I love how I feel when I’m doing intermittent fasting+keto, so why doesn’t it last?

quote:

---

Am I missing some key element besides sheer discipline and will?

---

Some people will tell you you need to see a therapist, but no that's what you are missing.

And thats not necessarily a bad thing. You just have to decide if you value the short term good feeling of "bad" food or the long term feeling of eating keto.

For me, the best way to describe the feeling was similar to an addiction. My body would crave sugar/carbs. Took about a year to break those cravings.

quote:

---

Is there a way to learn moderation? Or is it always a slippery slope that leads to the abyss?

---

Yeah, I'm going to eat this ice cream today and then not eat it again for a while.

quote:

---

I would like to adopt a strict on the weekday/loose on the weekends type of deal,

---

Everyone says this, and I certainly eat more junk on the weekend, but there's only 7 days in a week and Friday night spills into that weekend attitude. At that point you're eating nearly 25% of your meals off of your plan, and that's going to greatly inhibit your progress.

Once your body gets carbs and sugar, then it starts carving more. Like a junkie

quote:

---

Everyone says this, and I certainly eat more junk on the weekend, but there's only 7 days in a week and Friday night spills into that weekend attitude. At that point you're eating nearly 25% of your meals off of your plan, and that's going to greatly inhibit your progress.

---

I deal with this by keeping only 100% healthy foods in my house and 0 snacks and/or alcohol. I only get that crap when I go out to dinner or a bar with friends. This seriously limits me even if I happen to get that weekday craving.

As for Friday being included, if I ever do that then it's either Saturday or Sunday that gets stripped from the "weekend".

quote:

---

Once your body gets carbs and sugar, then it starts carving more. Like a junkie

---

The insulin addiction cycle is a bitch. You just have to break it.

I broke down this weekend due to an event. I felt like such shite all week that I'm done. Eating carbs and drinking beer just isn't worth the joint pain, inflammation, foggy brain, etc.

quote:

---

For me, the best way to describe the feeling was similar to an addiction. My body would crave sugar/carbs. Took about a year to break those cravings.

---

Same here. And like any addiction it is always dangerous to get to close to it again or think this one time won’t hurt me.

You and I are definitely on the same path. I’ve been Low carb for over a decade, and One meal a day for two years. I like to say I do intermittent gluttony. I think that I coped with food for 20 years, and that long reinforced behavior is my default. it’s more of a testament of how strong the pull is for gluttony than the weakness of a diet is.

I think that abstaining has given me a tool to be successful. This is a tool that I’ve developed instead of moderation. On the other hand I feel like I have developed disorders with eating, and I associate eating any carbs with a cheat meal, and cannot moderate. I feel like it would be very beneficial to me to learn how to moderate, but so many forces are against making that habit.

Mingo has a great point about being mindful of what you like about yourself being glutinous and the part of you being structured, and which one brings you to your goals. I found what is inhibiting my goals should equal repulsion, but also realized parts of myself that are valued while being hedonistic. Motivation is simple, behavior is complex.

Atomic habits could help you.

This was a post by StringedInstruments in a thread I found while searching for this kind of thing. I thought it was an interesting perspective and something I totally relate to.

quote:

---

For me, the binge/starve cycle was a symptom of stress triggers in my life. We form neural pathways to respond to stress. There's a good acronym that helps explain this: BLAST: boredom; loneliness; anger; stress; tired. Research has shown that any addiction has a connection to one of these triggers that aggravates emotional negativity. As most people live on a routine, these triggers occur around the same time leading to a craving (not necessarily just food) to avoid them.

For example, every day around 4pm-7pm, I am prone to ruin my healthy eating. Perfect eating all day until the late afternoon, early evening. It took me forever to understand why. Why, despite being determined to be consistently healthy, would I make the same bad choices with food at the exact same time every day? For years?

Well, I would be tired from working all day at a job that doesn't really challenge me and then have the stress of doing the evening routine (dinner, dishes, bed time) with my kids. I formed neural pathways that created a pattern of binge eating sweets around this time to avoid facing the realities in my life.

I bring all this up because "sustainable" is an interesting topic to me right now. So many people yo-yo with their diet. They binge/starve/diet/overeat over and over again never adopting a true lifestyle change that positively impacts who they are. The diet is only part of the equation and outside of caloric deficit for weight loss and protein intake for muscle development, it doesn't matter.

Just something to think about going forward.

---