How often do you allow yourself to eat treats, such as cookies, muffins, poptarts, candies, ect.? Lately I've been letting myself have about one treat type food a day; today I ate a serving of vanilla wafer cookies. Will one treat per day be detrimental to my health? Should I cut back? I feel guilty about it, but little things like one poptart, a handfull of mike and ikes..they just keep slipping what used to the the iron border!! Where'd my willpower go? lol.

lovenlight,

linz

I have treats a few times a week. Your post made me realize it's time to make more of those yummy blueberry brownies. @[email protected]; yum

I allow myself to have a treat almost every day. I have found that if I let myself eat a mini twix bar, get a coffee beverage from panera or eat a cookie, I am less likely to binge on stuff. Usually I binge after a long period of denying myself the "forbidden" foods. Something about knowing that they are forbidden makes me more likely to consume mass quanities of them. So when I eat a little bit each day, it seems to make me happy. However all bets are off when I am under extreme stress.

yummy blue berry brownies? they sound good. I eat treats almost everyday, especially if homemade. Once you start "treating "yourself its tough to stop. But if you make good choices - whats the harm?

Once a day at least. LIke kraftykraft said, if I deny myself treats, I'll binge later on in the day.



Everything is okay in moderation. Isn't that what Krista always says?

I have to have treats every single day!!! Yesterday was 1/4 tub of cool whip ate like ice cream . The day before was one serving of rich ice cream (I crave frozen sweets recently). Today will probably be fruity popcicles I made in Dixie cups.

Lately I have been eating a pint of soy delicious (fruit sweetened) every single night. It's become a habit to sit up late and watch the old reruns of Felicity while I savor my treat.

I suppose I have two to three "treats" a day. However, I try to look at them as healthy. There was iron and isoflavones in my Soy Delicious this evening. The chocolate covered cherries *do* contain cherries.. That's a fruit serving, not a treat!

Come on, enjoy food! Eat those treats! I eat treats everyday. Sometimes I'll even grab a handful of choc chips (vegan of course) to satisfy a craving. Charity, I am with you on the Soy Delicious, it is organic and I actually checked the nutritional values on it, not too bad for something so good! Although, maybe the crushed up cookies in it didn't help my girlish figure ( joking...I eat food to enjoy it!) .

Who wants a girlish figure anyway? The voluptuous woman is attractive.

Don't pop-tarts contain gelatin? At least they do in the UK. I eat chocolate and other treats almost daily. 810 calories worth of chooclate is a five minute snack to me! I love chocolate, and letely, I've been loving ice cream, even though i usually hate it, due to sensitive teeth. (Hot weather)

making healthy food choices is an excellent way to care for yourself physically and emotionally! along with exercise and an active mind! but caring for yourself also means doing nice things for yourself that are indulgent, sometimes, too!



it is one thing to eat "unhealthy" things (and i put that in quotes because it's a relative thing) to be kind and self-indulgent, and it's another thing entirely to binge blindly or anesthetize oneself with food. as long as you are concious of your food, and savouring every drop, i cannot see the harm in enjoying it.



i don't do "treats" every day, but almost every time i find myself in the grocery store (2 or 3 times a week), i find a little something to indulge myself with. this week i bought myself mangos because they were beautifully ripe and ridiculously cheap for once. last week, it was a bag of BBQ flavour corn chips. and so on.



so be good to yourselves and eat mindfully and for pleasure.

"The chocolate covered cherries *do* contain cherries.. That's a fruit serving, not a treat! "



Heheh





Well if I go grocery shopping I sometimes get a box of 8 tofutti cuties and a bag of these organic yellow corn puffs (mmmmm). I tend to eat the cornpuffs right when I get home (hehe ... they are mostly air anyway ... maybe I'll get 2 bags next time ). the 8 tofutti cuties last 2 days (4 at a time .. LOL) but after that, I'm generally out of treats for the week.



I sometimes get a 2 Litre container of chocolate soy drink and it's so good it is possible I can drink that all in the same day (more like I have to stop myself from drinking it all if I want some for the next day) I bring my weekly groceries home. I consider that a treat-like thing



I had been buying these organic blue corn chips and salsa but havent had that in a while now.



