Moderation vs Cold Turkey

[ChickenStash]

I really wish I could make either cold turkey or moderation work but I haven't been particularly successful. My issues are with food so outright quitting won't work (at least not for long). Moderation means constantly having to make "healthy choices" regarding ingredients, portion sizes, etc. which can be exhausting but it's the only way it works. I've made it work in the past with pretty good results but eventually fell away. Trying to get back to whatever state of mind allowed me to do it then hasn't been successful lately.

See I solve this.by taking the day to day decision making out of selecting meals. I meal plan and bulk cook for the week. I have very little option about what I have available to eat, so I just eat that.

It's always delicious, high quality, well cooked food, but there's never a question of "hmm, should I have fish and vegetables tonight or burritos?"

The meals are all made, all pre-portioned, and it's the laziest thing in the world to just pop them in the microwave and be fed with good, nutritious food when I need it.

This make.eating well the laziest, and easiest option possible. If I want something that doesn't match my nutrition goals, I have to go out of my way to cook it or buy it, which is so much more work than just popping a container into the microwave.

I also do the meal-prepping routine and actually have things already in the fridge and freezer waiting to go for tonight - heat and serve, basically. But, when I finally log off from work for the evening and want dinner I'm still going to have a hell of a time not doing takeout or delivery instead.

I do the same meal-prepping for breakfast and lunch and tend to be more successful there but by the time dinner rolls around my overall attitude is "Fk this, I want to order a pizza."

[poxpower]

I realized I will never be a "one slice of cake person"

If there's a piece missing from a cake, then what remains is one slice.
That's a fact.

[Metalcat]

I really wish I could make either cold turkey or moderation work but I haven't been particularly successful. My issues are with food so outright quitting won't work (at least not for long). Moderation means constantly having to make "healthy choices" regarding ingredients, portion sizes, etc. which can be exhausting but it's the only way it works. I've made it work in the past with pretty good results but eventually fell away. Trying to get back to whatever state of mind allowed me to do it then hasn't been successful lately.

See I solve this.by taking the day to day decision making out of selecting meals. I meal plan and bulk cook for the week. I have very little option about what I have available to eat, so I just eat that.

It's always delicious, high quality, well cooked food, but there's never a question of "hmm, should I have fish and vegetables tonight or burritos?"

The meals are all made, all pre-portioned, and it's the laziest thing in the world to just pop them in the microwave and be fed with good, nutritious food when I need it.

This make.eating well the laziest, and easiest option possible. If I want something that doesn't match my nutrition goals, I have to go out of my way to cook it or buy it, which is so much more work than just popping a container into the microwave.

This is a great suggestion that has worked for me too for many years.  Couple it with not keeping any snacks in your home so you don't have alternatives to mindlessly munch on and you end up living a very healthy life just by default.

The problem with this approach is that for many binge eaters just having any yummy food, even healthy food,  around in excess can be a problem. The "OMG that was so good I want more more more!" and proceed to eat ...more more more (the Billy Idol diet ;-)). Lots of failed binge eaters on things like Nutrisystem where they have pre-package frozen foods set-up with easy access. So probably harder then just having crappy food around that's easy to grab but making healthy fresh food daily (and not having easy access to other foods or treats) often helps with binge eaters.

ETA: I generally make fresh food everyday and often shop everyday or couple of days. Mostly vegan (and lots of salads and smoothies) and keep other foods I'm not fond of around for emergencies. Works for me but kind of a pita.

Yes, if someone has a binge eating addiction, minor lifestyle interventions won't help, they need professional intervention.

[GuitarStv]

I really wish I could make either cold turkey or moderation work but I haven't been particularly successful. My issues are with food so outright quitting won't work (at least not for long). Moderation means constantly having to make "healthy choices" regarding ingredients, portion sizes, etc. which can be exhausting but it's the only way it works. I've made it work in the past with pretty good results but eventually fell away. Trying to get back to whatever state of mind allowed me to do it then hasn't been successful lately.

See I solve this.by taking the day to day decision making out of selecting meals. I meal plan and bulk cook for the week. I have very little option about what I have available to eat, so I just eat that.

It's always delicious, high quality, well cooked food, but there's never a question of "hmm, should I have fish and vegetables tonight or burritos?"

The meals are all made, all pre-portioned, and it's the laziest thing in the world to just pop them in the microwave and be fed with good, nutritious food when I need it.

