How to fight bad/binge cravings?

The urge to binge could come from a lot of different factors, and I struggled quite a bit myself with similar experiences. BackbeattheFire hit on all the important points, I think.

To reiterate, what do your macros look like? Are you getting enough protein and fat? Personally, I have 50% of my calories from carbs and 25% each from protein and fat, and this seems to strike a nice balance for me. I have enough carbs allotted to eat reasonable portions of all the carby stuff I love (frozen bananas lately, with a bit of peanut butter for protein/fat!), and I get enough of the other stuff to feel satisfied throughout the day.

If you tend to put more emphasis on carbs--especially carbs with higher glycemic load--your body will tear through them and you'll feel hungry again. By nature, that kind of stuff doesn't stay with you very long. Since your blood sugar will spike and you'll get a burst of energy, that's a great thing before you go to the gym, but not so great when you're trying to stay satisfied with limited calories.

Summer I have had that issue for 40+ issues. Finally Oct 2014 I just quit fighting because I was not going to win and just cold turkey went off of carbs almost totally (<50 grams daily). The first two weeks were hellish but once I got the carbs replaced with mainly saturated fats the cravings stopped.

summer92008 wrote: »

When I was exercising, I was eating 1,200 calories or so and walking 4-5 miles a day. I'm maintaining between 1,100-1,300 calories a day now with no exercise.

Eat more, I too would be craving like crazy if I walked 4-5 miles a day on 1200 calories and then only ate 1100-1300.

Why do you feel you have to eat so little? Especially with the exercise, that is not healthy at all.

Try eating at maintenance for five days. Log every day. When you can develop very good logging habits, you can get to the next step. Then cut to one half pound for a week. This is not supposed to be hard and it is not punishment for something.
Try to think of this as loving what you do and working on being happy with most of your choices.

Wish I had a solution for you, but I don't. I'm in the same boat as you, though generally I binge because of hunger. Once hunger breaks me, I'm in a mode of "screw it, let's do this".

I'm now tackling the problem with appetite suppressant drugs.

Basically you're dealing with a behavioral addiction, similar to gambling. You're doing it even though you know it's bad for you, because you enjoy the way it makes you feel. Been there, done that.

Yup, like I said, been there, done that. Be aware there are *tons* of people here who will tell you that there is no such thing as a food addiction since you aren't living in a gutter or committing crimes for food.

I have many times opened a sleeve of cookies and not stopped until I had eaten the entire sleeve of cookies. My mantra for eating my entire life has been eating to satiety - if some is good, more is better.

The problem, as it has been stated before, is that an alcoholic can steer clear of alcohol completely. They can avoid places where alcohol is served. A food addict must eat. They take their addiction out 3 times a day and play with it.

I find, as Dr. Rudy Liebel expressed in his Grand Rounds video, that steering clear of more palatable foods can help. Try to avoid trigger foods. If you can't exercise self-control around ice cream, then steer clear of ice cream. Of course this has not stopped me from getting in the car and going and buying some.

Right now I'm using drugs (phentermine/topomax). They have a side-effect of altering taste. I have been addicted to diet coke for a long time but it now makes it take very metallic and disgusting (others have reported this also) and I have not had a diet coke in 2 weeks. Tried twice and poured it down the sink. I also find the sight of sweets to be stomach-turning but, strangely, meats or meaty-like foods are not. Wife brought home Publix donuts last weekend and I looked at them and went "blegh".