James G wrote:
PB wrote:

I just need one day where I eat too much (2 giant subs today), and
feel like an alcoholic whose fallen off the wagon.
...
It takes several of these incidents and a continued trend to actually
be "off the wagon."

Just to check if you understand what you just wrote - You
just denied the reality of patterns of addictive behavior and
that when dealing with addictions one use renews those
patterns. Deny all you like, patterns of addictive behavior
happen.

An alcoholic who goes on a binge for one night doesn't suddenly lose
his job, beat his wife, etc. (obviously these are possibilities, but
I'm making a point)

The same applies to binge eating.

Taking these out of order, your assertion about binge
eating does apply to almost all binge eaters, but it badly
fails the reality check when applied to alcoholics. Binge
eating does continue and eventually does interfere with
health to the point of interfering with work for some people.

If you eat too much one day, just
get right back at it the next day, and COMPLETELY IGNORE what you did
yesterday.

If this were true and there were no physical symptoms
driving binge eating behavior, then anyone who ever went
on an eating binge could simply decide to stop, stop
over eating, and resume dieting. Let's get honest about
this - Do you actually imagine there's even one fat person
in the world who hasn't attempted that approach and
failed in the attempt? Simply deciding to stop over
eating only works if you switch to a way of eating that
turns off cravings, which is of course not the same as
simply deciding.

The reason so many fat folks fail the attempt is that it is
based on a false assumption. There *are* physical
symptoms that drive folks to continue over eating. In
Atkins style low carbing there's a two week process
called Induction specifically designed as a detox program
to turn off such cravings.

It doesn't matter what type of plan you try, if it fails to
turn off cravings there's going to be an unending pull to
drive you off that plan. Find a type of plan that turns off
cravings or face cravings until you decide to quit. It
doesn't matter what type of plan you try, none of them
work when off the wagon.

Otherwise, you'll either make yourself depressed and
spiral into overeating, or you'll freak yourself out and undereat,
making an overeating episode more likely.

Both of which trends have both physical and psychological
drivers.

How do you keep going when seems like too big a hill to climb ?

By going. *There's no magic to it. *Put your nose to the ground and
keep going. *What you ate yesterday or yesteryear has absolutely no
reason to influence what you eat today.

Once you've completed a detox program to make that assertion
correct.

One hard part I've learned -

For me it's easy to stay on low carb. I've learned what carb
intake levels I can eat to not have any cravings. I've learned what
specific foods I need to avoid that trigger cravings independent
of carb levels. I know how to go through the detox program to
turn off cravings when I fall off the wagon. But the effort of the
detox program is so much higher than the effort to stay on the
program it's harder each time to get back on the wagon when
I fall off. I've stayed on as long as two years, as short as two
months. It's always a struggle to get back on, easy to stay on,
trivial to fall off.

At least it's not like when I was attempting low fat where for me
it was almost as hard to stay on it as it was to get on it. Ah
to be in that percentage of the population who gets no cravings
while on low fat.