How to overcome "all or nothing" thinking with food?

The all or nothing has to come from you and you have to be mentally ready.

There is nothing wrong with a slice of pizza and maybe even 2 depending on your calorie goals. But you have to WANT to commit to your goals and figure out from there how YOU will get past this all or nothing approach.

It's easy for ME to say go ahead and have a piece of pizza as long as it fits in with your goals but it seems that you can't stop at one so maybe for the short term you should avoid any and all temptations until you get into a habit and routine of healthy eating, Once it's become habit it may be easier for you to eat one, enjoy it and stop there.

Maybe try to enter your foods ahead of time into your diary and stick to it?
Some have success with that.
I don't see any food as bad, and do everything in moderation Good luck!

I can relate.

I do this when I eat something that I hadn't planned on eating. Yep: I'm a planner. I plan dinners for my family a week in advance and I will often plan out my meals for the day by lunch time and log them early. It seems crazy, but it keep the guesswork out of it for me so that when I sit down to eat something particularly delicious I already know how much of it I am going to eat. When I plan pizza, I work it into my calories for the day and when I sit down to eat it I put however much of it on my plate and tell myself that's it. When I don't plan pizza, I do end up sitting down to the meal feeling defeated even before I start eating it. And even if I don't feel defeated, I rationalize that it tasted good and I want more and it can't be THAT many calories, anyway.... when I'm finished with one serving. It makes me eat more. And then lots of sugary foods in no moderation afterwards because hey, why not?

For me, it's totally a mental thing. I associate it with my binge tendencies. I mainly control it by planning ahead, but also by only buying single servings. I'm doomed if I buy a whole box of cookies, but if I can buy just one or two at the bakery then one or two is all I can eat. The same thing with the pizza: doomed if there are two large pizzas with different topping choices AND bread sticks and I didn't plan ahead (I like to sample!) but better if there is less pizza and less choices.

Once in awhile if I give in and binge, I just pull myself up out of the "hangover", tell myself tomorrow is a new day, then try try again. Hope that helps!

A person with an addiction, or even a weakness, when confronted with a choice she/he knows is going to lead away from the goal and towards that "pleasure," will turn off the reason sensor in his/her brain. It takes practice and a lot of self-talk to take that off auto-pilot and stay in control of one's senses. Imagine yourself in a situation of temptation, then imagine yourself overcoming it.

Another thing to remember, you may have blown your "goal," but your body definitely knows the difference between two slices of pizza and the whole works. That's your little shoulder devil telling you to go for the mother lode! Don't believe that lie--just enjoy the pizza and remember that tomorrow there may be room for french fries.

As you can see, you are definitely not alone. We are all cheering for you! (And trying to help ourselves, in the process.)

I've so been there - but now I've changed. I think logging it regardless has helped me to change. I look back at the choices I made and realistically why and what could I do better next time. I don't look back through critical glasses either. It's not about missing my chance at perfection. I look back with thoughts like "was it a favorite thing?" "was it peer pressure" "was I just hungry" etc. Then make a plan to prevent the problem or accept that it was a favorite thing and I'm just not doing without favorites. I log it, move on. If I go over my calories for the day I just try to stop before I go over my maintenance calories level. Some days I'm just HANGRY and that's all there is to it.

My current motto is that I choose progress over perfection. If I'm below maintenance - that's progress. If I'm below my goal calories - even better. If I'm over maintenance - what happened today? Sometimes, you just need that dinner out with friends or family and I've learned if that's my breaking point so be it. I just restart the next day trying to do better again.

It's a process and it won't happen day 1. My day 1 was, in fact, a crap fest of high calorie low nutrition foods for the most part and I didn't care. I started from where I really was not from a prewritten unobtainable plan of perfection diet that makes some author rich - I started right where I was and thought to myself "self, what could you do better." and there I was, first tweaks in hand moving forward. I'm still tweaking and moving forward. I've skipped logging for a couple days even - and started right back up. I see logging as my norm now and log whether things are blown away or right on target. It just is what it is and it's not going to be perfect. Nobody likes perfect diet people, they are hangry and judgmental. Relax and just log.

I can relate 100%! I was just like this for years and years.

I started doing intermittent fasting and IIFYM (if it fits your macros) for me it made me realize that if I eat something deemed "bad" it doesn't actually mean I have ruined my day. I can still fit my macros and my calories.

Maybe google and read a bit about it. You can do IIFYM without fasting. For me it just means I can eat a bigger meal which I like.

And stop beating yourself up!

I agree that logging every bite works. If you pig out, record it anyway, and then adjust over the next few days.

Also, and I'm not joking here, eat with skinny people. Order what they order and stop eating when they do. For instance, I learned from one skinny friend how to eat salad dressing. She orders it on the side and dips her fork in it before digging into the salad for each bite. So the first taste in each bit is the salad dressing, but there is actually very little on the fork, and she seldom eats more than a teaspoon of dressing with the salad.

And motivation -- I've finally gotten into the habit of reminding myself how much my knees hurt before I order. If I lose weight my knees won't hurt as much.

Forbid yourself the foods that cause you to binge for long enough to build new habits (for me, that's 3 months), then gradually reintroduce them in moderation.

Hmm... Not to preAch, but u dhould try doing IF... That way if you only ate dinner you would be able to hold ur cals for one meal and eat that zza or chocolate in moderation. I have the same mindset and weakness as yu so i do a 22:2 IF. I fast for 22 hours and 2 hours of eating ! U jst find ur min cal intake and eat that in 2 hour window or howver u choose to use IF. Plus its great to work out fasted! Just a thought. Only thing that has ever wrked for me!

Lots of great information here. This is something I struggle with almost everyday. Once I got a few months of tracking under my belt, I've been able to see how letting loose every now and then won't hurt long term progress. It's when you fall out of saddle for weeks and months on end that you'll run into trouble.

Good luck!