I have a love/hate relationship with cereal. I love it. But, I hate it too. Whenever there is a sugary cereal in my house I will eat it until it’s gone (that usually happens quickly). Randomly. When I’m bored/not hungry/whatever. Most of this misses the camera, so I’m not held accountable 🙁
Right now I have a bunch of Nature’s Path cereals I won in a contest. When they arrived in the mail I told myself they would be Ben’s cereals. Yeah right. While he has been eating them occasionally, I am the one putting the huge dent in our stash. What makes it worse is I don’t even like them that much. 
This love/hate relationship with cereal has been going on for years. I remember lamenting to my therapist about how I always start (and end) a binge with cereal before moving on to something else. I have considered banning cereal from my house, eating nothing but cereal all day so I get sick of it – and everything in between!
My breakfast was pretty, but boring…cottage cheese, fruit, trail mix.
Question: Do you have a love/hate relationship with any food/drink/person? Do you avoid that food or eat it up? Spill it 🙂
I actually suffer with an eating disorder and I know how it feels to be in a binge and I have learned that I cannot touch certain types of food with a 10 foot pole!! For example, I always used to binge on ice cream and chocolate so while I still live at home and my parents love the stuff, I have learned that I just cannot have the stuff!!
Candy corn! I’m heartbroken, yet secretly relieved Halloween is over and they’re out of sight (and not being shoveled into my mouth)!
Anything and everything pastry. I could seriously eat carrot cake, brownies , cookies and whoopee pies all day long, everyday. My binges always start out with these and I cannot keep anything of the sort in the house.
D’s advice was really good. My love/hate relationship is with cupcakes- particularly icing. I LOVE LOVE LOVE them and icing but can’t ever seem to control myself
Yes! I recently got rid of all of the cereal in my house because I couldn’t control myself. It was bad. I’ve always had a problem with processed carbs – cereal, bread, and other such foods, so I try my best to keep that stuff out of the house.
I have the same thing with cereal. Now whenever I eat it, I actually measure it out. I know its so lame but its the only way I can keep the portions under control. Also, I NEVER buy sugary ones because then I have no hope to resist….
Cereal is my kryptonite too. I consider myself mostly recovered from any disordered eating but cereal still gets me everytime, so I totally understand how it feels. My first advice would be to ban cereal until you feel confident in other areas of eating (ignore this if you already do!!). For me, it was too stressful to be struggling with eating in general and then having the blatant cereal temptation. I only started buying it once I felt confident, and had no other issues. Imagine there is one advanced class at the gym that it is just SO difficult that it makes you feel like crap and you can’t keep up because you haven’t mastered the easier classes and your fitness levels arent built yet. If you kept trying to go to this class, you’d get frustrated and give up. So the solution would be to stop going to that class for a while, and focus on all the other easier classes. Once you’ve built up your fitness, you can try that class again. It might still be hard, but it definitely won’t be as hard as before.
If you already do feel like cereal is the only issue, then my advice would be to tell yourself you are allowed to have it whenever you want. I did this, and would say to myself before EVERY meal, “do you want cereal?”. If I felt the slightest twinge that I did want, I’d have a bowl (or two, or three) with no questions. Usually I didn’t feel that great afterwards, and sort of wished I’d had something that made me FEEL physically healthier. And a lot of times I did enjoy it, and that was that. Eventually, I started to realise that I didn’t actually want cereal for every meal. If I tried to have a healthier meal, but secretly wished for cereal, then I knew I’d end up having it afterwards anyway. That becomes problematic because there is the initial guilt (why do I want it so badly?) and then the “logical” guilt (extra calories). I figured that if I had cereal as the meal, then at least I wasn’t blowing my calories. This has worked the best for me. If I still feel like I want cereal, even a tiny bit, I have it, and the more that I do this, the more I find it really isn’t as great as it is in my mind. I’m now working on learning how to actually resist it, even these tiny urges, and I find that by telling myself “If I eat a dinner that I still love, but that isn’t cereal, then I’ll have a nice big bowl in the morning with no problem”, which helps me a lot.
