Hi,
I feel like I can do keto and do quite well but something will happen and I’ll get an urge to eat rubbish (sweets, crisps, cookies etc). When it happens I typically eat all of everything, not just a little bit everything.
I’m hoping there is someone who is similar but managed to stop it and has some advice!
Thanks,
HT
Oh… this made me chuckle. We’ve all been there. There is only one way out of this… refuse to give in to the first craving.
Then the second, and so on.
Cravings pass whether you feed them or not. Go chow down on some of your favorite keto food. Feed the urge, but not the craving.
Fairly quickly, the cravings will subside. Because it is sugar that makes you crave sugar. And we all lose our minds when we get on that sugar train.
Welcome!
Honestly, I am exactly the same way with “carbage.” Once I take the first bite of something off plan, I’m on my way to a binge of all the things I have been “missing out of.” Sounds overly dramatic, but food is my addiction. There is no control once I cheat. It’s taken me a lifetime to learn that to the degree that I won’t do it anymore - because I can’t. I know where it will take me.
From the beginning, I have been terrified of cheating for that reason. The guilt and hopelessness that come along with it aren’t worth it. I just don’t do it. Period. My suggestion is to eat three ample meals a day of clean food. Enjoy the things you do eat. If you feed your body sufficiently and regularly, it will remove the compulsion to indulge in the former foods you used to love. That’s what happened to me. If you are hungry in between meals, eat something (bacon, eggs, cheese, chicken, leftover protein, etc.) and then increase your intake at your next meal until you find the sweet spot of satiety. The key is to not take that first bite of junk. That is what will get you into trouble. If you don’t, I think you’ll find you can resist the urge to go off plan.
Good luck!
Oh yes, have I ever been there! To wit: the 120pounds I shed. They didn’t come from nowhere. Fill your fridge with food you love and can eat on Keto. I found it best to start the day with bacon and eggs, as much as I wanted. Hamburger patties smothered in cheese and topped with bacon and avocado for lunch. Steak and eggs and some veggies (low carb, here is where you have to watch carefully) for dinner. I was always a foodie and still am. I ate a ton when I first started. Hard boiled eggs with Mayo whenever I got a hankering. Whipped cream topped with strawberries as a sweet snack. I ate and ate. I was always full and didn’t have a chance to develop cravings. This is not how everyone here did it, but I was morbidly obese and dropped the pounds despite overeating. In time, I automatically ate less and less. No cravings because I was never hungry at all. I have never been good with record keeping or anything regimented, so all I did was buy a refrigerator magnet at Amazon that listed the carb values of allowed foods. I watched my carbs. I don’t know how much overweight you are, but if you are very fat, this is actually an easy diet because you can overeat at first, and the need automatically goes away over time. You will find that eventually you don’t get “stuffed” (which is temporary) but sated, which tends to last a good long time. It’s a feeling I had never had before. If you are morbidly obese because of overeating, this diet is the savior. Because you can overeat at first and it ends up going away all on its own, you never have to feel hungry or deprived.
Hey Ted, you’re not alone - not by a long shot!
Many peeps here find the old adage none is easier than some to be true for us. Once we have a bit of carbage, the old Sugar Monster sees its chance and raises its head, snapping at us to have a bit more, and a bit more, and a bit more…Our brains start to tell us to get allllllllll the carbage in while we can, while the going’s good, and that messaging is pretty hard to resist. The glucose is acting on the reward centre of our brain, and after that dopamine hit - the “feel-better” moment - we get the come-down, which makes us feel even worse (like a drug withdrawal). The more carbage we eat, the more we want, and the louder the Monster chatters in our heads as we go sliding down the sugar rollercoaster, demanding another hit to make us feel good again and send us swooping back up.
When we stop with the junk and quieten the brain, there’s no discussion and we have the opportunity to remember what really makes us feel good, and that we want to stay feeling that way.
Some people are good at moderating, but some find abstinence much easier. Another old saying goes “one bite is too many, and a thousand never enough”. There are certain foods that I know I simply can’t moderate, no matter how hard I might try. “I’ll just have a little bit” doesn’t work for my brain. (I mean, I’d love to be a moderator, but I’ve had to accept, after many years of mental battle, that I’m just NOT.) It’s easier for me to stop the brain chatter and have none rather than some, and I want to keep things as easy and comfortable as I can, not have to battle with myself every day while keeping my Sugar Monster awake.
