Hi!
I’m doing keto for 4 months now and it was going well until this week. I had 3 cheat meals in 4 months, i felt great, my eating dissorder was cured (i just thought so) and i lost my weight. At the begining of this week my mom had her birthday and i ate a piece of her cake. After that piece of cake i couldn’t stop eating for 3 days now. I ate till i was completely full and my stomach hurt so much that i couldn’t go to sleep. What scares me the most is that my eating dissorder is back. I don’t know how can i ever stop this. I was doing so well this 4 months and now this…
If someone had the same experience i would appreciate an advice on how to break that cycle and how to stop sugar cravings. I know i will cheat again some day, but next time i want to do it in moderation (one chocolate bar).
I miss that feeling of self-love that i had on keto.
I’m looking for moral support here, because i’m not comfortable talking about this with my family.
Binged on sugar again
Keto is great because if you “fall off the wagon”, you have an internal talk with yourself and get back on. Remind yourself why you were doing it in the first place, plan out your keto days and move on. No one (that matters) judges you but you. Stop doing that and convince yourself to do something good for you.
Note - I buy the 86% chocolate and I allow myself one square a few times a week. It’s bitter enough (but also sweet enough) to be a treat that I don’t eat more of.
Stuff happens and you learned not to eat cake just yet. Take the lesson, get back on track and don’t beat yourself up. You can do it.
If you stick with this long term, you may find that you will be able to have a bite and be satisfied, but now is too soon
Good luck and know you can succeed.
I think those of us who suffer from addictions will always be at risk for losing control. You may find eating regular sugary foods is a real trigger for you and keto sweets may be an option, but they can be a “gateway” to craving sugary sweets.
I’ve said it in another thread and I’ll say it here. After a small binge I had I just got so angry at the sweets and reminded myself that I hated them and didn’t want them in my life, etc. It helped to get over the craving hump until I really didn’t want them at all.
You didn’t ruin everything, you absolutely can starting today eat healthy choices and tomorrow and the next day and soon this whole thing will be in your rear view mirror and something you learned from. Hang in there!
by focusing on keto and going one day at a time, you can do this! maybe put a food plan together for the next several days or a week. higher on protein and sufficient food intake. make maintaining your goal. drink a ton of water (keep track if you have to)and follow the plan. You will be back in your routine in no time. consistency is important, but you have to find the sweet spot between consistent and perfection, no one is perfect! do some google searches on bingeing…keep the tools you like and leave the rest that wont work for you on the table. you have 2 options…let this side track your plan and maybe your whole life, or figure out what happened, put a plan in place and try again. the first one isnt really an option 
i LOVE sugar and something i learned from AA applies to me… 1 is too many, 1000 isnt enough, except in my case it’s not bottles of booze its sugar filled snacks.
i hope this helps. You Got This!!! honestly!!!
Eating three days of carbs after four months without is inconsequential as far as the adaptive lipolytic process. If anything, you partially recompensated some glycogen. It’s no big deal, and did not reverse any of your progress. You are at the point when limited carb intake for metabolic purposes is fine. If you eat them.a ittle more frequently you won’t have such a strong urge to binge. I suggest limit them by eating them only on the Weekends.
I didn’t realize I was a Sugar/Carb addict until 5 months on Keto. I heard an interview with a doctor who said something like “when we see patients who have not lost 30 pounds in 5 months, we suspect they have food issues. Other people only need the information and follow up to make sure they are applying the information correctly and the weight comes off”. My own personal view is: if I have been obese for years and haven’t been able to stick to any weight loss plan long enough to lose 10 pounds AND KEEP IT OFF, I suspect many of us have some form of problem eating or food addiction. I first cheated on my birthday cake 8 months into keto which touched off eating 12 cookies over 3 days; gaining 4 pounds and it took the rest of a whole month of the strict following to lose those 4 pounds. Scary and not worth it! Some people can periodically cheat and get right back on. For others, like me, it’s like playing with fire. Now it’s been almost a year and I really can’t see the point of having sugar or starchy carbs. Why do I want to swallow something that makes me feel bad? It’s awesome to feel in control of food instead of food having control over you:grin: I will say, I gave up potato chips before I even started keto because I could not imagine a day when I would be happy with just a handful instead of a family size bag! I am not tempted by them. There are too many delicious Keto foods to eat.
