I have been following Keto for 5 months now and lost around 17 kg. I weighted 83kg and was bordering on diabetic. I regularly suffered sugar dips and used to remedy them with a tonne of sugar binges which was obviously a vicious cycle. The weight loss has slowed massively since lockdown due to being less active, I’ve only lost 4 kg since April. I am running around 20 miles a week but am otherwise less active as at home with the kids. I stumbled across Keto in my search to stop my binge eating, which I have struggled with my whole life. I have also started reading Brain over Binge, which was recommended in a post on here. This week in particular I have been really struggling with urges to eat lots of chocolate and ice cream (and I mean lots). The good thing with Keto is I have to completely ban and track carbs which seems to be working for me mostly (I seem to be an all or nothing kind of person). I have given in and eaten a whole tub of low carb (Oppo) ice cream and last night 100g of macadamia nuts.
My question is how long does it take from being in Keto to stop the carb urges? I literally dream of food most nights and am still obsessing over food, albeit in a mostly carb controlled way. Also does anyone else have binge eating experiences? Brain over Binge is helping me understand my urges but not curb them.
Binge Eating
The physical urges will subside with Keto and the psychological ones may not. But you can decondition yourself regarding them! Rather than resisting the urge (pushing it away) or giving in to it (eating the ice cream) just feel it. Where is it in your body? describe as best you can (color, shape). What emotion label would you give it (for many people a very strong urge can feel like panic, a milder one annoyance or discomfort - but it’s highly individual). If you can do this whenever an urge arises, you’ll break the habit loop of urge =dopamine hit of desired food.
It’s complicated, of course. And individual. I never had carb craving problems on keto (except when I tried and immediately stopped not long after my high-carb time) but I did it gradually, keto came after low-carb years. Without that, it’s usually way harder, of course, especially for people who are addicted to carbs or sweets. My sweets cravings lasted for way longer than my carb cravings. Both chocolate and ice cream are keto-friendly made by me, they are sweets, not carbs. With or without sweeteners, that may matter too.
Keto alone never cured my food addictions and I always ate sweets too (I don’t actually craved them, just liked them, it was a habit and a useful thing sometimes. I had no problems with sweets eating, never wanted to stop at all. we all have different goals with keto, stopping eating sweets surely never was one of mine).
Many of us needs additional tweaks, eliminating some food items, going lower with carbs… These may bring drastic changes and the stuggle (in vain, at that) may disappear. But it’s not certain we can jump into our later ideal woe right away, maybe the changes would be too drastic and we couldn’t do it or would suffer even more. But maybe eliminating items right away would bring a tiny miracle. It surely felt like that when I tried carnivore… I was WAY more uncontrollable on my normal keto. A lot of addictions disappeared on carnivore (even some plant matter is fine just not much), even my attitude to food changed drastically (I still love food but it was insane before, it was on my mind all day and I spent much time on it), only my coffee addiction remained and I can live with that for a longer while… I actually can’t do carnivore now but I eat differently than before on keto. And it makes all the difference. We change too but it takes time.
What you can do immediately? Try things. Skip sweeteners if you can (it was impossible for me until very lately), eat enough satiating food… If I want some food I know I can overeat from and I eat a huge amount of satiating fatty protein, well, I won’t overeat from the stuff. I still can mess up my day with it if I start to eat it but to a lesser extent. Sometimes we just need to ban certain items. Sometimes having a tiny allowance works better. I had a time when I ate only unsweetened chocolate (I mean, chocolate wise, I ate proper food too ;)). I didn’t like that so much at that point and it controlled the amount very well (as I never ate it when I was hungry, just at the end of a good meal) BUT my freedom loving rebel and hedonist inner selves were pleased that chocolate isn’t BANNED, that sounds wrong and stressful… We need to be careful with our mental things. Much probably quite good advice in this forum is totally impossile for me as my brain is wired differently.
So I would try to eat A LOT before I even look at chocolate. And only touch it if I need it for my sanity. If I KNOW it must be banned, it’s harmful to me, I try to persuade myself, it’s not that hard with a healthy strong health-consciousness. Usually.
Occasional feasting is human, I guess. Don’t beat up yourself over that. Even clear fail happens with most of us. Do your best to avoid that but if it happens, keep calm and keto on (or back if you strayed)! Good luck!
Hi Mrs S. Welcome to the forums.
