seriously, a whole pack of milanos?

i just ate a whole pack of milanos. does anyone else ever do this? I do not binge like this every day but some days i find i get carried away. On top of that i also ate a pack of starburst. How can i be so on track one day and SO off track the next? How do i kick this bad habit?

Hello? You had Milanos! They are awesome! I have never eaten an entire pack, but I could! I don't buy them and don't keep them in my house. I wonder what I would do if a pack fell out of the sky and hit me in the head? I find that I can't EAT what I don't BUY.

so true but i also want to be able to have the self control to buy my milanos and eat them in moderation as opposed to all at once. Eating like this reinforces my bad habits. Sometimes i have the self control to eat in moderation, but how do i maintain this type of positive control? and what triggers this type of binge eating anyway? is there any science behind it?

hmm.. although i havent conquered it, i've realized that my mentality is "well... i might as well eat them all now, cause im not going to allow myself them after this." maybe its the same for you?

i often do think "oh there are only 4 milanos left, might as well eat them now!" but i know this is not how i should eat. It's not like i really want 4 more milanos after having already eaten 6! Nor am i aware of HOW IN GODS NAME i fit 15 milano cookies into my stomach. it is really sickening to think about 15 milano cookies floating around in my stomach. it is always after splurges like these that i tell myself i need to change my eating habits. however i need to make this change PERMANENT...not a day or a week long. HELP! how do u do it? How do you kick yourself in the rear-end or have your conscious slap your hand away as you reach for another cookie?...

I find that what works best to keep me from bingeing (sp?) is to take the junk food, say a whole bag of milanos, and divide it up into single serving sizes in snack size zip top bags.  It's a little like the 100 calorie packs that nabisco sells.  You feel fine eating one bag so you're less likely to break open another one.

First off, it's really important that you not beat yourself up about this. A pack of Milanos is not going to significantly impact your weight loss efforts. However, making yourself feel like a failure WILL lead to more times that you lose control, especially if you try to restrict your calories to make up for it. I know how hard this is, but try to remember that Milanos are delicious, and that you just allowed yourself a treat, which you certainly deserve.

In terms of developing control over eating, this is what has been working for me:

• First, make sure you're getting enough calories on a daily basis- if you're not, this can easily trigger binges.
• Next, try to start paying more attention to your body's signs of hunger and fullness. Rate your physical hunger before you eat (I used a 0-10 scale where 0 is about to pass out from hunger, 5 is no physical symptoms of hunger or fullness, 10 is about to puke from being so full), then rate it after you eat. I bought a tiny journal and recorded it in there.
• Start trying to eat only when you're hungry. Then, one meal a day (eventually building up to every meal), do your best to stop when you're full. Wrap up the extras and tell yourself you can have them later. Then eat them when you're hungry again. Remember- if you're eating when you're truly hungry, the sooner you stop eating, the sooner you can start again!
• I have found it helpful to only have three meals a day, without snacks. I know that this is not ideal for your metabolism, but this means I only have to worry about starting/stopping eating three times a day. I'm going to start working in snacks soon.
• At every meal, no matter how much you love the food, leave a small amount of each type of food on your plate. If it makes you feel better, wrap it up for later, but it's usually just a bite or two for me, and so I toss it. This has immensely helped my need to polish everything off.

I added each of these steps, one at a time, little by little. I never thought I was capable of this, but now, I can go to a restaurant and not have to worry about packing everything up in a doggy bag right away- I have the self-control to stop when I'm done and save the rest for later. I'm still bingeing periodically, but I'm nowhere near as bad as I was when I started this process.

Good luck!

 

VItamin_dominatrix - I do the same thing... I also do the same thing with pasta. When I open a new bag, it is immediately seperated into individual servings... keeps me from carb-loading! :-)

I've done it before!  Once around Valentine's day last year with the dark chocolate mint and then around Christmas I nearly consumed a pack of the regulars...they were a gift and whoopsie went a little overboard...just gained a sugar high, no weight...not a big deal just don't do it everyday obviously!!

yea you know what i feel like it does have something to do with my blood sugar. iam at the end of my period right now and whenever this time of the month rolls around i CRAVE chocolate and if i have any, i BINGE. so basically i have been on a week long chocolate binge. if it's blood sugar related, then how do i maintain a steady blood sugar during TTOM to prevent sugar binges?

Original Post by getfit20:

 if it's blood sugar related, then how do i maintain a steady blood sugar during TTOM to prevent sugar binges?

 Lots of snacks, and look into the Glycemic Index diet.

I really hear you on this one.  I have had problems controlling myself around sweets all my life.  I am a sugarholic.  I also suspect blood sugar.  The sweets make your blood sugar really high after you eat them so your body creates a bunch of insulin to metabolize it.  That makes your blood sugar drop too much because sugar is digested very quickly.  Low blood sugar makes you want more sweets even if you aren't hungry.

You aren't going to like the only solution I know of.  Stay away from anything containing sugar.  You will go crazy with cravings for a few days, but then your body adapts and the cravings subside.  After a few weeks, you can have an occasional sweet and control yourself, but you must keep tight control and never have a lot of sweets or have them often.  If you let the sugar levels in your blood build up, you will lose it again.