So my tip is to be honest with yourself, recognise when something is hard for you to moderate and it would actually be easier not to have it in your life, so you can avoid the struggle of battling with it. When as you say “something will happen” in your life which provokes an urge to eat rubbish, be prepared to accept that uncomfortable feeling, just sit with it awhile. You can acknowledge temptation to do or eat something unhelpful without actually indulging it. It can knock and say hello, and you can just say “Hi and thanks for dropping by, but you’re not coming in” and dismiss the urge without drama or a struggle. It’s not a life emergency, it’s just neurological junk, your brain throwing a little tantrum. It has no power over you. You are the boss of you!
In the meantime, keep yourself well-fed with healthy, real foods so that your body is fully satiated (plenty of protein), and then surf any mental urge wave that might still arise until it passes - and it will pass. Your dopamine receptors will settle back down again. And then you can celebrate your excellent expression of self-care!
Best of luck, friend!
This is classic addiction at work. As others have said, addicts generally find it easier to abstain totally from their addictive substance than to try and consume it in “moderation”. Non-addicts never understand this.
Take a page from A.A., the grandmother of the Twelve-Step programmes, and use some of their ideas for staying away from carbs, one day at a time. The first thing is never to swear off for ever. You can have all the carbs you want tomorrow, just not right now. Swearing off for ever sets up a feeling of deprivation that leads to bingeing, so just postpone the next carbs for a while.
Second, don’t keep carbs in the house, if you can avoid it. If it’s not there, you can’t binge on it. In any case, keep plenty of keto snacks around to binge on: cheese, pepperoni, prosciutto, pre-cooked bacon, pork rinds (crisps made out of pork skins), heavy cream for your coffee (I don’t recommend it in tea, however!). American bacon is very fatty and salty and very satisfying; you could probably make your own by slicing up and frying some pork belly. The uncured back gammon the local butcher sold as bacon when I lived in London was also very tasty and satisfying, but much meatier and far lower in fat. Fat will do a lot to satisfy a craving for sugar.
Third, be sure to eat plenty at meals, especially in the beginning. Don’t worry about calories; the body has mechanisms to do that for us. Eat as much as your body tells you to. That may be a lot, at first, but most people find themselves spontaneously limiting their food after a while; they just aren’t hungry for more. But if you start out by eating three hearty meals a day, then you are not as likely to be craving snacks between meals. As long as you keep your carb intake very low, of course. Eventually, you may find that you are simply not hungry in the mornings; at that point, you can drop to two meals a day. Listen to your body.
I can only talk from my experience.
Since starting this new Keto way of life I enjoy food more than ever.
I was always a keen cook but pre Keto I looked for new ways to make food more interesting, It’s funny, I’m happier with more simple recipes now!
The natural ingredients taste better than they ever did!
And with this I don’t miss any of the old food at all! Maybe that’s just me?
I’ve decided to go shopping tonight and stock up on good things to eat, then will try tomorrow!
I am similar. No, I didnb’t manage to stop it… But it doesn’t happen that often especially if I am determined. I usually allow such things occasionally for various reasons. But accidents happen, yes.
Okay, it’s not the same as I can’t imagine why I would want subpar carby sweets (there are exceptions but not many), keto sweets are quite great and having them is going off for me as my on eating is carnivore or very, very close… My “vice” is fruits and sometimes bread.
I trained myself out of most of the problematic items. Sometimes I can persuade myself before I eat up bad stuff.
It’s best if I start with my good, satiating, very enjoyable carni food. I can behave well-fasted if I want. Another thing for me is to get enough variety. I eat some meat, eggs, fine, maybe dairy… But if I am still hungry and bored of my carni food, off eating is very likely. I still can keep it keto if I am not in a too rebellious mood (or have some too tempting carbier food)… Practice helps, our taste can change a lot but it takes time.
I don’t really care if I go off, it has an effect. If I REALLY wanted to stick to keto, I probably would, keto food is good and keto isn’t particularly restrictive…
All of everything… I can relate. If you have such items, it’s best to avoid them. If I buy a big package of biscuits when I want biscuits (I love biscuits and never could manage to learn how to make them myself), I will eat it all if I can. So I don’t buy biscuits 
I choose my battles and resisting it for the few minutes in the shop (if I have any desire for it right then) is way easier than resisting it for days, weeks… Nope, it won’t happen.
