Tales From the Crypt

[blueskighs]

So I thought I would share some of my "old binges" most memorable .. perhaps most traumatic, seared into the memories of my mind ...

the first was in high school, I worked in the Galleria in Houston, I would eat maybe a crappy breakfast ... white toast with butter cinnamon and sugar, chocolate milk, lunch peanut butter crackers and pepsi... on the way to work somewhereis at 4 in the afternoon a HUGE BAR B Q beef po boy, potato chips and HUGE chocolate brownie, then when I got home from work, eat whatever leftovers from dinner, UGH! very awful period in my life .. I Can still remember the shame eating that po boy in the car driving to work.

The next one was after I sobered up, I would ritualisticly get 6 chocolate kreme filled dunkin donuts, 1/2 pound bag of M&Ms and 1 bag of Pepperidge Farm chunky chocolate cookies ...
I could actually eat all of that!

I could eat a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for dinner by myself!

Lest I kid myself that this was part of some distant foggy past .. I wrote this down in my No S diet book when I finished reading it:

3/24/2008

started No S Diet at 1:58 pm (hey there is an ex-accountant in me!)

B: 2 grande chai tea lattes, 2 chocolate iced donuts, 1 glazed donut
L: 1 cherry covered donut, 1 glazed donut, 1/3 cinnamon sugar donut, 2/3 maple iced custard fill bar

discovered and bought No S Diet book

D: snack chickpeas

Finished reading No S Diet book,

have been marking off my squares and not binging since then.

SO why do I bring this up ... because BINGING was my real problem the weight for me was/is a SYMPTOM of THAT problem.

and it is important for me to remember my personal priorities...

the inner cleanness, self-esteem, inner peace, satisfaction from not ever HAVING to binge again ... because for me, at this point. I think BINGING is a choice. It was not before I read NO S ... but for me NOW it is a choice,
and for THAT I AM TRULY GRATEFUL TO REINHARD FOR CREATING THIS WEBSITE, WRITING THE BOOK, AND SHARING IT WITH US ALL ... Oh and also regularly showing up on the boards to post!

Blueskighs

[wosnes]

I could eat a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for dinner by myself!

That one doesn't surprise me too much. It's not a large amount of food and it's not very satisfying, so it takes more to satisfy.

[blueskighs]

wosnes,

if you have ever eaten entire box IT IS A LOT and cheese is very heavy and VERY FILLING in that quantity!

but my you are sounding like such a food snob with my share!
so sorry you are not impressed!

Blueskighs!

[fkwan]

Blue:

For sure. I've demolished a pot of the stuff in about five minutes. Disgusting. Now I don't get near it because:

IT'S NOT VEGAN!

Oh YAY!

Free at last!

f

[wosnes]

wosnes,

if you have ever eaten entire box IT IS A LOT and cheese is very heavy and VERY FILLING in that quantity!

but my you are sounding like such a food snob with my share!
so sorry you are not impressed!

Blueskighs!

I have eaten an entire box -- with more food on the side, so what I say is based on experience.

[blueskighs]

fkwan ...

NO .. it is definitely NOT VEGAN!
but that was over 20years ago ... ANYWAY...

the whole POINT OF THIS THREAD is ...

as you say

FREE AT LAST ... FREE AT LAST ... FREE AT LAST ...


Blueskighs

[OrganicGal]

I can also sign my membership card in the....eat a whole box of KD myself club

I like KD...but seldom eat it now....because my body is sensitive to carbs. And there are better 'types' of mac n cheese out there.

Mac n Cheese, the way my Mom used to make it, is a comfort/trigger food for me, so again I very seldom make that either....although now I think I have a craving for it Might have to make it on an S day.

[fkwan]

the first was in high school, I worked in the Galleria in Houston,

the seventh circle of Hell, as is the entire city. I had my first nervous breakdown there. I would lie on the couch all day watching Astros games and cry.

The next one was after I sobered up, I would ritualisticly get 6 chocolate kreme filled dunkin donuts, 1/2 pound bag of M&Ms and 1 bag of Pepperidge Farm chunky chocolate cookies ...
I could actually eat all of that!

Donuts. Ah. The apex of bliss. Haven't had one in three years. Even before No S I knew there were certain foods I could NEVER eat again or else. HEB chocolate cream cake donuts in brown and tan flavors. Oh GOD. Followed by jelly and custard.

Greatest Pepperidge Farm cookies ever made were Geneva wafers. They were covered in this gritty chocolate that tasted like brownie batter, only hard. They stopped making them, fortunately for me. The second greatest Pepperidge Farm cookie is the Mint Milano.