Most of the time, the food isn’t as good as what you built it up to be in your mind. But you know what, sometimes it is, and that’s normal 🙂
D – This is great advice! I agree with not keeping it in the house and I will probably stop buying it for a while once we get rid of this stuff.
oh my gosh yes! snacky things like crackers and certain sugary cereals and FUN SIZE CANDIES and juice of ANY sort (orange, cranberry, apple) and CLEAR SODA (especially Sierra Mist!). If those things are in the house, they will be eaten FIRST out of everything. It’s horrible but at least I’ve identified them as my triggers and try my hardest to keep the little candies and snacks out of the house (which is hard when you’re 19 and living with parents who have their own prerogative to buy and keep whatever they want in the house). Thankfully they’ve seen the error in their ways with soda so that’s not a fight to keep out but JUICE… ugh we MUST have OJ in the house and sometimes it takes all my willpower not to drink it straight from the jug 😉
I have the exact same problem with peanut butter.
My trigger food is way worse than all the above – I have a downward spiral when I eat chips. It doesn’t even matter if I make myself sick on a bag of cheese doritos, I can eat them again the next day.
I have a “light” ban on most chips right now. On rare occasions I eat them, but avoid them for the most part. I used to wolf them down with reckless abandon. It was gross.
Now when I eat chips, I try to stick to brands that are healthier, or at least more gourmet.
When I go out for ice cream, even if I’m already stuffed from a dinner out, I can’t bring myself to order anything except the largest size!!! The only exception is when I go to Maggie Moo’s (my favorite) where I do order the middle size because it’s SO big. This is a good step for me, except that more often than not, the server makes my portion so big that they put it in the large size cup anyway — which I always finish. And then finish my boyfriends too.. 🙂 This is why I don’t buy ice cream for my house.
I definitely have that problem with cereal too. I rarely ever buy it, though, because I never crave it. I’m a oatmeal kind of gal! But when I do get a cereal urge, I can plow through a couple of bowls. My favorites are Honey O’s & Life. 🙂
Never one to “binge”, I have a few “trigger” foods
Peanut Butter: I keep it in the house and use it sparingly every day…the overeating is gone. The health benefits of using it normally outweigh the danger in my opinion.
M&Ms: Don’t keep them in the house, dangerous and no nutritional benefits
I’m a skinny little bitch so don’t take advice from me 😛 But my mother who lost 50 on WW and KEPT IT OFF says “cleaning the house” was vital for her success!
Best of luck with everything Monica I have been reading for a LONG LONG LONG time and I have been cheering you on from the beginning. I really hope you get to happy place, it’s a long and painful road, but you can do it!!
I have the EXACT same problem with cereal. I don’t know what it is, but I have found a solution that works for me: I don’t keep cereal in the house, but I do keep several kinds of oatmeal. They’re similar foods (I actually think I like oatmeal more), but I have never binged on oatmeal! If I want some as a late night snack, that’s fine, but with oatmeal, it’s easy to just have one serving, whereas with cereal, I would eat like four or five servings!
Cereal is a bad trigger for me too, particularly certain cereals. Once I start, I can’t stop. I’ve decided to stop buying it on a regular basis. From now on it’ll be a treat until I can learn to have it around and enjoy it in moderation.
i feel the same way with cereal but the hating is more that its so expensive for me to buy! so i guess my wallet hates it more than i do 🙂
I bought some TJs almond crunch cereal a couple of weeks ago. It was fantastic!! The one cereal I CANNOT have in the house is Corn Pops. I could eat them for every meal. 🙂
I get like that with cereal too. It’s just so easy to eat! My real love/hate is with bread though. I think I probably don’t eat enough of it on a regular basis and that’s where I get in trouble. It’s just. so. good.
I had a love hate relationship with Slim-A-Bear Fudge Pops. I ate one every day for months.
When we joined the co-op, and that item wasn’t available, I just stopped buying it. Ever since I don’t really have a craving for them.
Kashi crackers, on the other hand, now that’s a serious problem.
I usually end my binges with peanut butter with cookies and fryo inbetween. I love/hate them. You would think that since I have nut butters every day they wouldn’t seem so tempting for me, but for whatever reason they are.
I love big, healthy muffins, and I have some in my fridge, but I’m convinced they don’t satisfy any hunger and aren’t as good as a bowl of oatmeal, so I don’t eat them. I think it’s more of an oatmeal rut. I might have to have a muffin later.
Peanut butter is a really doozy for me!
The best solution seems to be to keep it out of your house. If you know it’s a binge trigger, probably best to donate it to a food bank or just toss it.
NUTELLA! I LOVE LOVE LOVE that stuff but cannot keep it in my house or I would eat the entire jar in one sitting!
I am the exact same way with cereal. I love it but it always turns into 3 or 4 bowls once I start! I had to make my roommate hide it in her room when she kept buying sugary ones.