All or nothing food mentality

Do you think that if you eat "bad" foods you will gain? Or is it just that you think it's bad for your health?

Do you currently log your intake? I wonder if logging and staying within your calorie goal regardless of what you're eating would help you? Or even just to make notes about how you feel....maybe that would help you to identify and deal with those emotions?

I guess I think I need to eat clean to lose and maintain weight. Ever since I read about low carb I've had this phobia that I'll gain if I eat too many carbs I don't know lol. But then I see my sister eating whatever she wants in small portions and staying thin. I want to do that too. Sigh it seems like the more I read about nutrition and dieting the more confused and extreme I got. I do log, but I'm not quite sure how many calories to eat. Faster results seem very appealing but I don't have much to lose so I'm told I'm better off with smaller deficiet.

Stop reading low carb propaganda, it's a bunch of crap. Look up a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculator, figure out how many calories you eat in a day, and subtract 10-20%. (I would go with 10 or 15% if you don't have much to lose.) Eat what you like, just less of it. Log it, make sure you're at your goal, and you'll lose weight.

Do you think that if you eat "bad" foods you will gain? Or is it just that you think it's bad for your health?

Do you currently log your intake? I wonder if logging and staying within your calorie goal regardless of what you're eating would help you? Or even just to make notes about how you feel....maybe that would help you to identify and deal with those emotions?

I guess I think I need to eat clean to lose and maintain weight. Ever since I read about low carb I've had this phobia that I'll gain if I eat too many carbs I don't know lol. But then I see my sister eating whatever she wants in small portions and staying thin. I want to do that too. Sigh it seems like the more I read about nutrition and dieting the more confused and extreme I got. I do log, but I'm not quite sure how many calories to eat. Faster results seem very appealing but I don't have much to lose so I'm told I'm better off with smaller deficiet.

Vegas, are you taking any noobs to mentor? This one looks like she could benefit.

I could certainly try

Yeah, unfortunately OP it sounds like you have just fallen into the trap that so many people do with all the crazy propaganda that is out there. The fact of the matter is that you DON'T need to eat low carb or "clean" to lose weight. To lose weight it's calories in vs calories out. That's it. Your body doesn't much know *where* those calories are coming from. Now, where you can see differences is in how you feel....your performance....your satiety. But your mental health is just as important. You can read MANY MANY success stores (myself, DamePiglet, and I_Will_End_You are all examples) of women that have no adopted these concepts and have been very successful.

As far as calories are concerned, you can certainly do it the TDEE way or you can do it the way that MFP is automatically set up. And yes, slower results are better. If you don't have much to lose, eating at an aggressive deficit to get there fast can really cause more harm (mentally to be honest) than good

Hope this helps!

This. :drinker:

Are you eating enough calories and fat when you're eating "good" foods? My guess is you're probably hungry.

You sound just like me! I do the sam thing! Once I have eaten bad I just go on and eat more! How do we stop???

The big issue here is that you have linked your sense of worth and self esteem to your food intake. Then, when you eat something you deem to be "unclean" (which makes it sound like food is equivalent to leprosy...) you feel a sense of shame. This is a self reinforcing circle - you sense of shame lowers your sense of worth meaning you put more pressure on yourself making it more likely that you will fall off at some point. It's a classic dieter's trap.

Many of these decisions and thoughts happen unconsciously and you have conditioned yourself over time to feel this way. The way to reverse this is to create conscious habits which overrides the unconscious programming eventually.

The idea of calorie counting and over time realising that little to no negative impacts will occur no matter what you eat as long as you meet your nutritional bases is a good one.

However it is far less important than consciously identifying your negative feelings every time they occur, rationally facing it and understanding that it will not be a problem to eat certain food items and telling yourself that it will lower your sense of self worth to prohibit your eating and it will raise your feelings of worth to go back to your former good habits. Do this enough over time and your unconscious thinking will change.

When that happens you will have freed yourself.

Thanks! That helped me, too. Because I feel the same way very often

I used to have a healthy relationship with food. I would eat whatever I wanted but in reasonable portions. I had no problems with my weight. Then I went on this clean eating health kick where I would avoid "bad foods" as much as possible. Couldn't have them. Ironically that's been a disaster. I can only eat clean for so long and then I have to have that icecream. But then I feel guilty for eating the unhealthy food feeling like I messed everything up and then for some stupid reason I reason I blew it I might as well eat more. It's a nasty cycle. How do you get over that all or nothing mentality and find balance? Does it just go away with time? It's like I have to eat perfect or be a complete disaster.

oh I totally understand this and have been doing the same thing myself for years now! Funnily enough, I always thought that I'm not alone, many many people must go through the same thing. Yet when I see these kinds of posts on here, it is clear from some of the responses that most people do not fully understand the impact of this and how it becomes an extremely difficult mental issue to overcome. I know it is not as easy as making sure you have eaten enough during the day or re-calcing the TDEE etc. Those things don't matter in the heat of the moment when the impulse takes over and it's so hard to stop eating. I can't really plan to eat 'bad foods' either as just the taste of some of them will trigger a binge.

I long for the days that I never thought about food and sometimes I wish that I had never even begun the whole calories in vs calories out thing all those years ago. Yes I might have lost 10lbs at the time, but now after years of on and off bingeing and a total obsession with food plus now being almost 50lb overweight from where i began, I wish i'd never started.

I say this not to discourage you or anyone but just to say that you are not alone and there are other people who understand this feeling all too well. I wish I had better advice but I have not figured this out myself, even 6 years after this all began. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot count calories anymore and I do not track food as I KNOW that every single time I do that, it leads to a binge cycle. A few good days, weeks or even months, and then off the wagon (for days, weeks or months). I know mentally when I have had a good day food wise and when I have not so I don't feel the need to log it anymore either.
As you said you don't have much to lose, then I would suggest perhaps spending some time trying to get back to the way you used to eat, not thinking so much about food or if it's good or bad or if it puts you over calories etc and using your hunger and fullness as a guide. Try not to focus on losing weight but instead getting back to 'mentally' healthy eating habits. Once you are out of this cycle, then you could try to lose weight again by continuing your balanced diet, making slight adjustments and improvements and exercising regularly.

. And it got to the point I that if I didn't follow the diet strictly I felt like a total failure so I might as well be a failure (yeah faulty stupid logic I know).

Which is ridiculously common right and why many people end up on a rather depressing lose weight / binge / lose weight / binge cycle. No one has to be perfect to succeed. Literally no one.

there is probably no one size fits all diet for everybody.

And there never will be.

And I'm sick of trying to be perfect all the time and I just want to go back to eating the way I used to, because it was so much more realistic and maintainable. And enjoyable. And it worked lol

Huzzah! Best of luck.