Another week without bread and biscuits! It's getting easier now. I've found that when I get a craving for easy carbohydrates and begin to move towards the pantry I just stop for a minute - not forever. And then I reevaluate and stop for another minute. And then for another, and so on, until the craving disappears. I promise myself that I'll reevaluate my stance later instead of a straightforward denial, thus leaving open the "possibility" of a binge, and this seems to give me a psychological edge. Of course I only do this for acute cravings - I outright prohibit regular consumption of junk food.
It's still difficult, especially when a craving could be temporarily relieved if I retrieve a few crumpets from the pantry, bung 'em in the toaster and then slap margarine on top, followed by a lashing of vegemite topped with a cheese slice (insert here a visual image of Homer Simpson's food-gargle).
I have closely observed when I binge and think it's less to do with general stress and more likely associated with the feeling of not being in control of a situation. My subconscious thinking might be "If I am not in control of my immediate circumstances then I also have no control over my cravings", and this is temporarily relieved by the act immediate gratification of satisfying a craving.
Here's a thought: perhaps the cravings are manufactured by my subconscious specifically as a way to provide temporary relief from the feeling of not being in control!
So one thing I've been trying is to short-circuit these occasional feelings of lack of control by taking some sort of mitigating action, either practical or symbolic. It seems to work.
Which may explain why I found it so easy to loose the initial 50 kilos: I'd associated my obesity with major health and social problems, and thus by losing that weight I was solving or minimising those problems. So, during my initial weight-loss I was in control of all those immediate problems, and this then fueled a positive cycle of improvement. But now that I'm relatively healthy I have a new set of immediate problems no longer masked by the problems caused by my weight issues, and not fixable by further weight-loss. These new problems require other solutions for which I need to develop other types of habits.