I eat oranges, apples, chinese pears, bosch pears, nuts, toast and jam (etc) as treats all through the week.

poptarts have gelatin if they're the frosted ones. they also have all kinds of chemical flavors, preservatives and coloring...



no thank you



there are actually some all natural kinds in the HFS

The all natural ones taste like caca in my opinion The whole point of treats IS to have chemical flavours, preservatives and colouring. That's why they taste so good



Unfrosted poptarts are vegan (at least, most of them). Everyone thinks the fruit filling is the problem, but it's the frosting that is.



Rainbowmoon, sheesh, eat the treat. It's better to eat a small treat a day coating 200 calories, then to deny yourself for 3 days and eat 1000 calories worth in a binge.



Everything in Moderation!

once you pop you just can't stop.. I can't. I open a bag of chips and their gone. Cookies, gone. Gone gone.



So, nowadays when i go grocery shopping I buy the snack packs of cookies and chips. It's more expensive that way, and it's probably worse on the environment (all those little plastic bags, individually wrapped servings), but it's the only way for me to control how much I eat.... grrr... Anyways, yeah. I am a cookie-aholic.

I make nearly all of our "treats" from scratch...and so my lazyness stops us from eating too many.



I have found that I can eat a small piece of something now and let the rest sit in my cupboard for days or weeks. So, I just don't crave sweets like I once did. Thank goodness!

I eat treats every day. And I relish them. Vegan chocolate, soy ice cream and sorbet, really good fruits (strawberries and pineapple are amoung my favorite treats). I'm thinking of buying cantaloupe seeds and attempting to grow them so I can have fresh cantaloupe this summer. I eat smallish muffins when I have an opportunity...and occasionally I enjoy having something sinful for breakfast.



I'm with mushroom, my sil made cupcakes (icing free) for my birthday and while Madison and I each had one for breakfast last week, and another one each for an after dinner treat one day, the other two sat in my fridge for the rest of this past week...and I completely forgot they were there.



B

Oh, but if you're feeling guilty about it and obsessing over treats....hmmmmmmm. Don't keep them in the house.



I had to do this at first. I never kept treats in the house. But every day on my lunch at work I would go get a treat and enjoy it, knowing that it was my 'treat' for the day. I would go for a jog, and then stop at starbucks for a tiny bit of dark chocolate and a soy latte. But the treats weren't at home...so I didn't have to worry about doing anything terrible while I was in a precarious emtotional state (my husband had left just months before that).



It depends on how you're using food rainbowmoon. If you're abusing food, as in using something outside to make you feel better on the inside...then I suggest doing what I did at first. Out of site, out of mind. But if/when you're ready to really enjoy food--which as we discussed in eat to live, you clearly aren't right now--and have a healthy relationship with it, you'll have no problem keeping treats around and getting them out when you just want something tasty.



Baby steps.



B

"I eat treats every day. And I relish them."





EWWW! Putting relish on a chocolate chip cookie is not my idea of a treat ... hehehe ...

Bethanie- Its near to impossible for me to keep treats out of the house, only because I'm 17, I live at home, and my parents and little sister are all junk food junkies! I made my Mom hide the peanut butter from me.....I won't buy any more vegan treats, but sometimes there's bound to be things in the house.

Me and food, thats a can of worms that I don't even like to open. My parents have always used fod as a treat, as entertainment, as comfort, ect.ect., and so naturally, I followed in suit. All my life, since first grade, I was chubby and felt awful about it, and as a young child I was teased about being a pig. Then, as I got older, I always felt fat and gross and I was always out of shape.

For awhile I cleaned up my act, started working out and eating well, with occasional splurges. It seems in the last....month or two maybe, my relationship with food has grown nuerotic once again.

I don't abuse food to make me feel better like I used to, but there is still an issue. . Sometimes when I get yelled at by my Dad or nagged at, or I'm stressed or in some sort of conflict, my first instinct is to make myself feel better with food. That is something I have tried to both recognize and overcome. Right now I fear I'm eating too much all the time- my clothes reflect this, I'm gaining weight. Yet I'm eating a normal amount of food, in my opinion, enough to keep me full throughout the day. Another problem is that I try to starve myself for periods of time, and then when I give in, I eat too much. I don't know what to do. I'm trying to eat right, I'm trying to be thin and healthy and all those things, but I'm failing.

