Oh, and the read that kept me up all night was Margaret Atwood's "Lady Oracle." I'd read it before a long time ago, but I just love Atwood and especially that book. She and Barbara Kingsolver and Isabel Allende are favs. And of course all the regency work by Austen and the Brontes. My ultimate escape reading are regency romance novels--I don't know why, but I just love a good love story that's full of manners and societal restrictions juxtaposed to hot, secretive, let's-not-get-caught-or-I'll-be-"ruined" sex, LOL!!!

Well I have something to say here which may or may not be popular.

I do not think we should judge others for giving their kids a treat as a reward after doing something active. I reward Dean with a variety of things, praise, hugs, stickers, an outing, high fives and yes ice-cream or the odd food treat. I think it is great to say hey yes that treat would be awesome so how about we get moving first so we have earnt it.

Secondly I understand we are all different in this group, at different stages and we have different battles with regards to food. But if we are going to have to start censoring mentioning foods all the time, or get jumped on for mentioning them, I will not be popping in as often. I really get that some of you have some issues that are way beyond mine. But turning certain foods into the big evil that cannot be named is not how I am doing this journey.

Edit: I stopped there and posted but when I re-read it it sounded abrupt, I just didn't want to get into a long post about it tbh. The above sums it up lol

I don't think I jumped on Caro about giving her kids icecream--I asked her to rethink the idea of it as a "treat" and instead to think of it as an "indulgence" and then asked the rest of the group to chime in. The only reason I did was because she was kind of laughingly trying to justify eating it herself, and I think it's important that we look at why we assign so much power to food--as a tool of shame, as a reward, as good or evil--instead of thinking about where it fits in our food plans. The reality IS that the sweets and junk food "treats" that we give ourselves and our kids are NOT rewards for our bodies, except maybe for our palates. They are typically void of nutritional value and loaded with sugar and fat. And then we wonder why our kids are pre-diabetic by age 13. I'm not saying no one should eat them--your choice! and mine!--but I'm very interested in having a conversation about changing the language we assign to food. Today I tried an Asian Pear. Now that's a "treat"---beautiful, juicy, loaded with vitamin C. It has a wonderful, delicate flavor. In a number of Asian cultures, it's considered a great delicacy (because it's expensive, comparably), and so the entire family will share one pear. Or the pear will be given to an honored guest. That's a treat both for the body and mind.

As for the other issue of food language, trying to be nonspecific when talking about high sugar/high calorie/high fat foods, I really don't think that's too much to ask. We're already censoring ourselves in here every single day. If I want to talk about my relationship and sex life, I keep it very generic, don't lay out in graphic detail what we did, how, when, where, and which parts, right? Or religious preferences. Or political leanings. Let me give you an example... I swam for an hour and had plenty of calories left for a nice big slice of warm apple pie ala mode.

Okay, awesome. Now fifty people have just read that sentence. Maybe for thirty, it does nothing. For twenty, it triggers a craving for apple pie ala mode. Of the twenty, ten manage to fight off the craving, but ten don't. They obsess about it. They give in. They finally go get their freaking apple pie and ice cream and have a piece. YUM. And for five of the ten, that's enough. They log it, they're done. But for five, that's not the end. The rest of that pie calls to them, they obsess over it even more. They get up in the middle of the night and eat the rest of the pie and ice cream, 7200 calories worth. The next day they feel like crap and say, "f&ck it, I already blew the week, might as well eat what I want and start on Monday," but only two of the five come back on Monday. The other three are back in the cycle of tragic morbid obesity.

Why? Because I had to announce to the group that I ate apple pie ala mode??? Why would I need to tell the group that? If I had created a lo-fat, lo-sugar version of it, I might mention it and post a recipe, but the reality is that this type of food is an indulgence--something most of us can't have every day because we simply don't have the calories and macros for it and because this kind of food is what got us here in the first place. So no, I don't think it's too much to ask to censor yourself a bit. If it is, if it's too much for the majority of the group, let's establish that now so that those of us who are triggered by specific high calorie food talk can go elsewhere for support. Most of the groups and forums for the morbidly obese DO have food talk rules because so many of the members are fighting eating disorders and food addictions.

That's my twenty cents.
Karen

Is this not the place where we can come when we have a victory with such foods? No-one else in my life would understand what a huge victory it was to leave the half plate of rice, skip a starter and desert, when I had my curry last night. Only people here would get that. Or sitting in a McDs with my son (it is a very rare thing always has been) and then going myself to Extreme Pita. And does being generic really make any difference? That is a real question not a snarky one. Does saying ice-cream as opposed to a specific help?

To me it does. "Ice cream" is nonspecific, so, yes, less triggering than saying butter pecan or mint chocolate chip.

I apologize profusely to anyone reading this thread today who is now fighting cravings. I'm trying to be specific so we can settle the matter finally.

Again,if you aren't a food addict, someone whose brain lights up over high sugar and high fat foods like a heroin addict's over heroin, this has got to be a bizarre distinction. But to someone like me, or Heather whose food cravings drag her out of bed in the middle of the night, or Dee whose bypass should keep her from eating sugar but who eats it sometimes anyway because of her compulsion and then suffers the consequences of b dumping syndrome, or Julie who tries so hard to stay on track all day but then loses the battle every night and feels ashamed that she's not" leading", or Pat who fights constantly to stay away from the drivethru... we're the compulsive overeaters, the night eaters, the food addicts, the binge eaters, and our recovery is fragile--why not give it a safe place until it toughens up?

The answer for a food addict or someone with an eating disorder is not always going to be everything in moderation. Sometimes it's going to mean abstaining from trigger foods. So, no , in some cases, a choco taco does not have a place in the food plan.

I think you can celebrate your victories in here, of course! Just think a bit before posting. Could you say, "I only finished half my plate on my dinner date and stuck to my calories even though we went to one of my favorite restaurants." ? What's the difference to you? To the food addict, it's a non-triggering sentence, so less stress and fewer cravings.

I'm not going to leap on everyone who talks about food-!I'm just asking that we have a ground rule that we try to follow in order to be kind and empathetic.

You wouldn't yell "fire" in a crowded theater because people's lives are at stake. Well think of the term morbid; it comes from the Latin morbus--disease--and the root mori--to die. People's lives are at stake in here. This may be the last round for someone like me--if I give up this time and go back to my old habits, I will be dead within a year. I'm sure of it. I'm not trying to be melodramatic here, although I know it sounds that way, I'm just trying to help you understand why this is so important to me.