What you are experiencing is real.
The
identification is important.
For as you have experienced while still carb craving, even trying to moderate or substitute foods can lead to a binge avalanche.
That being said, identifying and using keto-food substitutes for foods that currently are extremely hard to resist is your way out of the swamp.
Podcasts featuring Dr. Rob Cywes are an important help in understanding carb addiction and strategies to gradually overcome them. the link below takes you to Low Carb MD, a reputable low carb podcast.
HI!!! this was me. I get it. Darn hard to drop all the junk we loved to eat cause we are sugar addicted and we used as an emotional crutch support also.
I am all or nothing person also. I tried so hard to keep carbs in my life. I became a carnivore. Zero carbs. Not saying ya gotta do this at all LOL just saying this is the road I chose and how I helped combat my troubles in my journey.
It takes time. Big time on plan to stop the brain urges. It takes time on plan and true reasonings and thoughts about why you are changing your lifestyle and why you are dumping certain foods from your life and for me personally. Time. Lots of time to decide what I wanted and how darn hard and how much effort I was gonna put into my journey.
After carb battles I could not win at all for about 2 years of trying, I became zero carb plan. It worked for me. I controlled the physical body very easily then but I still had to battle off some mindset changes. Those just took having alot of hard chats with myself before I went off plan and dived into crap. Everyone finds their own way to make it work if they truly want it to work ya know and falling off plan a bit or whatever happens to everyone has we change. We have to truly accept this change in eating is what is required for our health if we want to go this route and we have to lock onto those reasons why we want change and hold them tight and put some Ummptfft behind our thoughts to achieve what we want. Mind games are tough but we truly can win them 
I can say as a sugar/carbohydrate addict that the cravings may lessen, but will probably never go away, at least not for a long time. What I find helpful about keto is that eating to satiety (a) helped me learn the difference between real hunger and simply wanting to eat and (b) greatly lessens my propensity to binge, even when I give in to a craving.
As a psychological aid to coping with cravings, the Twelve-Step programmes have a trick that can be very useful: Never swear off carbohydrate/sugar for ever (that practically guarantees binges), simply postpone your next hit until tomorrow. Tomorrow, you can have all the bread and doughnuts and cake with frosting you want; just not today. As one of the A.A. books puts it, “Even the worst alcoholic in the world can go twenty-four hours without a drink,” and the same is true of any other addiction. So take things a day at a time.
There are other strategies to deal with the addictive effect of sugar and carbohydrate, too. Dr. Robert Cywes, a bariatric surgeon in Florida, says he always keeps a cup of coffee handy, to help him deal with his addiction to carbohydrate. While not everyone is vulnerable to addiction to carbohydrate or sugar, he says that a lot of his practice involves helping the patients he puts on a ketogenic diet deal with addiction or with other psychological issues resulting from giving up carbohydrate. Another helpful trick, if at all possible, is to avoid keeping tempting foods in the house (this can be difficult if you share your quarters with carb-burners, however). But having low-carb, high-fat snacks readily available (I like pork rinds and pre-cooked bacon) can help you resist temptation, if removing temptation from the house is not feasible.
Lastly, another thing that helps is screwing up. I find that if I eat too much carbohydrate, my arthritis and other aches and pains start to come back, and I spend the next couple of days feeling like crap. I try to remember that feeling, when the bread from the pizza parlour starts to smell wonderful, or if my niece brings home dessert from the place where she works.
After a time, your taste will start to change, and this also will help. Some of my erstwhile favourite snacks now taste like cardboard to me, and sweet things now often taste too sweet to eat (thank God). I have gone from craving regular milk chocolate to eating and enjoying unsweetened chocolate, which used to be so bitter on my tongue that I couldn’t eat it. That shift in taste helps a great deal, because I don’t binge on unsweetened chocolate, the way I did on chocolate with sugar in it.
It’s very useful - for people who already have a great deal of control from my viewpoint… I can do this now (usually) but I trained myself since almost a decade to say no to things (not very extensively, I don’t resist temptation and I like to play with tiny amounts but we can learn wanting the right things. maybe not everyone but we can have a certain amount of success).
Our attitude probably matters a lot. If there is a real temptation, I never even try to resist, I am wired differently than that. If my inner rebel reappears after some time, I know it is its time and don’t try to stop it for a long while even though I see it does the wrong things. To some extent. I am always in control to a certain low level. HABITS help with this but they take time.
