how do you get past the all or nothing thinking?

Because occasionally, I used to skip a meal or eat a salad. It didn't make me skinny.

Conversely, occasionally overeating will not make me fat.

I guess you need to focus on the goal - and realize it is one day, sometimes one meal at a time. And one mess-up is just that - one mess-up!! We are not perfect - mistakes happen - success is moving on and realizing one mistake does not derail us - it can motivate us to do better next time!! I don't have an easy answer to changing thinking patterns. It helps to be on blogs - to be challenged by success stories - and to see that we are all in the same boat!! Good luck!

practice practice practice!

This was super hard for me too but over time it sort of clicked. One thing I did was to set my goals way low at first so I had less "mistakes" to make. I set it at .5 per week to begin even though I had at least 100 lbs to lose at the time. As I lost well past that rate it's like I gained momentum or something.

It also helped me to look at overall calories for the week so if I went "over" some I'd just start adding calories to the next day or a previous day where I was under to try to keep to the number for the week. That seemed to take my focus to broader thinking.

Also I joined a number of groups that had different weigh-in days, so I was always looking forward to a weigh in.

And I tell myself I can always eat that thing later. That bag of chips will still be there at the store months from now (well, hopefully not *that* bag of chips but you get the idea). I have still brought home a bag or two of chips. They still don't make it as long as they should, but if I eat a whole bag of chips in 2 days time I don't also eat 80000 other things just because.

Basically just practice on knowing it is not "messing up"- it is just eating. It's ALL just eating (or drinking). You can eat one splurge thing and that's isolated from how many vegetables you are otherwise going to eat that day.

My thing used to be that if I "messed up" I'd feel I'd have to make the highest calorie choices I could find for everything else that day or week. I don't know why, like you I know it was so messed up too, but it was what I did. Owning up to the fact of how messed up that thinking was and typing/talking about it seemed to help too.

Best of luck! I know right now it seems impossible to change, it seemed that way to me too. Just keep on trying and focusing on changing your thinking and habit and I think you'll slowly see it change too!

I used to think that way too. It was like giving myself permission to go off the deep end. I finally have changed my thinking. I do my best to track everything I eat good and bad. I don't beat myself up for going over my calorie goal for the day. I just try to make better choices the next day. I made a really bad decision a couple days ago and ate a sandwich from burger king that was almost my whole days worth of calories. I gave myself credit for having the sandwich only when before I would have had the sandwich fries and maybe even a milkshake. Small improvements turn into pounds lost.

Good luck.