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.

That statement describes a goodly portion of my life, unfortunately. Thanks for sharing your Christmas story, it certainly rings all too true for me. Sadly, I know that almost all of my eating is driven by emotional reasons.

That's one reason I have always given myself a 'free day' once a week. It's not an excuse to binge out, but at least I know that if I skip that cake/cookie/whatever today, on saturday if I want it I can have it. And of course I can move the day to suit a special occasion. Yes, I do sometimes eat a bit too much on that day, but it pretty much cuts the cravings for the rest of the week as I'll feel like crap and want to go back to healthy food ASAP.

I actually ate healthy on Xmas, as my 'free day' was Xmas eve and I was sugared out by Xmas day! (I had planned to allow two free days just for the holidays but didn't even want it).

Might not work for some - if it starts you down a bad road that's not a good thing, but for me it generally puts me back in check.

Same thing happened to me, only not just on Christmas Day, but the entire holiday. I gained about eight pounds.

I find your path through this WOE interesting, but not applicable. The more I study what happens in my body, the more I understand that physiology drives the bus I'm on. My mind will take the results and invent psychological reasons for what's happening, but the causative factor is getting the hormones out of whack by eating too long or too much or the wrong-for-me stuff.

An "extreme need for food" in my body when I can't be actually "hungry" indicates that I've messed with my blood sugar beyond the range I can tolerate and the cells are screaming for "more" because my insulin or leptin or glucagon is off (again).

I do realize that some days have more flexibility, but it appears that the cycle is longer than I want to allow for--depends on sleep, what I've eaten over the past few days, amount of exercise, etc.

I agree with cs_carver on this. The ONLY time I feel outta control with food is if my blood sugars are swinging. What ItsTheWoo described is identical to my eating behaviors when I attempted to keep my hypoglycemia under control with high-carb/low-fat eating. As long as I keep my carbs and portion size under control, I never feel out of control nor do I have cravings. So I'm curious if ItsTheWoo has a BG monitor and used it to check her BG levels that day. It might have been quite illuminating.

FWIW, I planned to eat foods normally off-limits to me on Christmas. Just like I did at Thanksgiving. I ate small amounts of stuffing as well as a few desserts. I started getting those same craving/outta control feelings but, instead of eating again when I knew there was no way I could be hungry, I went for a long walk and enjoyed the neighborhood Christmas lights. This almost eliminated the cravings urge but I did have to fight it a little. The next day I still had a slight craving so I ate extra protein/fat and exercised a bit more than usual and this kicked the cravings totally away. BTW, my BG levels were still higher than my normal the next morning as well....a carryover from the high-carb eating the day before...so I'm convinced this was the source of the continued cravings. Once my BGs stabilized, it was easy to return to low-carb eating and the cravings were completely gone.

ItstheWoo
I totally agree with cs_carver and funkycampe. It sounds like your insulin was totally out of control and the results had very little to do with your skewed/disfunctional relationship with food.

I know you don't want to hear this, but while I was reading your post, I totally predicted your reaction on Christmas and was not surprised with your reaction at New Years. This has nothing to do with a change in mental state but rather the behavior of your blood chemistry and insulin levels. In fact, you predictably reacted on both days just as a carbohydrate addict (CA) would. The minute I read you had cranberry bread and cookies for breakfast I knew what would happen. And it did. Your "hunger" escalated with each feeding and became insatiable by the end of the day.

Contrast that with New Years. I'm pretty sure you had a lc day up until the Chinese dinner. Then you had the the dinner and felt fine. You even got full and left food on your plate. This is a classic CAD type day. And your reactions both days were those of a classic CA type.

It's got nothing to do with emotions or a dysfunctional relationship with food. It's purely reactive chemistry and a physical function.

I don't think cs_carver was saying that Woo was wrong in her assessment of herself, just that it isn't the same as her experience with low carb binges/reactions to carbs.

To funkycampe and Zuleikaa, I'm thinking you haven't read too many of Woo's recent postings, but she has many other reasons to suspect that her binge eating is not just carb/blood sugar - induced. I think she is posting to let people know that it isn't always carbs that cause binges, sometimes it is your mind reacting to the fact that you ate carbs. For some, yes, it is just the carbs themselves, but for others, Woo included, it is the way we think about food that leads to problems more than just the content of the food. And that blaming carbs when it is something more mental/emotional can lead to more problems later on, like the ones Woo is experiencing now.