Also, if you love chocolate, it is easier to control yourself if you eat 70% or higher dark chocolate.  Less sugar to cause trouble.  But don't eat it every day, even that is enough to create problems for me.

it's so true! i can eat a nice healthy salad with tuna and then afterwards crave those milanos. I love dark chocolate...it's my favorite kind. It might be a good idea for me to kick the sugars for a week. I have been on overload and my body absolutely hates me for it. I have tried kicking the sweets before, never permanently but temporarily as a self test, and by the 2nd or 3rd day iam slipping some sugar morsel into my mouth without even realizing what i just ate. only after its been chewed and swallowed does it register with me and i think "****, i blew it!" ....sigh, eating without thinking- so bad. another bad habit that needs to go.

Milanos are addictive.  I've done it many times in the past but not in awhile.  I'm a sucker for the mint or orange ones.  The only solution for me is not to buy Milanos. 

Milanos?  No.  Brussels?  Ohhhh, yes.  But only, like, once a year: and I do so knowing exactly what I'm doing :D

Ironically, I used to do this when I weighed about 135-145 lbs (135 was a bit too skinny on me).  At the time, my basic diet was pretty good, and I got tons of exercise, so I felt like it wasn't going to kill me if, once in a great, great while, I plowed through a whole bag of Brussels.  (For the record, no, that's no how I gained the weight I'm carrying around now -- I had a pretty serious medical situation that put me on the bench for most of a year, and neglected to stop eating the 150-a-mile-a-week-cyclist's diet, then got a job that often means 60-hour work weeks.  It wasn't occasional splurges that did me in, but eating too much at every meal.  Eek.  Can I get a do-over?)

Now that I'm signifigantly heftier, I would probably beat myself up if I ate a whole bag of Brussels -- but, like everyone else has already observed, it's not the end of the world.

NMaybe rather than kicking sugars altogether, you should remove sweets, etc., from your house, and only buy them in single-serve packets (they sell Milanos in 2-packs here in Louisville -- perfect for a once-in-a-while splurge, without the risk of downing 15 cookies at once) as needed.  Of course, if you need them twice a day, or even once a day, that might still be a bit of a problem -- but most of us are less likely to binge on something if we have to go out and buy it first.

I suspect trying to cut your comfort foods out entirely may be backfiring -- maybe it would even help to plan to have them sometimes.  Like, "I'm going to get a 2-pack of Milanos at the end of this week, whether I'm good or not."  That way, you might be able to avoid a panic-induced desire to binge on them.

Anyway, good luck, and be well.

Original Post by kokorozashi:

Milanos?  No.  Brussels?  Ohhhh, yes. 

Oh most definitely.Chessmen, too!

I actually never really cared for Milanos, but Brussles and Chessmen are absolutely delicious.

Back on topic though, underreating is often a big cause of binging. Could you possibly be restricting too much and being too hard on yourself? I know that when I try and make up for a binge by eating very little the next day, it often backfires on me and I tend to continue binging. Since I've started eating my normal range of calories even on the days following binges, I've had much better luck not binging.

Brussels are awesome, particularly when they're scooping Dryer's Vanilla Bean ice cream into your mouth!  Which is why I simply do not buy either of them!

There are some foods that some people simply do not do well with.  For me, I try very hard not to buy those foods in my regular store trips, instead I force myself to make a special trip for that kind of item...fortunately I'm too lazy to do it most of the time so I do without.  Other foods I do well with if I portion them out or buy them preportioned (trail mix) so that I'm more aware of how much I've eaten.

Another possiblity is that you're not eating enough and it's catching up to you with your body demanding calories.

I've gone on ridiculous binges, but not usually on sweets so much; it's salty stuff that gets me.  Like eating an entire can of Pringles, or half a bag of chips, or, this happened recently, eating two bags of microwave popcorn (the big bags, not the little 100-calorie things) back-to-back.

As others have said, beating myself up over it tends to make it more likely to happen again in the future.

yea this probably happens to me about twice a week where i binge on junk food. i'm a good eater in general so i don't think it's because i am lacking calories. i just have a major sweet tooth and a bottomless pit...that needs to develop a bottom. I feel like crap after i eat like this, not only because i just ate a ton on junk, but i actually physically feel sick. my body is obviously telling me to stop loading it with so much sugar. i really just need to start saying "no" more often. i OVER-indulge too often. I'm sure i would feel a hell of a lot better if i strayed away from the junk.

I almost bought Milanos yesturday... Tell yourself that you know your body won't feel good after and try portioning out snacks like previously mentioned. I do that for when I go to work, because I sit staring at a computer screen all night. I also think you should make sure you are eating enough good-for-you-foods so your body doesn't feel cravings.

ugh, I do this once in a while too.  Not with milanos, but with homemade oatmeal cookies this weekend!  Same with you I will be great with self control and then lose it.  I just try to not be too hard on myself and tell myself that overall long term consistency wins out... just gotta keep trying I guess : /