Um. I just ate a tub of ice cream and need help

I've never heard of oatmeal a la mode, but it sounds like a bad idea.

I try to save all treats for after dinner/bedtime snack. But sometimes I slip up. We all do. Put it behind you.

If it's of any consolation, I've been making the mistake of measuring ice cream in cup measures for the last while too. Normally I weigh things but the serving size given on my brand is "1/2 cup (125 ml)" - presumably direct from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious. So I'm not sure what I can do to convert that into a more accurate serving by weight but I certainly have been packing that stuff hard into the cups so really need to dial back on that. In retrospect the huge container did empty out surprisingly fast although it isn't only me eating it and I'm the only one 'measuring' my servings from it so I can't be sure how much damage I've done to myself.

Quoting self to say I figured it out.

Weigh empty container. Weigh full container. Divide difference by container volume and multiply by serving size. That is the serving size in grams. Of course it can't be exactly perfect unless you check the stated container volume is perfectly accurate but it's a darn sight closer than ramming some ice cream in a cup measure. I have been eating just under 1.5 serving every time I 'measured' one serving. There goes my diary for the last week. Lesson learned!

1 mL of water weighs 1 gram. I usually just weigh whatever it is the same way. It is probably closer with this than trusting the company who loaded the product to actually give you the correct weight to the slightest gram.

I don't eat ice cream every day, but I keep a container of Unreal chocolate candies (basically "organic" M&Ms) in my desk drawer. When I get those middle-of-the-day cravings, I count out 12 or 25 of them (50 or 100 calories) and enjoy a moment of chocolate bliss. If someone said I have to give up the one thing that gives me a bit of pleasure each day, I'd probably feel like the OP, too. I fit it in to my otherwise pretty healthy and balanced diet. Though technically I should weight them, I don't. If I'm one M&M over for 50 calories, not going to worry about it.

My point is the OP says she's eating well and logging/measuring portions. Good for her. If she can get a new scale and hide it from her dad so he doesn't bust it up, great. Weighing portions is far more accurate than measuring, we all agree with that. But I think the OP's dad may be more of the challenge here than her nightly escape with a small cup of ice cream.

My heart goes out to you because I can hear the "I feel so trapped" in your posts. I hope that you find the inner personal strength to deal with your family and support from the outside to help you heal and move on. There is a solution to this--you have to search (and possibly search hard) to find it. Don't give up.

Since you can't get a scale the best option here just seems to be to forget and move on. You know what your mistake was so in future you can use it to learn from.

Today I've spent like ALL day sat about on the sofa, I ate pizza and now I'm drinking beer. I know it's bad but I've had an insanely good week so tomorrow I'll get back to exercising and eating well. You need to do the same Don't obsess because that's when you'll start develop a bad relationship with food which won't help anything.

The name of your topic is "Um. I just ate a tub of ice cream and need help." I took those words literally. That sounds to me like someone who ate too much ice cream and needs help. But maybe it's just me. Everyone seems very eager that you go right on eating the ice cream that is torturing you - and if that is your choice and it works for you, great! I was trying a different suggestion since none of the other suggestions seemed to please the diarist..

Log nine and move on. Don't over obsess on stuff like that. It happened, can't be changed, the world's not ending, period.

This. One bad day won't kill your success, just like one good day didn't magically bring you to maintenance level. Give yourself the gift of shrugging it off and move on! :-)

To quote from the original post:

"Last night I measured out 2 1/2 cups servings (serving per container: 12), then another 1/2 cup serving for myself. 300 calories. Ok. Then I gave my sister 3 sevings as well. I opened the tub today to make some oatmeal a-la-mode for breakfast. I was so hungry. I measured it out--one 1/2 cup serving. Good. Then I measured out 1/2 cup again. Then I caved and had another 1/2 cup."

I don't know what that sounds like to anyone else but as a binge-eater myself, I recognize some of the signs. OP, If you are not a binge-eater, my apologies, because you sound just like me on a binge. Only you know whether or not having the ice cream around is giving you problems or not, and if it is not, nothing to get angry or defensive about.

