Maybe next time you go out to eat ask for a take home box along with your order and put half your meal in it before eating. I find that even half a restaurant meal is more than sufficient to fill me up. Oh yes, I could write a novel on the dreaded cycle of restrict, binge, regret. Rewarding hard worked off pounds with the food that made me need to lose weight in the first place in quantities that would make a sumo wrestler blush. Sounds about right. Does it ever end? LOL I truly believe that I need to incorporate a little of the things I like into my eating, just in a different way so I don't go crazy on it when I decided I need a "break". I can't keep certain things in the house, because I don't have that kind of willpower yet, but I will allot for going to the store and getting a single serving of something from the "naughty" list once in a while. I will say that I have gotten a lot more picky about what I'm willing to spend the effort to obtain and the calories on. Devil's advocate though, unless you ate 17500 calories above your maintenance level you didn't gain 5 pounds of fat. More like a combo of water retention from sodium bomb foods and weight can fluctuate several pounds between morning and the end of the day with food in your digestive tract. It should level out soon enough when you've been back at it for few days to a week (anything with soy sauce will have my fingers swollen for up to a week) On the flip side, learn from how your body felt after eating and try to
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