I'm getting a headache from remembering all this. However, I'm no longer salivating...

f

[flipturn]

Great idea, Blue, but I hardly know where to begin!

5th grade: My father had a heart attack, and a neighbor bought him a box of his favorite brownies from a local steakhouse. They were a family favorite, as a matter of fact, but I wasn't supposed to eat any, because my parents worried that I was going to get pudgy. I ate the whole box that the neighbor gave us, and my mother made me write a thank you note!

7th grade, Fridays after school: My mother used to have a tin of Charles Chips delivered every Friday because my older brother used to have friends come over. Charles Chips are a local NJ brand and came in a large browntwo-pound tin, which you can still find in a few stores. I would eat about half of the tin and then move on to whatever cookies I could find in the pantry. Eventually, my mother had to lock the cookies up in the liquor cabinet so that I wouldn't eat them (but I knew where the key was kept and always managed to find them). Many years later, I realized that if my mother had really wanted me to stop eating cookies she wouldn't have bought them.

college: I used to go to the snack bar and order muffins, bagels, and cookies and pretend it was for several people and take them to my room and eat them myself.

college: Someone in my dorm asked me to keep several bags of cookies and candy that she was preparing to give to her roommate. I had to keep replenishing the stock because I ate it.

pregnancy: The ob-gyn's office was around the corner from a chocolate shop. I would reward myself after each exam with a box or two of chocolates, then say that I had no idea why I was gaining so much weight.

for years and years and years: most of a box of Wheat Thins, a 'sleeve' of Oreos, and a lot of ice cream.

[Nichole]

I can't look at this thread anymore... it's making me want to eat!

[wosnes]

Mac n Cheese, the way my Mom used to make it, is a comfort/trigger food for me, so again I very seldom make that either....although now I think I have a craving for it Might have to make it on an S day.

I have a recipe that I like and is "supposed" to feed 2; I find it feeds 4. So, I'm reducing it so it really does feed 2. Even if I make it just for myself then, I can't do too much damage!

[flipturn]

Hi, Nichole -- Thanks for the link! You look great, and you have a lot of talent. I love the bride and groom. I also agree about this thread being very dangerous (but fun).

[Shirls]

I didn't actually plan a binge. I was far too good at fooling myself for that. Instead I would plan "controlled sweet eating". So I'd buy seven Kitkats and decide to have one a day after dinner. This would be on my lunch hour at work. I rarely got to take them home - I'd have eaten the lot by five o'clock and feel sick and disgusted with myself. So I'd skip dinner and by nine o'clock be starving and just have some cheese and biscuits and some cookies and mabe a muffin and a piece of pie...
You'd have thought I'd have learned my lesson? But no, a couple of days later I was at it again repeating the same self-defeating pattern.
This is why No S is such a godsend. It went right to the heart of the problem and it's working

[CrazyCatLady]

How about eating whole bags of candy? I even remember being on a self styled diet, and getting a bag of black licorice, and saying that I would only eat 3 strips per day. Impossible! I just kept munching!

And sales were horrible for me. Oh, look, the cookies are on sale, so I'll get two packages. Or the post Halloween, post Valentine's Day and post Easter sales! Fooling myself that it was for "the kids." Stocking up....and then pigging out!

And just eating too much of EVERYTHING!!

Since No S, I have thrown out 1/2 of a cheesecake. Pre No S, I never had desserts get old enough to throw away! And I'm finding that I don't need to cook as much, due to my hubby and I cutting back to reasonable amounts of food.

Embarassing but true! Yay, No S! Yay, us, for doing so well at sticking to No S! Not perfection, but doing so very very well!

[fkwan]

Me at my worst.

I never ate a whole anything in my life. I somehow knew it was very bad. I did eat, however, most of: Sara Lee cheesecakes, caramel absolutely anything (see elsewhere), brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and in the candy department....candy corn. 100% sugar. And cake frosting from sheet cakes at work, scooped up with my fingers. Oh, and HEB oatmeal raisin cookies, to which my husband is addicted. They were the last substance I binged on. I haven't had a cookie in a month.

Me at my best two years ago: where I wish to return:

[resting52]

I think what got me the most often (and what NoS addresses so well) is the grazing on anything edible anywhere in the house until too stuffed to move.

Wish I could say that the above behavior was a rare event.

If wishes were gold..........

Resting

[lola628]

I just posted on this topic over in my daily check-in. Have you ever overeaten because you cannot satisfy your hunger properly? I was at a festival today and I was so hungry and anything I tried to eat did not satisfy me. The croquet I had planned to have as my lunch was so gross, my BF tried a bite and then threw it in the trash, he said "This tastes like someone else had eaten it before you." So then I ate a spring roll and that was awful too.

