How To Develop A Food Plan You Can Live With

I have binge eating disorder. I cannot and will not do the whole dieting thing. Diets never have and never will work for me. When I finally accepted that I couldn’t manage food on my own, I became much happier and less anxious. My alternative to dieting is a food plan. I have one that I’m comfortable with and that I can live (and tweak when needed) with for the rest of my life.

Food Plan vs Diet

A food plan is different from a diet in one very important way:

A diet is restrictive, while a food plan is inclusive.

It’s imperative to focus on what you can eat instead of what you cannot eat.

In a way, coming up with a food plan is enjoyable. I may be the only one who thinks that…but wouldn’t you agree that thinking about what you can eat is better than thinking about what you can’t eat?

Everyone is different (obviously).

Some people gain weight and are able to diet successfully.

I’m gonna tell you right now, I am NOT one of those people.

I’ve tried diets off and on since I was 16 and nothing has worked to keep the weight off. I have tried and failed over and over again.

What a slam to the ego. Failure, in general, is hard, but when you fail at your health over and over again, well…it really, really sucks.

How I Came Up With My Food Plan

My food plan is simple, in theory.

No binge foods
No snacks
Don’t overeat (this one is the hardest for me right now)
No foods with added sugar
No white (bleached/enriched) flour

Some days I make it through the day “clean”, some days I don’t.

I’m not perfect and I never claim to be. I am human, just like you.

After I made a list of foods that I can “normally”, another list of foods I’m unsure if I can eat right now, and yet another list of foods that I know for sure I cannot control, the majority of my food plan was done because:

I know I can’t snack because that would have me thinking about food constantly.
I can’t eat sugar without it causing a binge.
I need to listen to my body’s signals that I’ve had enough to eat, which covers the not overeating part.

White Flour & Sugar

I’m not going to claim that eliminating white flour and sugar from my diet was easy- that would be insane.

But, what I will say is this:

Sugar is a drug. It acts on the brain the same as drugs and alcohol.
For a lot of people, sugar is not a problem. They can eat it, love it, and stop when they have had enough.
White flour causes a sugar craving.
Sugar cravings can decrease and sometimes even disappear after cutting all white flour and anything with added sugar out of your diet.

If you are like me, or any other kind of addict (yes, food addiction is real), you have no control over how much you eat. You feel a compulsion to keep eating and can’t stop yourself.

You might keep eating because:

You’ve convinced yourself that you’re still hungry
The food tastes too good
The food makes you feel good
You don’t want to face your feelings
You want to numb out
You don’t want to waste food and feel like you should eat it all

The 3 Food Categories

You may have heard of the traffic light system for eating. What I’m talking about in this section is not the same system.

Your red, yellow, and green food categories will be yours and yours alone.

No one can tell you which food goes into which category. These are personal and you don’t have to share your food categorization with anyone.

Red Foods

Red foods are the foods you know cause you problems. Your binge foods go in this category.

Red foods can also be foods that you can eat normally, but then later cause a craving for one (or more) of your binge foods.

You won’t necessarily know that about your food right away, but you’ll quickly learn that when you eat a certain food, you’ll soon get a craving for another food.

Yellow Foods

Yellow foods are ones that you’re not quite sure about yet. They may or may not cause a binge, or they could turn into food you can’t handle later on.

Time will tell, and if it does become a problem food for you, you can add it to your red foods list.

Green Foods

Green foods are the ones that you have no problem with whatsoever.

For me, pretty much every vegetable under the sun goes into this category, and I still rarely eat them. (I may be a bit of a picky eater…)

Form Your Own Personal Food Plan

Guess what?

The time to create your personal food plan is now.

Sign up to get your food trigger journal at the end of this post and start listing your green, yellow, and red foods. The journal walks you through it.

No one can tell you what you should or shouldn’t have in your food plan. It’s based on what you can and cannot eat normally.

Once you have all of the foods you can think of listed, you can get an idea of where you are with your food.

Related: Why Do You Overeat?

A Little Diet Rant

As I said before, diets don’t work for me.

I don’t even talk about my own weight loss to people outside of my family and my compulsive overeater’s support group.

People can talk until they’re blue in the face about the latest diet trend and how it worked like a miracle for them.

Well, that’s nice, cuz it ain’t gonna work for me!

If diets don’t work for you, it’s ok. You’re not alone.

You don’t need a diet to lose weight. Even if you don’t need to lose weight but you know you have a problem with food/overeating/binging, a food plan can help you big time!

Final Thoughts

A food plan is personal, your own, and doesn’t have to be the same, nor even similar, to anyone else’s plan.

You don’t have to share it with anyone, and you don’t have to beat yourself up about your overeating and/or food addiction.

The hardest part of developing a food plan is getting started, of course. Once you’ve started, you’ll learn what works for you along the way.

If you have a setback, hey-you’re human, right? Try not to beat yourself up about it- that’s what diets are for.

Now sign up for the meal plan printable below and start developing your food plan.

I’ll be cheering you on the whole way. 🙂