s been giving them night terrors. They refuse to eat these things in moderation, or fit them somewhere in their daily/weekly/monthly goals and instead spend hours freaking out and obsessing about what they ate, didn’t eat or almost ate.

If someone brings cupcakes into my work, and I decide I’d like one – I eat it, I think “What a delicious cupcake.”, log it as best as I can in my food journal and continue with my day. I never think about it again, I don’t skip dinner or do an extra workout or pray to the Weight Loss God. I don’t shiver and sob on my bathroom floor while rubbing Sensa crystals all over my body. I ate a cupcake, I didn’t hit someone with my car and keep driving, so why should I feel guilty?

I’m not saying I don’t make bad choices some days. The other day I ate an entire bag of tortilla chips and an entire jar of queso dip. And not throughout the day or at a casual social event. I sat on my couch and crammed about 1500 calories into my mouth in 20 minutes. Did I regret it afterwards? Of course I did. Do I now think I have a queso addiction and refuse to have it in my house? No. There is a bag of chips in my cupboard and a jar of dip in my fridge. I like to enjoy a serving of each some nights after work.

The big picture is, food can not own or control us. We have power over our own minds. You are not addicted to chocolate. You are not addicted to carbs. There’s no shifty dudes hanging out in the alley trying to sell you Cheetos. Doritos are not meth. Losing weight to me has nothing to do with looking smokin’ hot in a bikini, one of my biggest goals is to continue to learn and implement my own self control. To learn how to keep things in balance, and make good decisions. I will slip up sometimes and moderation can fly out the window, but I’d rather learn from my mistakes than constantly worry about these “bad foods” and when they’re going to get me. I want to be free from these restrictions we put upon ourselves.

I’m not saying you have to keep eating junk food. If you don’t want to, don’t. If you want to eat clean (whatever that actually means), then go nuts. Just stop giving food more power than it has. I am so sick of people talking about food like it’s a drug. “Oh, I can’t control myself around sweets.” Yes, you can. You just never have. “I can’t have chips in my house!” Sure you can. Sometimes you’ll ration them out serving by serving throughout the week, and sometimes you’ll eat the entire bag at once and regret it afterwards. In my opinion, you will learn more from that than from walking through life with your eyes closed pretending chips don’t exist.

They do exist. And they are delicious.

Hey dear, you can try to talk sense into them until you are blue in the face, it will not work. There are actually people that believe this gibberish to be true. Maybe they are lying to themselves or simply are trying to force their will on others and believe they know it all so it must be true. Simple fact of the matter is, you know the truth and you are taking steps to help yourself. One thing I will tell you is, trying to argue this point is going to mess with YOUR serenity.

Dont sweat it. I feel bad for all the people that die every year because they believe this or someone else has convinced them that they can overcome addiction with willpower. But all we can do is all we can do. We walk the walk and if someone wants what we have, they will ask us how we did it.

Congrats to you for making the choice to get help with your addiction. Welcome to your new and wonderful life. :flowerforyou:

HAHAHA! Typical addict behavior, I just keep coming back for more. lol!!

Willpower is a stupid diet industry buzzword, points off for that.

The big picture is, food can not own or control us. We have power over our own minds.

Willpower is a stupid diet industry buzzword, points off for that.

Willpower is about so much more than simply your diet. It's what gets you out of bed on days you feel too groggy. It's what gets you to pay your bills. It's what keeps you from choking a co-worker or in-law that is royally pissing you off. Willpower is another word for self-control.