Question for others who also have issues with moderation

I try to keep my triggers out of the house. My #1 trigger is ice cream. I recently discovered Halo Top though, and it has been a Godsend because #1, it's delicious...and #2, I won't overindulge because I am sensitive to sugar alcohols and if I eat too much, it's bad news.

Different people are different, but speaking for myself, the problem starts with refined sugars and highly salted fatty foods such as chips. One makes me crave the other and it's a cycle. If I cut out refined sugar completely, within two weeks most of my cravings magically fall away. I still have behaviorally triggered cravings, such as wanting a Coke icee when I drive by the corner, but even then, refined sugar just tastes bad after two weeks of not having it, which helps.

These days I do crave fruit. It's nice!

Tropicoolblonde wrote: »

Maybe I'm a minority.. but if I want something I have it with reckless abandon. I will move calories and exercise extra to be able to get my fix. Say I want to eat half a tub of cookie dough one day? Then that will be my days worth of calories ( maybe more like half my daily calories after exercise) and after I have it I don't want it anymore and the craving is gone for good ( usually for weeks or more) and I go back to eating healthy and clean. Or some days I want pizza ( and not just one slice) so I will eat an entire small pizza with a liter of Diet Coke and then just eat a fruit for breakfast and frozen veggies for the other meal to make room in my calories for it. This has saved me so many times from going over calories. I'm lucky that I exercise for hours so I can eat gross 2800 calories a day on my long run days and still lose (1-2lb per week).. so I can fit those calories to begin with, but I give up on eating "healthy" that day as well to make it happen. Worth it. YOLO

Can't do that as a diabetic, unfortunately. Blood glucose does not care how many calories you've saved.

Lourdesong wrote: »

I don't really recall ever not being faced with the temptation to give in and have more than that which I've determined I 'should' have to stay on track. Is that not normal? I assumed it was normal.

I thought this was normal too lol

tlanger251 wrote: »

I've been addicted to food my whole life until I started the Keto diet. Now I don't have cravings for food ever, unless I'm physically hungry. I don't need willpower, the cravings are gone. No bored eating, emotional eating, carb binges.

I actually tried it and found the exact same to be true. The reason it failed for me was more of a social thing (family doesn't eat or respect keto diet). I definitely didn't have cravings and it felt WEIRD [in a good way].

Christine_72 wrote: »

Lourdesong wrote: »

I don't really recall ever not being faced with the temptation to give in and have more than that which I've determined I 'should' have to stay on track. Is that not normal? I assumed it was normal.

I thought this was normal too lol

I find it can be more or less difficult to deal with, which is what I thought OP was talking about.

Francl27 wrote: »

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I didn't have this issue until I got close to the middle of the normal BMI range though. Not sure if it's getting old, having a lower body fat %, or hormones being wonky because of 18 months of deficit (although you'd think it would have got better after 3 years if that was the case).

I suppose that it doesn't help my case that 90% of the time, it's sweet stuff I want to indulge on, and that's never as filling as even chips and dip (I did have an avocado and a serving of chips yesterday and that DID fill me up for the 250 calories. 400 calories of cookies? Nope).

^^this this.

I do believe it is a biological imperative to continue eating especially when in that mid-to-low BMI. I have found the same thing to be true since I've been at this weight. Combine that with a craving and I'm off to the races. I've been at maintenance weight for nearly ten years. I believe it to be the body's natural drive to have a layer of fat and when there is food available, put it in the mouth. Now that I've removed that safety layer of fat, my hunger drive seems higher.

The good thing is that through careful logging I've learned over the years that a few binges a month does not cause me to gain weight. For instance, last month I ate 12,000 calories extra (above my recommended maintenance calories) over the month and did not gain. I didn't exercise any more than usual, my exercise is the same just about every week. I don't know if the statement earlier (by someone...) that you never go over is true, but I've found it doesn't cause me to go permanently off the rails and in fact I need to "carb up" once or twice a week - which puts me over by several hundred. If I don't do that my hill-climbing hike becomes difficult. The rest of the week I stay below 150g carbs by preference.




@lemurcat12 - thanks for your answer above. Not sure I agree still, but that's okay. It's not really all that important to me, I'll just keep saying, "But I can eat all sugary, or non-sugary stuff in excess: bring it to me!"...not a sugar thread. Yet.

I think for most people, what @lemurcat12 is saying is very true. I think very few people will go into the cabinet and binge eat straight sugar (or even fruit). Sugar/starch/fat and/or starch/fat and/or sugar/fat combinations, OTOH, are hard to resist. (as in chocolate bars, ice cream, pastry, cookies, cake, ..., what people refer to as sweet/sugary snacks, but which would be nowhere near as irresistible without the high fat content). Even most of the salty snacks people crave are high fat (potato chips, bacon, ...).