The holidays were a mixed bag.

Now that I've made the decision to stop consciously restricting food, I decided to have a day of "regular" eating on the holidays (christmas and new years). By "regular" eating I mean I was not going to try to limit, count, or otherwise purify / improve the food I ate, I wasn't going to worry obsessively about nutrition, I was going to eat whatever I wanted - and I was going to do it guilt free. Furthermore, I wasn't going to redefine "eat whatever I want" to mean pig out and totally ignore my body - I was going to only eat as much as I needed to sate true physical hunger.
Basically, I was going to attempt to mimic the way a normal person would eat.

The results were extremely educational.

I found myself getting out of hand at Christmas. I indulged in cranberry bread for breakfast, cookies and brownies (small amounts) too. This made me feel certain that I felt "ill", ravenous, etc shortly after eating (all of which I'm sure were psychosomatic symptoms). And oh, the guilt. I felt guilty all christmas for "what I had done". By the end of the day, I found myself frantically eating slivers of pumpkin pie (controlled carb) and cheesecake from a platter meant for everyone. My family actually became scared for me. I just kind of broke down and ate sooo much.

I excused myself - embarrassed and defeated - to retire to bed early. Not before getting "a little something" from the kitchen, of course. This then resulted in my going in the kitchen to pick off turkey, gravy, and cheese & cauliflower.
I wasn't hungry at all, physically. I felt an extreme need for food but physically I was stuffed to pain (at least at first... after awhile I couldn't tell if I was full or not. Satiety lost all meaning).
To lose control like that...It made me feel terrible. I went from being so stuffed after dinner, to eating the pie and cheesecake and dinner leftovers without being able to tell if I was full or not.

As tempting as it is to say "carbs made me do it", I know that's dishonest. Carbs just made it easier. They provided an emotional catalyst (guilt) and an opportunity (a wide variety of convenient, tasty food to over eat). I also was going on almost no sleep, which didn't help either.

I know deep down the #1 reason I got out of control like that is because my mind - my dysfunctional relationship with food - got the better of me. Even though I TOLD myself I would ALLOW myself to indulge guilt free, and even though I reassured myself I wasn't bad or a failure or weak or gain weight etc for doing this... even though I told myself a thousand times I would ENJOY christmas like a normal person without food issues and nothing bad would happen... subconsciously I didn't believe it. I felt extremely guilty about everything "bad" I ate. The eating climaxed after dinner, because the extreme fullness of christmas dinner triggered unyielding guilt... a guilt that I decided to treat with irresponsible and uncontrolled eating. Deep down I felt "I might as well just eat everything since I ruined everything anyway".

I can see now that I let this problem - a dysfunctional relationship with food - ruin christmas for me. It had nothing to do with the type of food and everything to do with symbolism, feelings, impressions, the way I feel about everything - including myself.
I'm so glad I'm doing this work with emotional eating and examining the psychological/behavioral component of my weight problem. I imagine there are many others out there who had a christmas like mine, and instead of trying to fix the problem that resulted int he out of control eating (a messed up relationship with food), they are "going to reinduct first thing on monday to cleanse their body of all the carbs".

All the proof I need that it was emotional is the fact on new years I didn't lose control even though I ate more carbs then. The difference between the two days was my emotional/mental state. I was in a much better state of mind then (less guilt). I allowed myself to eat a starchy chinese dinner - mostly guilt free. On new years my dinner was much smaller, it didn't overstuff me, and I left food on the plate. The extreme guilt I felt on christmas was because in addition to eating "carbs", I also ate to the point where I felt sooo stuffed. The guilt just made me feel so bad that I lost control. Plus I felt more "in control" over the food I was eating new years day, because I ate formal meals. Formal meals make me feel more in "control" and keep the guilt of eating/fear of "screwing up" away. On the other hand, on christmas most of my eating was in the form of nibbles and uncontrolled/unplanned/unnoted (mentally) snacks.... and worst of all, they were nutrient void high carb snacks. Guilt city.

Basically, I didn't feel nearly as guilty about my new years eating as I did the xmas eating, which is why I didn't lose control. I had nothing to feel bad about, which made it easier for me to avoid the emotional highs and lows that trigger food abuse.

I can now see that cleansing my mind of food moralization and guilt and every wretched convoluted abnormal emotional hang up with food is paramount to me achieving normal weight and maintaining it naturally. The less I diet, the more I see how bad dieting is for people like me.

Just wanted to share my experience here. Maybe my experience will resonate with someone else and help them.