So it depends on the person and how strong is the addiction at the moment. But even so, determination can help (it’s super effective but we can’t just have it when it would come handy. it’s not available all the time. maybe if we have a huge motivation). And good food choices. Sometimes even timing.
I had exactly the same as you with chocolate My taste changed very little except my sweetness perception. AND need for sweetness. I feel my unsweetened chocolate isn’t sweet but why would I need sweetness in a chocolate…? It took me about 8 years though and I always used the minimum amount of sweetness in our food. It helps a lot if we don’t just keep similar (even though way less carby) sweets with similar sweetness in our life. Sure, we will feel the need to drop the sweetness a bit but it’s probably more effective if we work on it.
Screwing up, yes, I agree. If we have problems with carbs. More resilient bodies aren’t that helpful, many people leaves keto and feels fine enough not to come back. But even if we don’t feel awful after eating much carbs, maybe our body still nudge us and tell us to stop. I get very subtle warnings and it’s enough to think twice (or, think once. some cravings go into the way of thinking, we MUST eat even if we feel BAD now. the worst type is when one keeps eating despite huge pain due to the eating… as the compulsion gets less severe, warnings help more. if the compulsion is strong, that’s bad. even if we aren’t among the worst cases. if I have a strong compulsion, few things can stop me, reason surely can’t).
I write about myself again but well, I know myself. I know about nothing about @Mrs_S’s binge eating. We all need somewhat different tricks and different amounts of strictness. Too much? We quit keto or suffer. Too little? Chaos ensues and we possibly still suffer in the throes of cravings.
All we can do to tell her our methods, so many things to try! Some of them hopefully will help enough. And time helps too, probably (not if one just builds stress but it usually does).
It’s also very useful for people who have no control whatsoever. A number of sober alcoholics of my acquaintance have remarked that they find it much easier to postpone the next drink than to try to drink in moderation. Once the craving is indulged, even with a very small quantity of alcohol, they are unable to resist the temptation to drink more. So it becomes a matter of importance to try to postpone the first drink for as long as possible.
I used to know a guy who’d been sober for thirty years, and he said that he did it by simply postponing his next drink for twenty-four hours at a time. I find that the same thing generally works with me and glazed doughnuts, as well.
Thanks Madeleine, I am on a self discovery journey and trying so hard to understand myself, my habits, and my capabilities.
Hi Shinita, thanks so much for your thoughts and advice. I’m definitely going to look into cutting out artificial sweeteners for a while to curb my cravings. I just can’t be trusted! I’ve banned so many foods from my cupboards over the years, usually bought ‘for the kids, and devoured by yours truly, I think oppo ice cream will be joining the list!
Thanks FrankoBear, I will certainly give the pod cast a listen. I have been researching crazy and recommendations are hugely appreciated
Hi PaulL thanks for your reply. I will try your suggestion - when I have a up smoking a similar strategy worked for me, so will definitely be worth a try. I will take a look at the 12 steps as I definitely liken my food addiction to alcoholism.
I agree with this latter thing. It’s often easier to postpone, I had that myself with some things - and a tiny amount works way better for others. And sometimes banning something practically forever is the best and not even hard, I have no real addictions so as long as I don’t feel miserable to imagine a life without it, I can cut it out from my normal life, accidents and exceptional days happen.
BUT if I feel a strong compulsion to do something NOW, I simply can’t postpone it. I lack to power for that. It’s like swearing in the Tourette syndrome, a short waiting may be possible but that’s it. Many people are like this I am sure. I needed many years of training to be able to postpone eating what I really fancy at the moment until TOMORROW. It’s so very far, it’s super hard, I couldn’t do it, it felt like never to me first. I had some success with NOT fancying the stuff (suddenly stopping eating sugar and wheat was the easiest thing ever as I was sure it’s not good for me so I suddenly lost all my desires towards them) but if I do… Nothing can stop me barred blunt physical means, definitely not myself. I am quite sure now that out brains are very differently wired, our attitude is different, that’s why I read advice that never could work for me in the most problematic situations. It’s a compulsion AND I don’t want to fight against it, usually. Even if I find the thing unfortunate. If my health would be in danger, that would be different but losing fat? It doesn’t worth to me to fight. Day after day… That’s not hedonistic.