I had an "aha!" moment this week. I actually stopped myself in the middle of a binge before it got out of hand.

I was alone in the house and bored, and I got hungry. I went into the kitchen and started grazing... then I realized I was eating too much and starting to binge. I was trying to talk myself out of eating more, but when I continued to eat, I started feeling guilty, and that made me want to just give up, give in, and keep eating until I was stuffed. I told myself that I could "just start over tomorrow" after I was finished eating everything in the house.

For some reason, I paused, and thought "It is only Jan 3, I haven't tried very hard, and I can't just keep doing this to myself over and over. This stops now."

At that point I decided to get on SparkPeople and entered what I had eaten in my food tracker to asses the damage. I really hadn't eaten all that much. If later i ate a small dinner, I would still be within my calorie goal range. By dinner time, I wasn't even hungry and I had a mug of warm milk and at the end of the day, I was actually a little under my calorie goal.

So I learned a few things:

1. If I am hungry, eat a small meal. Sit down and eat, don't eat at the fridge, and don't feel guilty.

2. If I am alone, hungry and bored...that is my "Danger Zone" and I am likely to binge. Keep busy and don't get too hungry.

3. It's never too late to pause and take inventory during a binge.

4. If I'm not hungry at dinnertime, it's OK to skip dinner.

So I turned a potential binge around! Wow! I am proud of myself!