AIBU - to not ruin my healthy eating

[AcrylicAfternoons7]

I've been healthy eating for about a month and lost a few pounds. Yesterday I went out for lunch and had a huge curry with naan bread and a poppadom followed by a huge chocolate sundae covered in whipped cream, brownies and a flake.

I knew I was going to fail, I couldn't resist. I felt awful like I'd ruined the good work I'd done for the past work. So much so that when I got home I went and made myself sick as much of it up as I could.

It's not something I do. But AIBU to think a one of - say once a month after a lapse of willpower is okay? I felt like I'd got myself back on track afterwards.

One meal did not undo all your good work. You need to get rid of this all-or-nothing mentality.

Vomiting up your food isn’t getting back on track, it’s bulimia. One blow out isn’t going to derail your efforts, just accept it happened and move on. A weight loss plan is much more sustainable if you have whatever you want occasionally.

I would encourage you to get rid of this mental attitude. It isn't healthy and is called bulimia.

Don’t get into that mentality, it’s not sustainable. Make the 19th of the month your cheat day!

In my experience you must have a cheat day. Once a month is very good, mine is once a week!

We're all allowed to have meals that we enjoy. What's not healthy is to make yourself sick.

I've lost over 5st, I've been on meals out/weddings/holidays. We've gone out for spontaneous ice cream. There's eating healthy and there's still allowing yourself to enjoy it.

I admit I’ve done this a few times when I was pregnant and had a super gag reflex but it’s bad because now whenever you want to overeat you can say “we’ll just this once I’ll puke it up” and before you know it you’re bulimic.

One meal won't hurt your progress.

But there's dangers with making yourself sick. Please don't do that, even though I know it's tempting. Don't ever make yourself sick as it could lead to a habit of Bullemia which is very distressing to your physical and mental health.

If you need to talk about it, talk to somone close. Or feel free to message me on here.

I saw online a personal trainer talking about how he will occasionally eat things that he didn’t mean to but then he won’t let it become a day of day of eating rubbish or a week. He was saying that’s why people often give up because they see it as a relapse rather than a temporary lapse.

This is a very dangerous slippery slope to an eating disorder. If you’re eating well most of the time, you don’t need to have a “cheat” day. Just have a day where you eat what you want.

My healthy eating over the past month has been all good - not even a diet. Just all healthy food and not restricting just not eating any crap. It's worked.

I know I'm fa bit all-or-nothing. It's not something I do - the thought popped into my head out of nowhere because I was so disappointed in eating so much crap. I felt so relieved afterwards that I was the same as I was before I went to lunch.

You have disordered thinking around food. Vomiting deliberately after meals is bulimia. You need to see your GP.

Try not to feel guilty on your cheat days, otherwise there’s no point in having one! You have to eat a large amount of food to gain 1lb, I think it’s 3500 calories? That definitely wouldn’t have been in what you ate. Don’t sweat it, everything in moderation.

Eating food isn't failing. One meal that isn't ideal won't ruin anything.
You need to get help for your attitude towards food. Binging and purging is a dangerous cycle to get into.

Please see your doctor about this. Your attitude towards food is really not healthy and from personal experience I know this only leads to serious health issues and misery. Please seek some help before it becomes a bigger problem.

You haven’t undone anything by eating that meal - you still achieved weeks of eating healthily, that can’t be taken away from you. But by depriving yourself completely and thinking you’re never allowed to eat what you like, you’re setting yourself up to fail and when you do it’s going to hit you really hard, as you’ve seen.

Also, throwing up may have seemed like the easiest way to get rid of those extra calories you’ve eaten, but in reality your body would have already taken the majority of the calories/fat/carbs if that makes sense? Please don’t fall down that slippery slope, you can lose weight in a healthy way.

You can cause yourself physical harm trying to make yourself sick. You really need to move away from the all or nothing or you risk an eating disorder.

I agree with @petty. by the time you are sick your body has taken the majority of calories anyway so it's pointless. don't do it again xx

Think of losing weight as being lie, for example, walking from Lands End to John'o'Groats. You can keep at it steadily day after day, or you can have a day off in the middle and not do any walking, and then get going again the next day. It really doesn't matter.

You weren't undoing your good work, you were having a well deserved rest day.

You want us to tell you that it's ok to sabotage yourself.
I have news: it's not.
Oh, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

But vomiting doesn't make you the same as before you had lunch. Your body will have started to digest and absorb nutrients from the food. I think it's disordered thinking that you think vomiting counteracts the meal. Please don't do this again. An unhealthy treat now and again won't hurt you, but deliberately vomiting will.

The problem with making yourself sick is that it’s addictive. Once you have found the ‘magic solution’ it’s hard to let go of it and go back to healthy eating that requires willpower, saying no to things and, sometimes, living with the fact that you may have eaten something that wasn’t ‘on plan’. The latter is the hardest because you suddenly know there is a ‘solution’.

So, go to your GP now. You have made yourself sick for the express purpose of maintaining weight loss. A very slippery slope. If you are not very mindful, once a month (you are already creating a pattern) will become twice, then one a week and then who knows. In the end it will barely even be about weight. You will hate it, hate the smell, the hiding, the shame - you will want it all to go away and not know how. I know I’m being dramatic but if I can shock one person into not doing this, then good.

I say this from experience. It’s so easy to think you’re in control of it. And it feels so easy in the beginning - the damage it does to your heart, your electrolyte balance (google this) and your mind is almost invisible in the early days. Just FYI the moment I realised I wasn’t in control was in an ambulance! Luckily this is now years ago for me but sometimes, even now, my mind whispers that ‘I could just...’ and I have to have a talk with myself. So nip this in the bud NOW - you do not want it following you around for the rest of your life.

What the PPs have said about most of the calories already being absorbed is true. Many bulimia sufferers are overweight. This is why. Vomiting on purpose after eating is not the answer and it definitely isn't healthy. One meal as you describe will not undo your months of healthy eating.

It’s really not ok. It’s a slippery slope to full blown bulimia from where you are at the moment and that will negate all the healthy eating you’re doing in terms of benefits to your body.

But also it’s setting you up to fail at maintaining which is the important bit. Pretty much all of us know how to lose weight, it’s the keeping it off that’s the hard bit and you’ll have to find a way long term to do this that can facilitate days like that as they are just life and there will always be something. You need to learn how to have these days, draw a line under it and move on, not letting one meal that didn’t go to the ideal you have in your head sabotage yourself.

An all or nothing mentality sabotages weight loss and maintenance in the long wrong. Personally my weight break through has come after ditching diet clubs which were causing me a good food/bad food mentality and I was with on plan or off plan. Inevitably I could sustain it for a few months but then would blow it and things went downhill from there

Now i’ve Fixed my mind set this time round it’s worked brilliantly and i’m very confident I can keep the weight off (I’ve lost a lot). I agree with everyone who says see your GP now, don’t let this escalate any further.

I am slim. I don’t ‘do healthy eating’.
I simply

1. Monitor my portion size
2. If I want to feel ‘full’ I stuff myself with porridge, if it’s the morning. Veg or brown rice (brown not white) or sweet potato during the day/evening. These will never make you fat.

1. Things like cake, crisps, biscuits, take away etc. Basically I will have one or two treats a day. A portion of trifle, a packet of crisps, a McDonald’s. You will never get fat this way.

I see people on diets who crave biscuits then end up eating a whole packet. If you ‘ban’ things you become obsessed with them. I know I can have McDonald’s or fish and chips whenever I want, so I don’t crave it. I have cake at work when it’s a birthday. I am slim. I am never hungry. (I’m not ‘naturally slim’).

Your relationship with food is not healthy.