Trigger foods

So as any of you who have struggled nearly all their lives with weight, you know that there is always a list (large or small) of trigger foods. I define trigger foods as the following:

Trigger foods- certain types of food that once they are around, you can't say no to eating them; once you start eating them, you can't stop at just "a little"- foods that trigger you to binge (on that certain food or foods)

I think a lot of you know what I'm talking about. For instance, if I order pizza, I can eat nearly the whole thing in one sitting most of the time. Tonight I ate the whole thing in one sitting (the only redeeming qualities were the thin whole-wheat crust and that it was covered in veggies and less cheese than usual). Another occasion is either when I make cookies or someone else makes cookies. I can't just eat one or two and feel satisfied. I have to eat like 4 or 5- you know, when I feel like I'm about to lapse into a sugar coma.

I don't binge-eat on EVERYTHING I eat- just a select number of foods.

Tonight after eating a whole pizza (even though it was as healthy as a pizza can be made), I have decided to stop eating trigger foods altogether, at least until I can get control of my eating habits. To start small, I'm going to make myself go at least a week without any trigger foods. My list of trigger foods is as follows:

Stephanie's List of Trigger Foods

• Pizza
• Mac & Cheese
• Pasta (of any kind)
• Cookies (especially peanut butter, sugar, or chocolate chip)
• Bread (the white, processed "crap" kind- whole wheat doesn't trigger me to overeat)
• Chips
• Rice (only white rice- brown rice doesn't taste good enough for me to binge on)

Here's to kicking my trigger food habit once and for all. Maybe one day I can be one of those people with a healthy perspective on eating the things they like to eat, just in small quantities.

Here are 3 questions I have for those of you who can relate.

1. What are YOUR trigger foods?
2. How do you cope with the urge to binge when they are around?
3. Have you ever overcame the problem of binging on "trigger" foods? If so, how did you do it?

One step at a time

So, after weeks and weeks of beating myself up about the fact that I let myself gain back the 25 pounds I lost (plus one or two more pounds) and weeks of wishing I would just eat a perfect diet 100% of the time, I decided to let that go today.

I got in all my veggie/fruit servings today and all my veggies even happened to be green! I have had tons of protein, all lean sources from chicken and eggs. Hey, they say green veggies have the most nutrients, right? After work, I leashed my dog up and went for a walk in the beautiful sunlight.

At dinner, I had 2 pieces of white bread- you know, the processed, bad-for-you kind. And you know what? I didn't beat myself up for it. For the past couple months, I'll set out at the beginning of the day to eat perfectly healthy all day. When I slip up, I beat myself up (mentally) and just gorge on more unhealthy food. Counterproductive, right? I wish I could be as logical with my food choices and my relationship with food as I am in other aspects of life.

I believe a big part of being healthy physically is being mentally healthy, too. It's something I'm trying to work on. With all the crap that's been going on with me lately in my personal life (not gonna get into it all on here, aside from what I said a few posts ago), it's been really, REALLY, REALLY hard to get my head back in the weight loss game.

I'm going to try to take it one step at a time- one meal at a time, one snack at a time, one day at a time.

If I knew then what I know now...

Stress and (lack of) weight-loss

This is going to be a short post because I just have one question to ask.

How do you get your head in the game to lose weight when you're going through all these stressful life changing events? All I want to do is stress eat.

Any answers appreciated, the more honest (and helpful) the better!