x... instead of bingeing

Well, this sure didn't take off! Maybe because people end up including that info somewhere else?

But I'll post one, which I think I have somewhere else as well. After having some unintended cake at an event yesterday, I was tempted to extend the sugar-eating by going to check the discount shelves at a supermarket. Hershey's Kisses were on sale, and I even picked up the bag. But I also saw some high quality apple cider vinegar which was only 50c more than the candy, so I dropped the bag, picked up the vinegar, and thought about the dressings I could learn to make while I went to the register. I also thought about how if I really want to reduce or end this habit, I need to be willing to say no sometimes when I really want to eat. Thankfully I was on my way to an outdoor concert where I knew I would probably be dancing and would feel physically better not eating anything more before I went.

Binge averted.

I think this is a great idea. I tried to get something like this going years ago. I know it's best if it is something that happened TODAY, not suggestions in general. (I actually called it What did you do to avoid binge or random eating TODAY?) People tend to talk about activities in general and in theory, but habit theory says it's recording and admiring ourselves for the recent behavior that helps seal new habits.

It might be just coming to write here! You'll see another thread that says "posting instead of bingeing." But here, we can report anything we do to avoid or stop the binge.

I don't have anything from today, but will say that yesterday, I reminded myself how bad I'd feel if I bought a huge bag of popcorn and ate it all, even though it's so easy to do that, since the popcorn collapses so easily. I did buy a smaller bags and ate a couple of single-bag servings, then threw the rest away. This was before a dance class; afterwards, the urge was over. It might have been better not to get the food at all, but I want to acknowledge that I didn't let it get out of hand. No matter what activity I do instead, it's always preceded by thoughts that talk me out of the binge.

I just saw the post on this team about posting instead of bingeing, and thought it would be a good idea, when tempted to binge, to do something else as an automatic reaction, but not sure what it might be. I thought maybe it would be good to come to this thread and track what I did instead of bingeing. Or if I did binge, post about what I could have done to stop it. A sort of journal I suppose - recording binges and avoided binges.