If it is giving you problems, then it's within your power to not buy more ice cream for awhile until the cravings stop. Another way is to buy a lot of it, so much of it that it fills the freezer and you don't feel compelled to eat it all up, the way you describe. That worked for me in breaking binge cycles early on in my weight loss. It's all contained in a great book called 'Overcoming Overeating" by Munger and Hirschmann that really helped me a lot.

If you don't want to do this - fine. Please disregard. It is only a suggestion. Since you say you measure your food "compulsively," you might want to examine why measuring it didn't keep you from eating 20 oz of it (by your count) in about a 12-hour period. But if that is not a problem, my apologies for thinking that it was. And best of luck to you!

Slow churned gets some of its fat and calorie savings from the air that is incorporated (it gets it's texture from including air rather than fat...oh, don't get me started) so it's almost impossible not to have it settle some when kept at the generally colder home freezer temps and very easy to pack it. To even try to measure volume without packing, you would want to let it soften just a bit, but not so much that it loses the air. You migth actually find it easier to pick a healthy standard ice cream and eat smaller portions.

Oh, and seriously consider moving out. even if you have to get 4 roommates. It's cheaper than therapy later.

so are you saying some of the 'calories' they list and the 'servings of 12' are actually like 8 servings and less cals?

She/he is saying that that 12 servings of Edy's (100 cals/serving, right?) is the same as 6-ish servings of normal ice cream (~200 cals/serving) with a whole bunch of additional air incorporated during the churning. That's what gets you the lower calories - they doubled the volume of the same ice cream base with air.

Like the difference between angel food cake batter and angel food cake - lots less calories in the same volume for the cake.

If it's of any consolation, I've been making the mistake of measuring ice cream in cup measures for the last while too. Normally I weigh things but the serving size given on my brand is "1/2 cup (125 ml)" - presumably direct from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious. So I'm not sure what I can do to convert that into a more accurate serving by weight but I certainly have been packing that stuff hard into the cups so really need to dial back on that. In retrospect the huge container did empty out surprisingly fast although it isn't only me eating it and I'm the only one 'measuring' my servings from it so I can't be sure how much damage I've done to myself.

Quoting self to say I figured it out.

Weigh empty container. Weigh full container. Divide difference by container volume and multiply by serving size. That is the serving size in grams. Of course it can't be exactly perfect unless you check the stated container volume is perfectly accurate but it's a darn sight closer than ramming some ice cream in a cup measure. I have been eating just under 1.5 serving every time I 'measured' one serving. There goes my diary for the last week. Lesson learned!

1 mL of water weighs 1 gram. I usually just weigh whatever it is the same way. It is probably closer with this than trusting the company who loaded the product to actually give you the correct weight to the slightest gram.

According to my calculation, if I simply measured 125g of ice cream and called it a 125ml serving in my diary, I would be counting almost exactly half of the calories I had actually eaten of my brand of ice cream (it'll vary by brand). Your trick absolutely doesn't work for ice cream because of the air.

In any case no weight is actually given in grams by the manufacturers of the ice cream I buy, which is why I'm having to weigh it and work off their container volume (which, as I say, could be a little off) to get a gram/serving amount. I could probably take the empty container and fill it with the relevant amount of water to make sure it compares visually to the volume of the ice cream in a full container, just to be a little closer, but unfortunately there is no way to be 100% certain. Splitting the entire tub into portions might be closer. I'm happy to accept the small error inherent in my method since the ice cream I buy comes in a 4L container and any discrepancy in the container volume is going to be divided over 32 servings, i.e. fairly insignificant. With a smaller container, it would definitely be worth taking the time to be more precise but again, you can't know for sure if the container volume is right so even portioning it out beforehand won't necessarily be perfect.

This is why all serving sizes of solid foods ought to be given in grams. What a lot of unnecessary messing around.