no wonder i was/am fat...

Remember the 'double decker' pizza hut pizzas? Yeah, my loose belly does! XD

(to be fair, that's ALL I ate all day when I'd have one. But I'd wash it down with a two-liter of sprite!)

lots of beer followed by an entire pizza at 11:00 p.m. thanks to delivery. HAAA

Burgers, fried wings, and soda all week long. I'm glad to but alive after thinking about it.

Yeah all these things but what always strikes me as funny (sad) are those times where I told myself "but I don't eat any differently than a fit person....." Ha.

I once at five McDonald's double cheese burgers in an eating competition with a best friend in college. I was proud, so I definitely get that feeling.

I'd eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream right out of the carton.

I'd sometimes sit down with a box of cookies and, an hour later, realize I'd eaten half the box.

I'd buy a roll of pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough and eat the entire thing in one sitting... raw.

A night out for drinks would involve not one or two beers, but five or six. (I'm a 5'1" woman.)

I'd buy a wedge of cheese from the local cheese shop, and eat the whole thing on the walk back to my office. It'd be gone before I made it back to my desk.

I'd lie to myself and say things like "life is meant to be enjoyed", or "you don't live longer, it just feels longer". I'd pretend that I was so much happier than all those people watching their food intake or counting their calories.

I made being a chocoholic part of my identity, and used it as a sort of defense mechanism to ward off comments about my weight. I'd fight against size-ism and discrimination, and take down anyone angrily for judging people for their weight. All of which is true and important, but I also used it as an excuse of why I didn't have to lose weight.

That was then. This is now. No more excuses.

Grazing all day, snacking and eating large quantities at supper - no matter what we had for supper. And beer. I like beer still, but decide to make room for it within my calorie goals now. My worst habit is midnight snacking. I do not need to shove food in my face at 3am!

Oh, and who could forget, I'd buy the store-bought icing meant for cakes (Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker, whatever) and eat the ENTIRE THING with a spoon.

Yes, really.

Before deciding I had to make a change, I would drink 2-liters of root beer almost everyday. (Some days I didn't finish the bottle, but I was still averaging at least 4 each 2-liter bottles of root beer a week.)

Typical day 2 years ago. Bacon egg and cheese bagel breakfast meal at Mcdonald's, 4 coke's, 4 snickers bars and a couple bags of chips at work. Bacon cheeseburger and fries for lunch. Driving home snack, two cheeseburger value meal at McDonald's. Then dinner.... I am positive I ate 6000 calories some days.

I'm doing better now.....

Eating at restaurants every day Mondy-Friday for lunch at work. Or getting a sonic blast every Friday just to treat myself for no reason.

• 1-2 pints of Ben & Jerry's S'mores ice cream in a day (and if the first store was out of it, I'd go to another and sometimes even a third store in my quest to satisfy my craving). And this was downsized from a half-gallon of rocky road ice cream. This amount of ice cream almost always gives me painful diarrhea, so I think this was an exercise in self punishment.
  
• An entire key lime pie in 1-2 days.
  
• A whole box of Girl Scout cookies in an hour.
  
• A block of port wine cheese and an entire sleeve of wheatsworth crackers in an hour with 1-2 Cokes.
  
• An entire box of Twinkies and 3-4 Sprites in a day.
  
• A whole medium pizza with lord knows how many Oreo cookies.
  
• 3-4 servings of macaroni and cheese (homemade).
  
• Entire box of Kraft macaroni and cheese (mixed with the cheese dust, butter, and milk, of course).
  
• 2-3 servings of pasta loaded with butter and Parmesan cheese.

It is interesting how specific my cravings were.

Once I stopped eating massive amounts of food like that, the weight started to drop off. I wasn't counting calories or denying myself, I just no longer had the cravings, I think because the counseling I had been in had finally taken firm root. It was amazing and felt magical. After the first 20 pounds, I did start working at it, though. I am a bit annoyed with myself that I engaged in emotional/impulse eating again and slowly gained back half of the weight I lost back in 2008-2010, but oh well, it is what it is. I guess I had not finished learning my lesson.

I guess I could say that when I binge, I binge. We could be talking 2-5000 calories on top of my normal daily eating. The worst thing is that I don't really remember the act of going out and buying all the junk (I don't keep it in the house) or in fact eating all of it. I sort of remember the craving to buy the food, and finishing the binge coupled with the stomach pain and sick feeling.

Weirdly, when I am not middle of a binge, my diet is actually really healthy - however my weight has crept up to 13st 7lb due to an almost month long binge.

Ice cream with banana's, strawberry topping, pineapple topping, fudge and whip cream...

I think they call this a banana split??

Not to mention Blue Bell Banana Split and Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream... Om Nom Nom!

Half gallon never enough! LOL

Dominos hot wings...dominos hot wings....

Other than that, the point at which I realized I might have a slight issue was when I noticed at lunch, I filled my plate up double what my male coworkers had (at 5'2" with no exercise, that's not a recipe for success).