i feel on the verge of a massive binge! Help

I think you should eat what you want, but make sure you log everything and hold yourself accountable.

I recently recalculated my TDEE and calorie expenditure and found out that after weeks of hard work I was just breaking even and that I needed to lower my calories. I had a minor tantrum over this and overate by 500 calories for a couple days in a row but I think it's just something I needed to get through.

It's a journey, as cheesy as that sounds, and it's normal to take a step back before a leap forward. If you indulge your whims and honestly face the consequences, then eventually your whims will change for the better.

I read this the other day:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pavel-somov/mindfully-choose-what-you_b_455508.html

"Strange as it may sound, having a full, even unpleasantly full stomach doesn't have to mean weight gain. Foodstuffs differ in their caloric density. Having a stomach full of cheese is different from having it full of spinach. Some new-paradigm nutritional authors free their readers to eat as much as they please as long as what they eat is low in caloric density. This kind of humanistic, harm-reduction approach to overeating comes without the dessert of guilt! Dr. Joel Fuhrman (2003), for example, challenges us to eat at least two pounds of vegetables a day, four pieces of fruit, a cup of beans, and small amounts of nuts and whole grains. Bottom-line is that it's okay to overeat, i.e. to eat beyond the sense of pleasant fullness, as long as what you overeat is low in caloric density."



Might be worth a try.

I really, really have to disagree with this.

Over consumption is not healthy, even when what you're overeating is carrots and spinach. There are physical reasons this is unhealthy, you might turn orange from too much beta-carotene or get kidney stones from the oxalic acid in spinach from example, but it's also beside the point because it doesn't fix the problem.

We keep coming up with these diet fads that justify over-eating. Paleo says eat everything you want as long as you exclude these food groups, Atkins says stuff yourself with everything but carbs, Eat to Live says fill yourself to bursting with low calorie plant material.

Over-consumption is the American Way. "Who cares if your body can't use all the beta carotene from eating a pound of carrots in one sitting, you won't gain weight so it doesn't matter!" Do we ever pause to consider that our body suffers when it has to expend energy to use or get rid of all this stuff it doesn't need? Do we ever think about malnourished people with VitA deficiency who really needed those carrots? Do we think of all the wasted resources, the water, land, and soil nutrients that went into that food you didn't need?

I just... Ugh. It's wrong, people. It's just wrong.