Hi Woo-
what you wrote about is a very consistent finding in the research on dieting behavior. When someone is on a "diet" and restricts eating, if they think "I blew it all, might as well go off and ....." they will. So I think you are right, that your relationship w/food and your thinking did affect your out-of-control eating on Christmas.
I also agree that your insulin/blood sugar played a role, and that you sound just like the CAs on the CAD/CALP thread. When you write about eating "like a normal person" I want to hug you and tell you how sorry I am, but you are not "normal" (whatever that is), but have to eat a certain way for your body to be healthy. It sounds like you are still exploring and trying to figure out what that is for you, without being in a weigh-loss driven mode. Please know we are here, and here's that hug.
E

What I think it proves is there are components of BOTH at work. I think it's almost never "purely reactive chemistry" which I agree CAN be used as a bit of a cop-out by some people. OTOH, Woo.... I think you may be underestimating the physical aspect of your experience and putting a little too much blame on emotions. Take a good old fashioned insulin overreaction, add a heaping teaspoon of guilt...stir. Recipe for a messed-up, all-or-nothing-thinking foodfest.

FWIW, I do believe that Woo has emotional issues related to food as well. Her many posts on this issue are testament to that as they describe thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are foreign to me regarding food relationships. But that doesn't negate the fact that she may also be experiencing a strong physical reaction to blood sugar swings caused by the way she eat. Starting out the day with high-carb, high-sugar food items is a classic way to start the blood sugar surge/crash cycle.

Potatofree, maybe some folks do use these physical responses as a cop-out but, for those of us who do have strong blood sugar swings, I doubt it. I can tell you that I was always thin until I developed blood sugar problems in my first pregnancy (gestational diabetes). I then gained about 100 pounds trying to stabilize my blood sugars by following the dietician recommended low-fat/high-carb diet. During these years, I thought I had an eating disorder as well. I thought about food all the time, craved it, had no willpower at all, and felt ruled by my stomach. It was, indeed, horrid.

Yet, once I found low-carb eating, I have had none of these feelings regarding food. I have returned to my prior behavior from my thin years before blood sugar problems were an issue. I eat for fuel, I rarely think about food, and, in short, I am no longer ruled by my stomach. Zuleikaa described how Woo was able to eat carbs on Christmas without feeling out of control. While I don't follow CAD on a regular basis, I do use some of the principles of CAD on special events when I know I'm going to want to splurge a little. I do pay for this by having temporary higher blood sugars than normal but I don't need to binge on carbs or feel out of control because of these splurges. If I eat my treat with protein and plan for exercise shortly afterwards to help bring my blood sugars down normally, I don't experience these cravings.

In short, I think the physical response to high-carb eating, especially if the food is also high in sugar, is profound and shouldn't be negated.

Final comment: my husband who is not diabetic or overweight experiences similar binge-eating when eating as Woo described on the day she binged so much. I really don't believe one has to be diabetic, hypoglycemic, etc. to experience this. The only difference between my husband and Woo on this is that he doesn't feel guilty about it.

funky-- I have no doubt your situation is exactly as you describe. For some people the drive to eat that comes from an insulin reaction is very powerful, and for some, the fat-storing action of the hormones can actually make them gain on a suprisingly small amount of food.

I was referring to people who claim to be powerless because they are mere victims of chemistry and fall off again and again because the carbs MADE them go off plan again. People with an external locus of control often tend to also blame others for their lapses "My Mother made potatoes, and I HAD to eat them" or "That damn waiter put the bread basket right in front of me, and the surge of insulin I got from smelling it just made me lose control!"

To change off that hot-button topic.......

Just as some people's body chemistry reacts to foods differently and dysfunctionally, so does some people's "emotional chemistry" so to speak. I really feel that some people react in a VERY emotional way to the sensations of hunger or craving due to their own unique makeup.

I personally don't mind feeling a little hungry most of the time...but there are other times when I'm in a different frame of mind when that little gnawing of hunger seems to cause me a lot more anxiety than usual.... and when I'm anxious, one of my coping mechanisms is snacking. I'm working to identify the anxious feeling and find better ways to deal with the anxiety.

I think potatofree is right... it was a combination of both. I'm probably underestimating the physical stuff, but I'm certain I'm not over estimating the role of the emotional component.

While it's true eating the way I was eating (little nibbles of starchy, sugary foodall day) did make me feel "out of balance" with my hunger (this was a real physical sensation of being "less satisfied" with what I was eating and wanting to eat more)... however I DID NOT lose control until after dinner. Also, the true physical desire to eat more, the lack of sync between physical fullness and perceived satiety... while it was there, it wasn't all that extreme and it is something that was COMPLETELY manageable if not for the horrid stressful feelings evoked by the food.

BTW If anyone is wondering...dinner was pretty darn low carb.
(NO rolls, no potatoes. It was turkey, gravy (some small carbs from thickener), artificially sweetened cranberry sauce (small portion), stuffing made with high fiber LC bread (small portion), carrots & onions (nothing out of the ordinary), cauliflower with cheese & cream sauce, brussel sprouts and bacon. Water, no cider.)

Anyway. I was really more or less fine until the big xmas dinner. Hundreds of calories, extreme fullness... extreme panic. I'm sure that it was the feeling of fullness that was the "last straw' so to speak.