Sometimes substitute items work. I LOVE crunchy, that’s why I love biscuits. And wafers. I can make crunchy things even on carnivore. They aren’t the same but good and crunch is the main thing. I rarely have chicken skin but I can make scratchings or cheese whisps easily. On keto I had my nutty wafers.
I already wrote sweets are easy on keto. Very easy, I don’t often missed sweets on keto (I missed vegs and fats but I had all the sweets I wanted and more). Many of us consider it best keeping our sweetener consumption minimal, even zero (sometimes it’s not a bad idea for me to force zero but carnivore helped tremendously, it’s very rare now) but we don’t need to give up our desserts. I still need dessert often, they just don’t need to be really sweet. My current fav is cottage cheese, it’s a new item in my life. It helps with keeping my fat/protein ratio low enough too.
Maybe you can learn moderation with some items…? I heard about people who has to be abstainers, I am a mix but as time passes, I am better and better at minimizing amounts, no matter what it is (except meat. I don’t do tiny amounts of that). Practice is an amazing things and changed tastes too. Sometimes I just want a tiny taste. Sometimes my inner rebel wants to say I did it but it is fine with a tiny bit. See me and my peanut eating. I can do 5g and less any time. Zero is the best idea but I am not that good yet. Most of my days are peanut free since I first tried out carnivore (I was quite addicted to it before and my consumption showed it) but I still have days when I consume some. On my best days smelling it is enough…
But peanut is still mostly innocent. Very carby items, especially with little protein are worse. I easily eat a ton of them that way. So I like to mix things. It’s not enough to eat a ton of protein and fat first. I still can eat very much carbs afterwards (and I may get hungry). Sometimes it’s the best not to have a lot of the stuff to begin with. I mentioned biscuits, nope.
I don’t know if it helped any, maybe I am a bad person to react and today my brain totally melted in the super hot weather, I don’t feel so great.
Of course, eat enough food to get well satiated! And eat when hungry (unless you have some very good reason not to). My brain got the wildest ideas when hungry, I thought of food I didn’t even want to eat AT ALL… So old habits may die after we even lose the interest in the items involved… But we usually still like those so it’s easy to grab them. Don’t do it if you can resist. Grab some nice keto food. Get used to them, they should be your first thought when hungry or even if you just fancy food.
I never could do that. It’s just not how I work. Oh if I could do that, I could quit coffee 
Sigh.
Cutting out added sugar? Easiest thing ever. Giving up sweeteners? Okay, I am not there yet but I can go for many days without any. But if I fancy a food item, I eat it, no need to try to resist. (Okay, I resist a tiny bit sometimes… When I don’t REALLY fancy it…)
But even people like me can change. I changed a lot!
For me, it’s important to eat as late on the day as comfortably possible. If I start to eat early, it’s hard to pull off a proper day. So eating without any hunger or other need (beyond temptation…), not a good idea, to put it lightly. But it’s probably highly individual.
It may work wonderfully for some, I don’t say it isn’t, others may go for less meals. I noticed that the more meals I have, the more carbs I eat. It’s not a super strong correlation, I had 5MAD carni days several times (I can’t have so many meals off carni…) but as I have more and more meals, I start to get bored my normal, good stuff and get ideas… While a big amount of meat and whatnot keep me perfectly satiated for a day, way less chance for temptation. So it’s somewhat individual. But whatever the number of meals is, choosing some enjoyable, satiating, good, properly fatty and protein rich keto food is the best when one gets hungry 
I often eat off when I am full (not just satiated) and already had carbs… I It’s best not to go there if I can avoid it… If it’s unavoidable to happen, it should happen rarely. And hopefully not going very much overboard using lots of good food (especially first but later too) and avoiding the most triggering items.
Me too. And I feel a great desire for simple. I am still not good at it, after so many years but it’s way easier with meat. I just fry or roast some with salt and bam, perfection or at least close enough to it. I do need some variety but it’s a great basic food I can use every day in not small amounts.
But I like cooking (if it’s not way too complicated, hard or time consuming) so making a bit more complex dishes are fine too 
But I like to cook when I fancy it at the moment. If I don’t, I always can just eat something simple. I can even just eat something I cooked before…
Good luck, @HeavyTed!
Very good observation. I had started typing something out and it just didn’t seem right. But this puts the spotlight in the right place.
It’s not just food, it can be other things.
