Are there any foods that are banned in your head?

Nope, no banned foods here. I like eating too much to think of banning anything.

I allow myself moderation of whatever I want as well, at least, this is the logic I follow so that I can maintain my loss so far, and HAVE so far for 7 years. This will allow a realistic approach for life. (IIFYM/If It Fits Your Macros).

However, my subconscious/guilt about pizza is something that still happens regardless. I have no idea why, I wish it didn't happen. It also happens with things like Kraft Dinner (prepackaged, crappy macros), even if it does in fact fit into my daily goal. Yet I'm totally fine logging some other crappy things.

Like I said, I logically know the difference from my personal experience with my own weight loss, so not sure why.

In addition, I don't think you're crazy. I think we are given so much information about food and diets and what is considered healthy by some and then opposite advice by others that at some point we take on opinions about food which may not necessarily be true, but which have been repeated and reinforced so often by others who have particular angles to work, that it's there in our heads.

Store-bought muffins, and chocolate shell sauce, and battered deep-fried stuff! I don't love anything with that deep-fried batter so it isn't worth it to just munch on onion rings or whatever because they're there. Muffins because again, don't LOVE them, and also because I can make them at home and have em be way healthier and a smaller size, and they're like 600 calories at the store. And chocolate shell because my aunt used to talk about how junky it was and it just stuck with me and now I have a "health aversion" to it, all the time, not just when being health-conscious!


And not sure why @AlabasterVerve you think quinoa or flax seeds are unhealthy/gimmicky, or why you regret eating them. They are both very nutritious, and flax seeds aren't any higher in calorie than any other seed or nut. They're also both tasty and really versatile. You can look up the nutrition of them specifically if you want to be educated instead of just blindly following fads like you say you used to. No need to feel foolish!

Only what I'm allergic to.

The only banned foods for me are foods that I don't like. I don't care how "good for you" something is, if I don't like it I won't eat it. And even though I used to think that I could never eat certain foods in moderation, I have learned that I can eat them in moderation, so I do.

My brain has trouble with full-sized candy bars. Last week I really wanted a candy bar and had plenty of calories to make it work. But I just could not buy a regular sized candy bar. So I bought a bag of fun sized and (as you can probably guess) promptly ate just as many calories in fun-sized candy as I would have if I'd just bought one full-sized bar. No idea why my brain rebelled at buying the blasted candy bar.

I don't abstain, but there are foods I choose to purchase in restaurants, buy individual servings of, or eat from other places rather bringing them in the house. I learned that Nutella, for instance, is hard to keep in the house. I don't miss it if it isn't there, but if it is there I eat a lot of it all at once.

No, I don't. There are lots of foods I usually don't want and don't eat (like traditional fast food, which I only ever think about eating on a road trip) and other foods that typically don't fit into my calories/eating plan so I have them rarely, but it's actually important to be that nothing be banned. Even if I pretty much never eat it, that I could if I wanted to is part of my understanding.

It's interesting that you put pasta in that category, as I think of pasta as a base for quite healthy and fast meals with a reasonable number of calories -- basically mixed with a topping of lean meat, veg, and olive oil, with the pasta kept to a sensible serving.

Alfredo sauce is high cal, but I bet there are homemade ones that you could play with to make a more reasonable number of calories -- the trick is logging it yourself and figuring out the calories and (sometimes) how to cut them, not just assuming something must be too high. That's what I found valuable about MFP -- it's easy for me to estimate calories now, and to play around with something to decrease them, if I want. (Sometimes it's not worth it and better just to have it rarely and fit in the calorie hit.)

Some things, I outright won't eat because I don't like them. I don't care how many people tell me that Greek yogurt is delicious and full of protein. It smells... really horrible to me. Y'all can have mine (I'm not sure how you eat it, to be honest). Other things, I avoid because I know they contain migraine triggers. No matter how much I love them, I can't have them near me or I will eat enough to end up with a migraine (cordial cherries, nacho cheese chips, marachino cherries... anything with Red 40). I'll eat some of them out, because I can limit them (i.e. - a single cherry on my sundae is safe, 1 nacho chip is safe... my sister eats the rest of the little bag.)

However, there are other things where I have to tell myself, "I can eat this. It fits in my calorie limit today." Fast food is one of them. I'm going to an outside concert tonight directly after work and the plan is to get some fast food for dinner. I'm just a little worried because in my brain, all fast food is "BAD." I know that it doesn't have to be. I can make good choices and some of the things I have no trouble eating are far worse (ice cream sundae?), but... yeah, my brain keeps saying, "Fast food is bad when you're on a diet."

I don't ban any foods, but there are definitely foods I don't keep around my house regularly. (Looking at you, chips.)