"All or Nothing" Mentality-- anyone?

As I wrote on your other thread: "I found it helpful to work on my own all or nothing tendencies and the logical approach that tracking is combined with for me made it easier to do so -- I could see that eating above my goal but below maintenance would still mean an overall loss over time, whereas going nuts and eating all the things because my day was perfect would cause weight gain. I also could work in maintenance days where I had room for a restaurant meal or some such and just didn't go over maintenance."

I think it's common -- and tied up in dieting culture -- to have a lot of magical thinking about dieting, and the black and white "I'm being good or I'm not" thinking is part of that. For me, since I'm usually a logical person, focusing on how that is not logical, that it is a type of cognitive distortion helped me a lot, as did switching my thinking to screw ups as learning experiences.

One way in which it is magical thinking is the idea that you are either dieting perfectly (this is not only cals, but what you eat, so on) or you are not (and any level of "not on my diet" is the same even though there's so very obviously a big difference in consequences from being 100 cals over on one day vs. 1000 over every day for 2 weeks).

I also don't think this has much to do with tracking or not. I've focused on losing weight/getting fit without tracking before and still had to work on the all or nothing reaction -- for me tracking is one tool to help me think about it logically, in fact.

Finally, I think all or nothing can be related to assuming a "diet" has to be very restrictive and about self-denial. In that case, the "I ruined it" message (for a tiny thing like eating a nutrient poor day without cals one day or going slightly over cals or missing a workout) can serve as an excuse to be extra self-indulgent before the future misery of having to start again. So I think understanding that in fact no misery or restriction (other than finding a way to reduce cals somewhat) is necessary, and that one can reduce cals without a restrictive diet or hunger and building in maintenance days and such is helpful. Early on when losing weight this time (back in 2014), I had been on a roll, hitting my workout schedule perfectly, and eating well and losing weight. Work got crazy and I missed a couple of workouts, which -- combined with the stress -- usually would have led me to give up and eat whatever. Instead, I just decided (journaling and tracking helped me with this) to control what I could, the food, certainly the cals, and let myself off the hook if I wasn't getting in the workouts as well for a bit. It turned out to be a period in which I lost more weight than usual, even, and helped me understand that imperfection neither ruins everything nor = failure.

I used to struggle with this. I was always either "on" or "off."

One thing that helped me was to think about it like a budget. If I have an unexpected bill or if I splurge on a purchase in a moment of relative weakness, I don't say "to hell with my budget" and just buy everything I want until my next paycheck (or whatever the reset point is). I figure out how it impacted my budget and make the adjustments to get back on track. I realized I could do the same thing with calorie counting. If someone brings bagels to work and I grab one even though I already ate breakfast or whatever, I don't have to throw in the towel for a whole day. Oops, I "spent" more than I meant to, but it's nothing that I can't adjust for.

Over time, thinking about it in practical terms (instead of as a terrible flaw or falling) made me less likely to "spend" extra. Yes, I wanted a bagel and I knew I could have a bagel, but did I really want to make the adjustments over the course of the day or the next few days to account for that? Sometimes the answer would still be "yes," but more and more times, it got to be "no." I had a tasty dinner planned and I didn't really feel like changing that plan in order to have that bagel.

I'm not saying this would work for everyone. We all have individual responses and motivators, but this worked for me.