So far great, but how to cope with the inevitable binge?

Keep the carbos under 100. It will cut cravings. If you bing, just get back on it. Avoid things that can lead to binging. I am on my third week of low carb, I'm a terrible dieter, and a 'eat the whole bag' kind of girl, but cutting the carbs works better than counting calories. Good luck.

Keep your mind and hands busy...got a hobby you're into? I paint and play guitar (badly lol but it works..) Also, staying full on healthier options..the smaller meals several times a day could be an option.., but most importantly..if or when you give into a binge..forgive yourself and start clean the next day! best wishes!

If you feel like you JUST HAVE to eat something, measure it out into a bowl and out the package away before you dig into it. A bowl of chips, cereal, whatever will be so much less than if you sit down with the package in front of you. And log it, even if it makes you go over your daily calories by a huge amount. Be accountable.

I think the hardest thing for me is always the morning after- resisting that feeling of "well I totally screwed this up, may as well keep falling off the wagon, rolling down a hill, and end up in a ravine!"

1. As others have said, if you fall off the wagon, all you can do is hop right back on.

2. Have the right frame of mind. If you have a bad couple days because of a family gathering or being on vacation or something like that, don't worry about it. But if you head into this thing expecting......and accepting......failure to happen, it is going to be much harder to follow through. Be faithful to yourself and MFP as much as you can.

3. Despite what I said in #2, if you have a day where you feel like you really need something extra and you want to go over your calorie limit.......do it, but do so responsibly. Keep it under 500 calories if you can and never go more than a 1000 calories over your allowance. If you can keep yourself from going to far (500 calories), you won't actually gain any long term weight and it makes it easier to ignore those urges later. Don't cheat often though.

MFP is a very good tool if you have the buy-in necessary to make it work. If you don't commit to it, you are going to struggle. I bounced from 179 down to 172 and back every year for about 10 years before I started using this site. I had some rough days in the last week where I really felt like eating and it was tough not to do it. I went ahead and cheated a couple hundred calories on one of those days but on some, I just have a glass of ice water and try to find something to do.

One of the key tricks to avoiding binging is not to deny 100% of the time things you crave. Instead work them into your plan for the day, especially if it's on a workout day when you can have more calories anyways. I eat at a 30% deficit on rest days, and 10% deficit on workout days, so on those workout days if I've been wanting McDonald's, I plan my day's intake around having McDonald's. Just the other day I did this, I had a Double Quarter Pounder W/Cheese, Medium Fries, and a Medium Dr Pepper, but it was 100% accounted for, and I filled in the rest of my intake appropriately for the day's goals on protein, fat, and carb.

Another thing that helps with avoiding binging, is making sure that what you eat is satisfying you. Upping your protein can do wonders for satisfaction when it comes to eating, but many people accept the default macro spread on MFP that sets protein to 15% and carbs to 55%. And unless it's red meat, protein foods generally are not dense foods, you can eat a lot of grilled chicken or broiled fish and still have consumed reasonable amounts in regards to protein and calories.

Sometimes there are "unavoidable" binge days, such as family events for holidays and birthdays, such as 4th of July coming up. On Memorial Day, I went to a family cookout and kept myself under control while still enjoying myself and not being "that guy" who won't touch anything people made because he's on a diet. I had -a- burger-, -a- bratwurst, 4 deviled eggs (notice I hit a lot of the protein foods here?), I filled a plastic drink cup with pasta salad and had that much and no more, 1 big choc chip cookie, and as much watermelon as I wanted (amazingly low density food there but with lots of volume due to the water content).

The entire point is, it's not a binge if you control the manner in which you enjoy food. A diet isn't there to punish you, and if you don't learn how to enjoy food within the bounds of what you're doing to lose weight, how are you going to stay trim after you get done and are no longer "on a diet"? This isn't a temporary thing, counting calories and macro nutrients, you're re-training yourself how to live the rest of your life. You're not going to forgo good foods after you reach your goals, so removing them entirely while you're losing weight is counterproductive. Learning to incorporate awesome foods into your diet now in reasonable amounts will make it that much easier to not go on an eating binge both during -and- after you've met your goals and are eating at a maintenance amount.

And if you do have a wild binge and suddenly eat 6,000+ calories in a day? One, your digestive system is going to punish you more than your guilt can afterwards, and two, get over it and get back on the wagon and resume doing what you need to be doing. If you let the initial binge wreck your self-confidence at losing weight, then you're setting yourself up to throw everything out, so don't sweat the lapse and get back on track.

i just posted this in another thread about bingeing

i was told by my friend who is a doctor that it usually takes about 20 days to start a habit.
i told myself every day for a month "no you cant eat that" whenever temptation popped up and now its programmed.
i went to the fridge today on an empty stomach and saw a chicken pie in the fridge, i picked off a piece of the pastry and just as i was about to put it in my mouth i heard myself say "no you cant eat that" and i put it in the trash, it gets so much easier with time , just practice the willpower and it gets stronger!

after a short while the "inevitable binge" seems more evitable!