I am the same way. I THOUGHT I was over my sugar addiction and could add a Quest cookie every other day or so without falling off the wagon. That turned into every day…which turned to 2 a day…which turned to more…bam the sugar monster was back. I recommend sticking with strict keto, no sweets or substitutes, for a LONG time. I’m back on it and won’t cheat with sweets for a while…basically until the point where I’m ok with gaining back a couple of pounds.
That just hit me the wrong way. Shame on them. Five months is approximately 21 weeks, which, at one healthy pound a week is 21lbs. Does it suck - yes it does. Am I cheating or have “food issues”? I didn’t eat sugary snacks or sweets (the chocolate I can take or leave) before and I don’t do it now. I did like variety and too much of it but slower loss is not always because we’re all repeatedly cheating and sabotaging ourselves. I guess maybe some of us are.
You got into ketosis once so there’s no doubt you can get back in. The next time you see a slice of cake, remember that processed sugar is likely the most addictive substance in the world. It makes our bodies do irrational things so try to look at it like the drug that it is. Just say no!
This statement sounds like blaming and it’s right out of the SAD Dictionary
The whole CICO model doesn’t work and the way the doctors present the issue is that YOU are the issue, not that their diet doesn’t work, which it absolutely doesn’t, and if it does - it’s unsustainable.
What people don’t understand is being obese for many years, is not so much a problem with food, or addiction, and everything to do with hormones and insulin resistance built up for many many years. I know many obese people who’s diet was better than mine before I tried Keto.
Non obese people have lower levels of insulin.
And the longer you are obese, the more insulin resistance you have! Even gradually over time, that resistance will cause your fasting levels to rise.
Insulin resistance in turn leads to higher insulin levels.
It’s not a case of ‘they eat too much or too many calories’, and more of a case of many years of insulin resistance and high insulin levels.
Let further explain my issue: I was normal weight for my adult life until I hit a massive crisis. I coped by eating every processed carb I could find, sweet or salty. I gained 70 pounds over 10 years causing me to be very obese (I am short and have a small frame). The only reason I didn’t gain more is I tried hard to follow diets in between frequent binges. I was in total denial of how much sugar & junk food I was eating because I didn’t eat it every day. I thought I ate healthy most days and only binged sometimes. I didn’t understand the addictive nature of the binge foods, I thought it was my failures. The doctor that made the statement is exceptionally kinds and concerned. He wasn’t at all blaming the people and totally rejects CICO; he was just sharing his experience with treating patients with keto- some people only need education/information and are able to lose on keto easily; others have more problems with food and need more coaching/support. Hearing this struck me deeply and helped me be honest with myself about the possibility I could have true addictions to certain foods or just to eating. Watching Bitten Jonsson’s series on DietDoctor and reading Vera Tarman’s Food Junkies really helped me. It was creepy to admit to myself that I really did have a lot of the behaviors of food addicts: eating in secret, sneaking food, hiding wrappers & all evidence of sugar/junk I had eaten, eating way more than I intended. Hunger had nothing to do with eating, I just wanted to eat until I couldn’t eat anymore. I do suspect that I am not the only person in the keto universe to have (had) these struggles and I also suspect that it is entirely possible for some to overeat keto foods, remain obese and have all healthy bio-markers. I sure do not have the answers, nor am I blaming/judging anyone. There are plenty of reasons for slow losses: age, gender, how long a person was obese, medicines, etc. I am glad I heard that doctor’s interview and learned enough to know that eating sugar could trigger a binge for me and it’s best for me not to have any. I don’t know if it’s forever but for me, it’s not now.
Make this a learning experience. Sugar and processed carbs trigger you to binge on them. Get right back to keto. It will be hard at first to ignore those cravings but feed your body good food and those cravings will go away. Don’t cheat anymore. Its not worth it. 4 months of eating keto is not a long enough time to “cure” an eating disorder, especially if it has been present for years. You need to get at the root issue of what caused the eating disorder and work on resolving that.