This make.eating well the laziest, and easiest option possible. If I want something that doesn't match my nutrition goals, I have to go out of my way to cook it or buy it, which is so much more work than just popping a container into the microwave.

This is a great suggestion that has worked for me too for many years.  Couple it with not keeping any snacks in your home so you don't have alternatives to mindlessly munch on and you end up living a very healthy life just by default.

The problem with this approach is that for many binge eaters just having any yummy food, even healthy food,  around in excess can be a problem. The "OMG that was so good I want more more more!" and proceed to eat ...more more more (the Billy Idol diet ;-)). Lots of failed binge eaters on things like Nutrisystem where they have pre-package frozen foods set-up with easy access. So probably harder then just having crappy food around that's easy to grab but making healthy fresh food daily (and not having easy access to other foods or treats) often helps with binge eaters.

ETA: I generally make fresh food everyday and often shop everyday or couple of days. Mostly vegan (and lots of salads and smoothies) and keep other foods I'm not fond of around for emergencies. Works for me but kind of a pita.

Yes, if someone has a binge eating addiction, minor lifestyle interventions won't help, they need professional intervention.

Yesterday I did eat about three pounds of raw carrots over an hour or so while working on stuff.  There's a helpful physical limiter to fiber.

[AlanStache]

...
Yesterday I did eat about three pounds of raw carrots over an hour or so while working on stuff.  There's a helpful physical limiter to fiber.

Yep costco sized bags of carrots are a good thing.  Dont even bother weighing them for calorie tracking. 

[GuitarStv]

I've binged on healthy food too occasionally it's harder to eat 2 pounds of Brussels sprouts at once - and live to tell about it!

You'll not only live . . . you'll go much faster on your bike thanks to the added jet propulsion.  And fewer people will try to hang in your slipstream.  :P

[poxpower]

Yep costco sized bags of carrots are a good thing.  Dont even bother weighing them for calorie tracking.

Ate a 5 pound bag once... yeah the resulting bathroom trip is not something non industrial plumbing is designed to handle on a routine basis.
I'll plow through any fruit too, like 10 apples, no problem. Don't eat too many bananas btw you get potassium poisoning and throw up. Don't ask how I know this.

Tried this once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YtOO7ysJts&t=305s
Tasted freezer burn in the back of my mouth for a week after eating a gallon of it. I gotta say though: It's genius level science right there.

I'll say one thing positive for video games: It gets so addictive you just go 20 hours without sleeping and eating. Makes me understand why so many twitch streamers are sickly skinny fat pale kids with chronic health problems.

IIRC the OP FIREd pretty young, is single and most of his friends are working so wonder he might be bored a bit too.

Trying harder this year... https://www.thepoxbox.com/posts/2023-resolutions

[AlanStache]

Dont know the OPs level of regular socialization but I am in the process of selling my house in boring-ass-nothing-around-suburbia to move to a much more walkable socially active area.  Am nearing FI and RE and dont want to spend the RE time with nothing to do but maintain a yard, I know will do much better if there are things to do directly out my front door.  Or at least I need to remove the barrier of everything being a 10->20->40 minute drive away.  In some ways I think it would be really cool to have a modest home on some wooded property somewhat out in the middle of nowhere but I know it would not be good for me to be isolated. 

I am trying to set up my life so the things I want to be doing are lower friction and easy to do.  Just a larger scale of the old "if you dont want to be snacking on cookies all day dont have them readily accessible in the pantry".

My newish journal: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/should-i-make-a-change-or-why-the-f-did-you-not-do-that-earlier/

[GuitarStv]

Don't eat too many bananas btw you get potassium poisoning and throw up. Don't ask how I know this.

A single banana has about 422 mg of potassium.  RDA of potassium for an adult is 4700 mg . . . so you could eat more than 10 bananas in a day and still not be getting enough potassium.  Medical literature suggests that you can be at risk of developing hyperkalemia if you consume 18 grams of potassium at a time . . . but that would be equivalent to around 42 bananas.  Not sure you could even fit that many in your belly.

I suspect that something other than potassium was causing your stomach upset when eating the bananas.

[wenchsenior]

I really wish I could make either cold turkey or moderation work but I haven't been particularly successful. My issues are with food so outright quitting won't work (at least not for long). Moderation means constantly having to make "healthy choices" regarding ingredients, portion sizes, etc. which can be exhausting but it's the only way it works. I've made it work in the past with pretty good results but eventually fell away. Trying to get back to whatever state of mind allowed me to do it then hasn't been successful lately.