I can distinctly remember sitting there, while everyone else was laughing, chatting, playing cards, happy to be together and enjoy the holidays...meanwhile, I was sitting there smothered by panic and anxiety and dread and fear, so overwhelmed by it that I wanted to burst out hysterically. I felt so jealous that they could mull over the day's events not with guilt and regret but with contentment and satisfaction. I also felt a little sad, too.
I was forced to act, put up an exterior of calm and normalcy all the while inside I was feeling completely horrified with disgust, with the degree of fullness I brought on myself. It was anxiety almost to the point of panic. It was a combination of feeling of powerless and disgust. Not to be dramatic (hehe too late for that I think :rolleyes but I'd liken the way I felt to how one might feel if they were destined to slowly drown in a septic tank. Just so powerless, forced to meet my fate, and the extreme disgust of it.
Crazy thoughts were going through my mind, like getting rid of the food if you know what I mean (I've never EVER done that and wouldn't even know how, but I have to admit it crossed my mind).

I tried so hard to seem "normal", like I was having a good time and experiencing typical emotions for the occasion (it wasn't the first time I had to "pretend" to really be "with the party" because of the way I feel about food). It didn't work though. My mother asked me what's wrong, everyone wondered why I was acting "quiet and weird", and I tried my hardest to seem ok. I tried so hard to keep together you have no idea. Thinking about it now, it makes me feel so ridiculous, like such a blubbering fool, who do I think I'm fooling? Only myself.

Even then I was fine for awhile. I sat and endured this misery (as I often do now after eating what I feel to be an "imperfect" or "disgusting" amount/type of food)... until I was invited to eat again as a communal dessert tray made it's entry. While messed up hormones might have contributed to the urge to eat (I'm certain it did, in fact, as all day I felt "unsatisfied" and never quite full, irregardless of how much I ate)... I fully know the reason I got so completely out of hand was almost entirely caused by my head. The panic, anxiety, and guilt I was feeling over the extreme quantity of food I ate at dinner, as well as the "impurity" of the food eaten earlier... combined with the utter shame and disbelief that despite what I had already eaten, I still wanted to eat all the food presented in front of me... I just broke and caved. Everything I was feeling was expressed with food.


Binge pattern eating isn't a common occurrence for me. I look at binging as a drug (yes food tastes good, yes it makes you feel good), but before that it is about self-hatred. Binging when you have the food issues I do is a form of self-punishment. It's usually one chosen when I feel disgusted with myself for my perceived inadequacy, worthlessness, or weakness. Stress is a powerful catalyst for binge eating, for me. Stress is tricky, because the more you get the harder it is to handle, but likewise the less you can handle it the more stressed and "worthless" you feel over it. You can only take so much before you break, and when you break you will berate yourself for being so weak, which leads to negative thoughts about yourself, which sets the stage for self destructive acts.
Stress with my parents, especially triggers binge eating for some reason. I think it's because of the influence parents have over the way you feel about yourself. Your parents in a lot of ways shape who you are, and if you feel rejected by them it produces a very powerful feeling of self doubt, loathing and worthlessness... feelings that often are the inspiration for potent self destructive acts. Binge eating is one of many self destructive acts I've indulged in because of blow outs with them. I don't want to go into details, for sake of brevity and also because frankly it's too depressing to think about.

I've gone on much too long. I'm rambling about nothing and just bumming myself out. Sorry for being so negative.

I must learn to put things in perspective. Think happy thoughts this too shall pass etc.

Nah... it just means you think too much.

Seriously, you have some really clear insights into your feelings. That's a really good start. I'm just one of those people that tends to make things much more complicated than they really need to be, so I often get bogged down in figuring out WHY I feel like I do, instead of making an action plan to deal with it.

You already know about my Dr Phil-ness..... The first time around, I was AMAZED at how I could identify with what he was saying. I fell flat when it came to following the advice he goves for CHANGING the behaviors I worked so hard to identify.... so I'm in teh "do-overs" stage.

Wow...Woo, thanks for sharing.

Ya know, this is the first time I've read a description of what it must be like to be experience an emotional attachment to food. Since I have no experience with this, I have not really understood what it must be like. You paint a clear picture in my mind of what it must be like for those who have these types of emotionally relationships with food. Actually, maybe not so much with food itself but with issues that food has been used to alleviate? Maybe that's not quite right either.

Anyway....I think I have to take back what I said in earlier posts. From your description of the physical response, it sure sounded like swinging blood sugar levels to me. From your description of the emotional response, it does sound like that's a more accurate diagnosis of what happened to you that day.

I have to admit that I learned a lot from your post. For one, it totally convinced me even more than I was before that I really have no emotional issues related to food. Thanks for helping me confirm that. However, I also learned that emotional issues related to food, body image, self-image, control issues, what have you are far more debilitating and disturbing for the person experiencing it than I had previously realized.

I'm sorry that you are going through all of this. But I think if you apply the same careful thought to this situation as you did to your successful weight loss experience, that you will be able to overcome it. Don't deny yourself the benefit of professional help though. That may end up being a useful tool to help you sort through these issues.

Best wishes.