Help me stop cheating ...

Hey OP

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate problem.

I'm an ex cheater myself and if it wasn't for my wife's big forgiving heart I'd be noes deep in a brothel right now.

I'm glad to see that there's motivation and support for people like us on MFP

Feel free to add.

:flowerforyou:

I do good most of the day feel good but by the end of the day i am tired and hungry so i seem to pig out .. I need to stop doing that but it is hard ... I live in Nevada and it is just about summer already and i still have 60 lbs or so to go but at least 20-30 befor i will even consider wearing a swim suit ... plus they are opening 2 new water parks in a few months .... please help .....

It sounds to me as though you are not feeding your body enough calories and nutrition. To lose weight effectively and in a healhty way, you should not be hungry and tired at night, you should feel full as a tick. ) I have learned that cravings are 99% physical. Your body does not have a voice, it's can't say "hey! you are eating too little, I don't have enough calories, I need so quick glucose right now and I'm low on protien and while you're at it, I need more high-quality fats too.:" Your body speaks to you through cravings, hormonal and chemical urges. Which your brain associates with your common foods. If you crave pizza, but give yourself high-quality protein/carbs/fats instead, your pizza craving will go away. If you crave sweets but give yourself high-qualty, quickly absorbed carbs instead, your sweets craving will go away. If you eat the right amount of caloires with all the nutrients that your body needs and you do this consistently every day, after a few weeks or months at the most you will find that you almost NEVER get any kind of cravings. Because there is nothing left to crave when your body is getting the fuel/nutrients that it needs.

I recommend a great book called Intuitive Eating. The website is awesome too. http://www.intuitiveeating.org/ Your diary is closed so I can't see your settings but if you are like most of here, you started MFP putting in "sedentary" as your activity level and "2 pounds" as your diet goal and you get 1,200 calories as your default. For more adult women who need to lose weight, 1,200 calories will not get them where they want to go. I recommend that you check out the MFP group: Eat More 2 Weigh Less. They have a ton of links and a website with tools and resources to help you find out how many calories you should be eating.

The basic idea is this: To lose weight, you should calculate how much you burn per day (e.g., 2300 calories) and then eat a moderate deficit below that (between 10-20% less), which is about 1800-2000 calories. The exception is if you are very obese with more than 75 lbs to lose, you can eat 30%+ less. But on days when you work out, eat more to fuel your workout (that's why MFP add exercise calories to your diary). I was in the category of more than 75 lbs to lose, and I did mistakenly eat too little (around 1300 for a couple months). I hope/think I didn't do too much damage to my metabolism because at least I ate every 2-3 hours, 5-6 meals a day religiously, which helps with hormones, such as helps to keep leptin in place and helps avoid cortisol. But now that I have lost a lot of weight, I've had to bring my calories back up. I'm in the process of ramping up, eating about 1700 now.

But my point is this: at no point have I ever let myself go hungry or feel deprived. I kept reminding myself that this is NOT a temporary "diet" -- this is just how I eat now. ) Even at 1300 calories, I made sure I was full all day and NEVER hungry. Best secret: eat massive amounts of veggies. I eat 2-4 servings of cooked veggies for lunch and dinner almost every day. Add on lean chicken/turkey/fish and high-quality filling carb like brown rice, and you will not be hungry at night.

I also discovered that how I ate at the very beginning of the day set up my whole day and had a ripple effect into that night. Whenever I ate right away upon awakening (within 20 minutes) and ate a full, balanced breakfast with adequte carbs/fat/protein, and in particular, a minimum of 20 grams of protein, then I noticed the whole rest of the day that I only got hungry at meal/snack times and was very satisfied with my meals/snacks. But when I didn't eat enough breakfast or 20 g protein, I would be up-and-down and plagued with ravenous hunger all day. So even if I don't feel like eating breakfast, I force myself. I know I'll be sorry later in the day if I don't.

It sounds to me like you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date. I'm sorry to tell you, but your body is a mechanism that does not understand "swimsuit season." LOL If you feel pressured to lose weight FAST you are more likely to do counter-productive things, like cut your calories drastically at the same time that you increase your exercise sharply. This will mess up your hormones and slow your metabolism. I recommend that you take a high-pressure deadline off yourself and settle in to learning a new eating lifestyle, in a healthy way. I have lost 70 lbs while never once "dieting" -- I eat cookies almost every day and waffles/eggs/bacon for brunch every weekend. Of course, I have also learned how to find yummy delicious ways to eat 4-8 servings of veggies every day. I've been losing since Sept. 2012 and never once have I felt hungry or deprived or stressed. The "diet' mentality won't serve you, because after the "diet" is over, you will go back to the eating patterns that god you here in the first place. The other day I realized that when I reach my goal weight someday and increase my calories to maintenance levels, it will only be a few hundred calories more than I am eating now. (Because when I am smaller, it will take less calories to maintain me, so the 20% less I am eating now is close to what I'll need to eat when my body mass is 20% less). So I consider how I am eating now to be practice for maintaining a healthy weight! Basically, I am eating RIGHT NOW exactly how I need to eat to maintain my healthy weight. So, I AM a healthy weight eater RIGHT NOW, and my body is just in the process of catching up to that reality. ) This is a much happier way to lose weight than trying to deprive yourself.

You know, honestly, at the end of the day it comes down to willpower. Resisting late night binges has a lot to do with your commitment to your weight loss, and being accountable for the goals you set for yourself.

What's your calorie goal? How much protein are you getting?

As others have mentioned, you may not be getting enough to eat during the day. I experienced that before also. I would be famished by 4:00 in the afternoon and would binge as soon as I got home, then eat a full, big dinner.

I solved the problem by eating breakfast and lunch and adding a calorie dense snack in the late afternoon (nuts, fruit and peanut butter, etc).

You know, honestly, at the end of the day it comes down to willpower. Resisting late night binges has a lot to do with your commitment to your weight loss, and being accountable for the goals you set for yourself.

Absolutely! You will stop cheating when you decide that BEING THINNER, BEING HEALTHIER, FEELING BETTER, NOT BEING FAT (whatever it is for you) is more important than that craving you are having in the moment. It's a work in progress that starts with a snack, then a meal, then a day, month, etc...pretty soon it's a lifestyle and not a matter of "dieting vs cheating"

Log, log, log. And click "finish entry" every night. It helps keep you accountable. (I'm relearning this myself after a few weeks of inconsistent logging myself.)

to me, it seems you have two problems, possibly 3 if you count willpower.
1- you are likely not eating enough because of:
2- you have unrealistic goals and want to achieve them NOW.

this whole "need to get skinny in a month because summer is here" mantra is a load of ****

this is why you are depriving yourself and your body and then binging because you are both unhappy, unfullfilled, and underfed. This is why people might lose weight, but they are miserable while doing it, can't help but cheat, or give up, and regain the weight.

focus more on being healthy. Eat more.

you will probably stop cheating if you aren't restricting yourself unnaturally to achieve the impossible in an unlikely and restrictive time period.

What is it that you find yourself wanting to eat that makes you cheat? If it's sweets, you could always buy a bag of cotton candy from your local movie theatre, the whole 1 oz is only around 114 calories, and it should be enough to kill your sugar cravings picking a little bit from it throughout the week.

Bad idea. The sugar cravings will only become far WORSE because you will trigger an immediate insulin spike. If you have having cravings sugar and carbs are the thing you want to avoid.