See I solve this.by taking the day to day decision making out of selecting meals. I meal plan and bulk cook for the week. I have very little option about what I have available to eat, so I just eat that.

It's always delicious, high quality, well cooked food, but there's never a question of "hmm, should I have fish and vegetables tonight or burritos?"

The meals are all made, all pre-portioned, and it's the laziest thing in the world to just pop them in the microwave and be fed with good, nutritious food when I need it.

This make.eating well the laziest, and easiest option possible. If I want something that doesn't match my nutrition goals, I have to go out of my way to cook it or buy it, which is so much more work than just popping a container into the microwave.

This is a great suggestion that has worked for me too for many years.  Couple it with not keeping any snacks in your home so you don't have alternatives to mindlessly munch on and you end up living a very healthy life just by default.

I don't bulk cook, but I do variant of this in that I mostly eat by rote, off a preselected menu of foods. I leave a little bit of wiggle room to try occasional new recipes/eating out/parties, etc. But mostly it's habit.

Habits are the crucial element of sticking to any long term goal. Not willpower. If I relied on willpower when it comes to eating or anything else, I'd be screwed.

[poxpower]

but that would be equivalent to around 42 bananas.

How many bananas is 2-3 pounds of dried banana chips :O
lol
Maybe you can't get sick from eating 40 in a day but what about 40 in 15 minutes.

[GuitarStv]

but that would be equivalent to around 42 bananas.

How many bananas is 2-3 pounds of dried banana chips :O
lol
Maybe you can't get sick from eating 40 in a day but what about 40 in 15 minutes.

Hmm.  Interesting question.

It takes 40 - 120 minutes for the stomach to empty into the small intestine (https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-long-does-it-take-to-digest-food/).

Assume the middle point as an average for this experiment we end up with about 80 minutes to clear.  You're giving us 15 minutes of time to eat.  So, assuming linear stomach emptying time, we would be able to empty about 0.1875% of our stomach in this time.

The human stomach has a maximum volume of between 2-4 liters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomach#:~:text=Because%20it%20is%20a%20distensible,between%202%20and%204%20litres.).  Again, we'll take the midpoint as an average - 3000 cm^3.

We add 562.5 cm^3 to the 3000 to account for the 15 minutes of digestion time that we've got to come up with the maximum volume of banana that can physically be eaten during the experiment:

3562.5 cm^3



A banana has a volume of approximately 156.1 cm^3 (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Estimation-of-ellipsoid-volume-of-banana-fruit-by-weight-The-R-2-was-obtained-096-so-by_fig1_236484411#:~:text=The%20average%20ellipsoid%20volume%20was%20calculated%20as%20156.1%20cm%203%20.).

40 bananas is therefore about 6,244 cm^3.  So you definitely couldn't eat 40 bananas in a sitting - just not physically possible.  You could probably get about 22 down - still well below the number necessary to hyperkalemia.

I suspect that a general feeling of unease would arise doing this - but this would be from filling your stomach to its maximum levels though, not specifically from the bananas themselves.



Banana chips might be a different matter though.

2 - 3 lbs in non-stupid units is 907 - 1360 g.

100g of banana chips contains 536mg of potassium (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168849/nutrients), so you end up consuming between 4, 824 and 7,289 mg of potassium.  Even doubling that up to 6 lbs of banana chips will leave you below the 18g of potassium that would cause hyperkalemia . . . and I think you would run into the same volume problems that raw bananas cause before hitting that mark (especially because banana chips are dry and would require the consumption of some sort of liquid as well).


So you should be good in both cases.

[RWD]

I'll say one thing positive for video games: It gets so addictive you just go 20 hours without sleeping and eating. Makes me understand why so many twitch streamers are sickly skinny fat pale kids with chronic health problems.

The amount of generalization here is off the charts... I've played a lot of video games (certainly thousands of hours) of all types and have never had it seriously interfere with normal life.

[AlanStache]

Do it!! Well I guess I should read your journal first before saying that but I did that shortly after I FIREd (mountain ski town/4 seasons resort) and it worked out well for me. Did need to move back to Suburbian Hellifornia for family reasons after awhile but it was a great choice as a younger single childless early retiree. I do believe the OP is contemplating some thing like moving to a new (better) place so that's really good advice. Might infuse his life with more RL adventures.

Dont let reading the journal get in the way of life afk.

Signed paper work today on an agreed upon sale price - I will be homeless, in the two comma club and living with my parent in a month!