The only things I’ve ever had a really hard time giving up I’ve had to replace with something else less bad to get away.
All the best to you. Hope you get into a routine that just “works” for you that you can stick with and feel satiated, satisfied.
Yeah, I think if you’re an addictive personality, you have to clean out the house, fridge, closet, wherever there’s anything you like to eat. Toss it. Get down to meat, meat, and more meat.
There you go. I buy the vast majority of our food, and when I do keto I just don’t buy the desserts, and the carbage, processed foods. That helps a lot, because they are not in the house. Then, when I do have an urge, I have “allowable” treats. I make a coconut oil, chocolate fat bomb I sweeten with erithrytol/monk fruit sweetener. It reminds me of choc fudge. Feed the cravings with protein foods. I make protein smoothies that will take that edge off as well, and they are a lot like having a choc or vanilla milk shake except I am using coconut milk, avocado, and protein powders. They are creamy, and pretty dang good. I use Orgain protein powders I get from Costco. I often add things like collagen and creatine. I buy the ones with “superfoods” which do have some carbs though, which is part of my carb allowance. Another allowable treat is choc covered strawberries. Melt dark choc sweetened with allulose or monk fruit sweetener, and dip your strawberries. This is actually very low carb, but tastes decadent. i like living it up doing keto, and enjoy my food.
Hmm, Shinita, can you tell me more about these nutty wafers? I like a bit of crunch too, and while I can’t have crunchy carby things in the house because I have no off-button with them, fortunately I have no trouble moderating crunchy keto stuff. And while I do enjoy nutty things, I don’t seem to struggle with overeating them (unlike some other people, it seems - aren’t we all wonderfully, weirdly individual).
It is very easy! I mix some nuts and possibly other oily seeds, ground with a little water in a silicone mold and I nuke it for some minutes, I had to figure out that as this crunchy things burn super easily in the microwave if I use a bit too much time. of course the oven is fine too but it’s quickest and simplest in the microwave and I am the type who fancy crunch and want a wafer or cheese whisp in a few minutes
I used to love walnut+flax a lot, I am a big walnut fan to begin with but I can’t snack on it (I can but it’s like 1-2 grams), I need a dish with it.
But I had zillion types, it was long ago, I don’t remember much, I know like pumpkin seeds, a bit sesame (not too much as I am sensitive to the bitterness in it)… But I probably put walnut into most of them, it’s a very great flavor, no bitterness, tiny sweetness… Flax is very bland alone but lovely together with others and its net carb content is almost zero.
It’s important to keep these things thin. I usually use enough water to be able to almost pour the thin paste I get but if it’s too much water, it takes too much time to evaporate… And it’s a positive thing that I only can make a… IDK, 20g wafer in my medium sized “bread” silicone mold and it takes minutes so I can’t just eat them forever but as you wrote and many of us experienced, it’s harder to overeat keto treats (well it depends. I can overeat using anything. I did that with too fatty pork). Carby crunch? I can eat a TON even when I already feel too full in the beginning. It’s scary and while I never feel any guilt about eating, this is something able to make even me comfortable. It hurts my pride too. I hate feeling a slave of my wrong desires. I know what I should do so why do I act like an idiot? Bad form and not hedonistic at all. Overly carby treats don’t even bring the nice satisfaction keto (or sometimes just lower-carb) things do. I eat some, lovely but want more and more, no “oh it was lovely, enough, thank you”. Sometimes it happens, there are such items, they are usually extremely flavorful and quite fatty. Mostly carb crunchy items aren’t like that. Peanuts were that bad (the only not very carby item I have this problem I think) but now I can be satisfied with a tiny bit. Still better to avoid it so that’s what I normally do. But they still smell wonderful to me…
Apropos peanuts, I made wafers from peanuts too. Just salted, roasted, ground peanut and water, water evaporates in the microwave and a peanut lattice is left But as peanuts are already crunchy, I rarely bothered with it. Still nice and a bit different…
I like to roast walnuts along with whatever I have in the pan. They taste very different and so nice when crisped up in a little butter.
We all have that feeling. Also my husband’s motto is “you’re not hungry, you’er just bored or have a lack of imagination, so do something to distract your mind.” That usually works for me
If not, I have the least damaging carbage, an apple instead of an apple pie, zoodles instead of pasta, that sort of substitutions.
Good luck sorting yourself out.