I became so irritable. I was hungry and everything I ate could not satisfy me because it was bad food --- I find this happens at parks and places where good food isn't available. People there are just wandering around absent mindedly stuffing their faces on ice cream and waffles and candy. It makes me sick. Sorry this is so long, it's after 3:30 am and I'm half hallucinating from sleep deprivation.

All I want to know is what do you all do in these types of situations!?

[blueskighs]

OrganicGal,
mac n'cheese is definitely a "comfort food" ... i think I liked it when I was a kid with green beans there are all sorts of ways to make mac n'cheese better than Kraft deluxe ... I even have a decent vegan recipe I have made when the craving hits me these days .. not recently, but it works in a pinch!

fkwan, i have to pretty much agree with you about Houston, I lived there most of my life but since I have moved to CA don't think I have been back even once ...
so you have this thing for donuts ... good thing you have been off for three years!

flipturn, your memories are touching ... it is amazing how deep some of this goes... the way i see now i will always have my food memories, but I believe now they will be distinctly part of my past, they look more bittersweet with distance.

Nichole! please don't eat! Ahhhhhh I know you won't!

Shirl, I can relate to the controlled sweet eating ..that was something I tried in later years ... to pretty much no avail! ANyway ... yes .. NO S does get right to the heart of the problem ...
free at last ... free at last .... free at last ...

CrazyCatLady, I was just talking with my husband about how I don't need to cook as much because we are not eating as much ... he is not on No S but he seems somehow to go where I go with food!

fwan, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, you deginitely look like two different people in those photos! oh my goodness. I went through a candy corn phase ... man that stuff IS sweet! and CAKE FROSTING don't even get me started ... for years I was hooked on Von's Birthday cake ...

Resting, for me no matter how it started that is pretty much how it ended up ... to stuffed to move

Yes Lola! It is a horrible experience that you are describing ... festivals can be fun but it's true often the food not so much! and then you are not satisfied so you just keep eating .. I hate it! We used to go to magic kingdom here and would just eat the corn on the cob and just plan a meal on the way home ... I don't really know what else you can do.

Blueskighs

[lola628]

Corn on the cob - deLish! You make a good plan, DON'T EAT at the festival or just find the one healthy option and go with that! I guess I should have eaten a sandwich before we left.

One new habit I have formed thru all of this --- I prefer to eat sitting down. I used to eat "on the run" all the time and not think anything of it. It was the norm. Grab something GO. That is one big change No S has done for me, I'm so happy about it. In retrospect I think I ate all day long..... whilst running.....

[fkwan]

Blue,

Can I have your mac receipe? Is it out of the Uncheese cookbook? I bought it but haven't gotten around to using it; my husband is the chef, not me.

And what is this Von's you keep mentioning? I thought they made shoes, or is that Van's?

Lola,

Ya just gotta bring your own. For example, I'm going on vacation in June to visit family and best friend back home. No one in my family is vegan, so I'll mail myself a "care package" in advance. Even if you're not vegan, carry proteinbars and trail mix and an apple or orange is a good idea. When I went on a pilgrimage to Springfield, IL (I'm nuts about Abraham Lincoln) back in the day I lived on apples and bread.


f

[blueskighs]

fkwan,

the recipe is MAC DADDY ... it is from VEGANOMICON ... the same chicks who brought us Vegan Cupcakes Overtake the World ... ANYWAY it is a long recipe but I will get it to you ... please remind me ... I am getting ready to go out of town tomorrow and next week will be a wreck because we don't come back til monday ... things should slow down towards weekend ...

if I forget please remind me, it is a cool recipe just quite a bit to type!

also ... hate to BRAG ... but we get to go to best VEGAN restaruant this weekend ... NATIVE FOODS! www.nativefoods.com ...YAY!

Blueskighs

[Beckycan]

Donuts -- I remember in high school band we sold Krispy Kreme Glazed Donuts (and raised about $70,000 for new band uniforms that way-- LOTS of donuts!)

My best friend and I would fill up the back of her Pinto with donuts and drive around both our neighborhoods selling donuts to our neighbors. Of course, we always shared a dozen and stopped at 7-11 for a couple of quarts of milk. Then I would take a dozen home for my family and end up eating 3-4 of them for lunch.

Of course, she's thin even now, as we approach 50 y.o.

NoS gives me hope for change.

Becky

[blueskighs]

Becky,

WOW! $70,000 is a LOT OF DONUTS

A car full of Krispy Creme Donuts, that WOULD have been hard to resist!

It is so wonderful how NO S makes this all DIFFERENT,

Blueskighs