[poxpower]

So you should be good in both cases.

I'm wondering if your body will make you throw up before you reach fatal levels but then I guess that's also technically not potassium poisoning.

[partgypsy]

"Addictive things eat time and motivation" great quote Spartana!

[DrinkCoffeeStackMoney]

Great topic and lots of relatable comments. I'm very much an all or nothing person. Even growing up my Dad would say I had a "one track mind" because I'd take an interest in something and that'd be all I wanted to do or talk about until the next thing came along. Regardless of what behavior I'm trying to modify the "cold turkey" method has always given me the best success. I once lost 130 pounds in a year by just completely cutting out added/processed sugar, bread, and soda while doing mild exercise. Most recently I've given up social media (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) because it became such a time suck and I realized I couldn't just cut back. I think the first day without the apps I picked up my phone 40 times before remembering the apps were no longer there. I estimate I was probably spending/wasting 15+ hours a week staring at my phone watching other people live their lives instead of living my own. Now, two weeks into no social media, I rarely think about it.

[ender]

I've been reading https://www.amazon.com/Dopamine-Nation-Finding-Balance-Indulgence/dp/152474672X recently and it talks about a lot of things like this.


I'd encourage anyone who is particularly interested in this topic to give it a read :)

[kite]

Cold turkey works for the things I’ve quit. 

Alcohol, Words with Friends & Facebook were deliberate.
I’m sure there are other things I’ve stopped doing, but they were more like habits I fell out of without realizing on the day that I quit how I’d never go back to it.

I can get so engrossed in work or reading or binge-watching that I can manage to sit still for hours. A puppy cured me of that as she needs to be taken outside, demands to be played with, etc.

As for “how to deal with people trying to draw you into bad habits” I have an excellent strategy: have a vomit or diarrhea story.  I can’t drink alcohol because it sets off a migraine that includes nausea. No body wants to hear it. My husband will have a different GI reaction to certain foods.  Again, nobody wants to hear it. A “thanks, but your plumbing won’t recover” kind of reply is usually enough.  If someone is rude enough to push it further, you can get into the rude details.  An aside, I’ve learned that vegan cheese will come flying out of me like I’m Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

[FrugalShrew]

As for “how to deal with people trying to draw you into bad habits” I have an excellent strategy: have a vomit or diarrhea story.  I can’t drink alcohol because it sets off a migraine that includes nausea. No body wants to hear it.

This is really crafty, @kite! What a great idea. Resisting social pressure around food is an art form.

[use2betrix]

With sweets/candy I can very much be an “all or nothing” kind of person. I usually have 5 cookies or 0. Fortunately I’m usually pretty good at the 0. My wife and I don’t keep junk food at the house aside from like 90 calorie halo top ice cream bars we have most nights (ok some nights two). If my wife ever makes cookies, I have her hide the chocolate chips/m&m’s, etc., or else I’ll get in the panty and snack on them.

I used to work with a lady who thought it would be so nice to constantly pack the office with candy. That’s fine and her own thing, but she always insisted on putting a huge bowl of candy immediately outside of my office door. I know how I am and asked her politely multiple times to please not leave them there. Finally, one day, I sat down and I ate the entire ***** bowl of candy. Easily many many thousands of calories worth. She came in, saw the empty bowl, saw my trash full of empty wrappers, and it never happened again : )

My mom owned a bakery/restaurant for 25ish years as I was growing up so my family got unlimited anything. Gourmet ice cream, home made cookies, jelly belly’s, ice cream shakes, raw cookie dough, yadda yadda. I was known for getting massive bowls of cookie dough that looked like a huge bowl of ice cream.

Nowadays we do really well by managing what is at home, cooking healthy meals, and being selective about where we go out to eat on weekends. Fortunately, I also burn around 15k calories/month through exercise. I’ll lift weights heavily 3x/wk and run around 20-25 miles/wk. That helps immensely.

I do still splurge impressively hard a few times a year in regards to ice cream. I have visited many a ice cream parlors, ordered the largest thing on the menu (in some instances, ordered things larger than what is on the menu), and amazed the employees by eating the whole thing. I have countless entertaining pictures of those endeavors.

I drink a bit more alcohol than I like (when we do old fashions or marg’s it can get a bit wild), but fortunately I get up at 5 a.m. to work out nearly every day, so that puts the brakes hard on the drinks. I can drink a bit and be ok to lift weights at 5 a.m., but more than a drink or two majorly impacts my early runs, so it helps me avoid.