It won’t be easy but Im sure you can do it, especially since you have personally experienced the benefits of eating keto and the positive effects it has, then re-experiencing eating crappy carbs again and how crappy it made you feel.
The biggest thing is to not beat yourself up and to get back on track the next day when you cheat. The fact that you feel you need moral support is indicative of the virtue/guilt you have erroneously associated with eating. You’re not a saint when you eat keto and you’re not a sinner when you slip up and/or deliberately have a cheat day/meal/several days. Just get back to it! You can do it!
The conventional wisdom is to avoid all sweets or even fake sugars/substitutes - but I submit that you CAN still be keto and enjoy some things sweet. Diet sodas and low-net-carb treats (like the Atkins’ Endulge treats) are viable options.
One thing to understand is that this is a lifestyle/way of eating; not a quick event that you’ll finish and move on to something else. So accept that it’s a journey and don’t get bummed out when there’re ups and downs. You’ll drive yourself nuts looking for resolution in a continuum; there is no end to the rainbow.
You’re going to find what works best for you. I just can’t stress enough to not start attaching guilt to cheat days or whatever. Looking for tips to avoid sweets cravings? Cool. But when you start feeling like you need moral support, you’re sort of heading down a dark path that you don’t need to subject your sanity to. Believe in yourself and KCKO 
4 months keto 3 days off…hmm…
overwhelming majority of time on keto so how about focus on what you got right, instead of beating yourself up…give yourself some support and kindness.
It is not easy to be perfect and why try? We all go off the rails occasionally, doesn’t make us bad or wrong or disordered…makes us human.
Just keep calm and carry on ketoing.
Why be harder on yourself than you would be on anyone else?
I’ve been binging for over a month now, it all started with the bright idea to intermittent fast 
lol yep I starved for all but four hours of the day (I am a food addict, this was a terrible idea…), when I finally started eating I went all out, sometimes over three thousand calories in one sitting… I am now up ten plus lbs, my gut is still OFF, it stays bloated and each time I go to eat I just really have to stop myself from over doing it. Don’t feel so bad, just try to get back to what you were doing before… Don’t let yourself go, you’ve came too far… Good luck 
Yes, for an addict, one is too many, and a thousand aren’t enough. It’s been twenty-six years since my last drink (but who’s counting?), and I still don’t trust myself to have “just one.” Just one 1.5-liter bottle, just one case of whisky, just one keg of beer, it’s all the same—sooner or later, I’m going to have to do some real drinking. And then it’s off to the races. This is one of the reasons most sober alcoholics refer to themselves as “recovering” alcoholics, instead of “recovered” ones, It’s a reminder that the disease of addiction is not gone, merely in abeyance.
Fortunately, sugar cravings are susceptible to the same kind of treatment as alcohol cravings. For me, the first thing to do was to admit that my butt was whipped by the substance in question. Then, since the substance is stronger than I am, I need a source of power that’s stronger than the substance. That’s one of the reasons I go to church, to get in touch with a source of strength that is more powerful than alcohol or sugar, which kick my butt. It’s also one of the reasons I’m here on these forums, because a group of people in the same boat is a lot stronger than one man on his own.
Then, I find ways of not ingesting either of those substances. A wise old man once said that the world’s record for sobriety is 24 hours; it’s just that some people have a lot more world’s records than others. I haven’t sworn off the drink or sugar for ever, I’m just not having any of them right now. If I swore off for ever, I’d go out on a drink-fueled doughnut binge. Instead, I promise myself as much as I want tomorrow, just not today. Even the worst addict in the world can go 24 hours without a hit.
Another thing that helps me is to try to help someone else. This post may not help you stay away from sugar, but writing it is sure helping me.
So easy does it. Just keep postponing that next hit of sugar for a while, keep calm, and keto on. And keep letting us know how things are going.
“this is a lifestyle/way of eating; not a quick event that you’ll finish and move on to something else. So accept that it’s a journey and don’t get bummed out when there’re ups and downs. You’ll drive yourself nuts looking for resolution in a continuum; there is no end to the rainbow.”
decreebass, your words here are absolute brilliance! I’m copying them and keeping them for future use!!! So well put! Thanks!