Everyday Systems

I started dieting several years ago and have been in maintenance for almost a year now. I did this by quitting grazing on junk food all day and eating 3 healthy meals instead, with one sweet treat per day as part of a meal.

I'd always look forward to my treat. Often I couldn't resist having it with my breakfast and then I'd be a bit disapointed at my following meals. Even though I've become a great cook these past few years, sparing no effort or money to create delicious homecooked meals, I'd still be a little bit sad that there wasn't any chocolate or cake or ice cream to go with it.

Until a few weeks ago. I'd just finished my main course and started to dig into my ice cream. Then I wondered why was I doing this? I'd just realised that my sugar craving was gone. I was eating that ice cream out of habit, because I always ate one dessert a day. I didn't need it like I used to feel I did.

Since then I've decided to only have a sweet treat whenever I have long shift at work, about 2/3 times a week. It's still something I enjoy and look forward to, but it's not a craving anymore.

That is so great!!! Way to go!!

Patience is key congratulations on a rock solid habit.

It really seems that for many of us, being fed regularly with good, pleasurable food eventually sates us so well that the natural sweetness of some foods is enough most of the time. But it sometimes takes a little epiphany to realize it.

Sounds like your maintenance is much like No S is to start- and finish. Welcome!

Thanks.

Your right oolala, my current diet is very similar to No S. I actually found this place a while ago by googling 'no snacking', however I was too addicted to sugar to give up my sweets all week. Just cutting back to once a day was hard enough. Until now that is!

BTW, I've read that it is typical for Italians to have a sweet at breakfast time, something we might usually think of as a dessert. But they don't necessarily have desserts every day at other meals. And they don't snack.

Or at least this used to be true. As some of us drop snacking, it's intruding in other areas...

But we know better.

So it took you a few years to get rid of your sugar cravings? (not 30 days like Reinhard says - that definitely didn't work for me.) That seems more realistic. I've only ever done 3 months of perfect compliance so maybe I need to do it for a year. It's just very hard when I want to cry at the thought of no sweets for five days. Congratulations that you overcame such a great hurdle.

I just read today the comment of a woman who lost her weight years and years ago. She said she still sometimes gets longings for food in the afternoon or at night even after years of maintaining without a lot of slips. (Some people can maintain slim bodies with pretty outrageous eating habits. ) But she's completely aware that they are not real longings for food. Sounds like she sometimes analyzes them pretty carefully and sometimes just ignores them and goes on with her day.

Oh, I meant to say, I'm no expert, but I'd say crying over not eating sweets for several days is a perfectly acceptable reaction, at least at first. Yes, there likely will be a lot of tension in not giving in to the withdrawal cravings, and in privacy, crying is a decent enough release. I would bet that as coping mechanism, it would be replaced after a period of time, especially if you outlast the craving, Leafy.

Sorry to bogart the thread!

It's been a few months now. I've decided that my sweets days are Wednesday, Saturday and special occasions so I'm pretty much on No-S now, besides spreading my S-days out a bit.

I'll either have one big dessert or 2 smaller ones, so I don't eat a crazy amount on my S-days. I've started eating a lot more fruit throughout the week instead, which have sugar but are still healthy. I'll eat a few sweet & savoury meals too.

I had some reappearance of grazing and semi-bingeing this last year, but have been getting back on track. At the end of the today, Sunday, I found myself wandering in a supermarket considering some of the sweet things I could have bought. I knew if I bought something, I would enjoy the taste, and I liked the idea of the taste, but I also realized that I I wouldn't like it as much as I did in my imagination, that I would just be grasping at the fun of it, trying to make it mean more than it did. I bought some corn on the cob instead.