Today I've had two bowls of oatmeal ( I can't keep away from this stuff, I'm telling you!), a few vanilla cookies, some canned corn, and three pitas with a veggie hotdog. Thats 1000 calories, its noon, and I've gone and blown it once again.

I'm feeling a little discouraged.

Lovenlight,

linz

"and as a young child I was teased about being a pig. "

-----------------------------

I remember when I was 8 ,9 and 10 (or thereabouts) and I was really chubby. Certain people (mostly 1 person .. argg!) used to tease me and I used to get really mad (there's a dent on the wall in the old house where I punched it ... hehe). It's not very nice





I wonder if you could find foods that are mostly just space with few calories. Like aren't ricecakes mostly air. I think eating can become a comforting process but if you eat things like carrots (they take a lot of time to eat. It takes minutes to crunch down a whole carrot!) and rice cakes you could be spending the same amount of time eating but it has less calories. Also lettuce and salads could be a good idea as they take a long time to eat and are bulky and low in fat.



Rather than confine yourself strictly, changing what you eat (not the cookies ... even one cookie in most cases has a ton of calories) to more time consuming, bulkier and less-calorie foods might help you.

I don't normally eat "treats" because once i start, i can't stop.

"I don't normally eat "treats" because once i start, i can't stop."





Looks like the little dude ( or dudette ?) in your avatar likes treats. Man that nut is the relative size of a jumbo bag of chips to a human ... hehe

I eat "treats" frequently, though I think the definition of "treat" probably varies from person to person. Some people might consider peanut butter a treat, but to me it's just part of a balanced diet.



My treats are tortilla chips & salsa (or chips & guac, or chips & bean dip). I have some almost every day! I also have a little dessert maybe 2 or 3 times a week (usually some ice cream or a couple cookies).

A treat or two a day keeps the madness away.

Live a little. Feeling guilty and wanting to cut back over one serving of nilla wafers is obsession. It's unhealthy. Eat some fleeping cookies and relax. Enjoy food a little.

Sheesh.

A treat, here or there, for me is not a bad thing. I have such a stoic diet (thanks to all my food allergies) that I can't do too many treats for one reason or another but there are a few things that I can have that don't cause problems. One of them is Soy Dream. I love the stuff so my treat is a few spoonfulls straight from the carton while watching my favorite show. My aunt used to have 2 cigaretts when everything was done in the house and the fam was in bed and that was her treat. She would go outside, under the large oak tree and have her 2, then go in the house, watch Johnny and afterwards, retire for the night. I'd like to think that I'm carrying on the tradition except that Soy Dream is my 2cigs, Red Green replaces Johnny and I don't go to bed immediately after but it's the same; I'm still having my "me" time because that's when I unwind and relax from the day just like she did. Nice.



Rainbowmoon, My mother used to use food as a comfort too in my growing up years. My dad was also chronic heartless so everytime I'd eat, I'd hear "you're gonna get fat" from him so it was a mixed-emotion thing with me; comfort was fear and fear was comfort but later in life, I learned how to deal with the cruelty in addition to finding my own comfort foods that were healthy. I also had to learn to see myself as I really am and not what I think I am or tell myself I'll always be. That was really hard for me, but once I got there then treats became just treats and nothing else. For the stress and things, I've learned to write poetry or songs and that helps a lot - it helps me to process my emotions without taking it out anywhere else.

I gained 5 pounds in the last few months by eating vegan cookies and so forth once a day as an evening snack/dessert. I now have a slightly expanded mid-section, and it's irritating as hell. Guess the metabolism ain't what it used to be.



But if you're 18 and athletic, go for it!

" slightly expanded mid-section"

----------------------------------------



Slightly expanded mid-sections suck!



speaking of which, one could always get liposuction .... hehehe

Ew, no thanks. I started hiking again. Did an hour in the hills this morning. Glad to be active again, even if it means I'm up way too early now!