>>
>> Bottom line: it makes life a battle of both stoic self-denial, unceasing
>> wondering (should I have just a piece? just a chip? etc.) and selective
>> caving in with resultant guilt feelings.
>
>for some of us it's more then just guilt feelings. yesterday I was at a
>party and had a small handfull of potato chips and about 4 or 5 grapes and
>today I'm paying for it with GI discumfort. when you have crohn's you
>clearly see the benefits of not cheating. even so I still went for it -
>pathetic.

Those who don't experience food cravings for biological reasons, or who do
not eat compulsively for comfort, or use food as a mood-changing drug (and
these may or can be aspects of the same phenomenon), probably find it
strange to hear of how people can eat what they know will make them ill
later after making them feel better immediately.

There are a number of nutritionists whose relations to food and taste are
so (by my way of thinking) bizarre that they come up with the admonitions
that applesauce is a good substitute for butter, or that prune sauce is a
replacement for chocolate syrup.  These people's taste buds reside in some
other spacetime continuum than mine.  (The above examples are from my
girlfriend's involvement with the Jenny Craig people; their secret weapon
seems to be undigestible polymerized fats in their foods, which resulted in
the appalling side effect of fecal incontinence...)

Add the enormous variability in people's metabolisms, abilities to digest
various foods, and so on, and you get the chaos that sustains a
multibillion dollar dietary/nutrition industry year in and year out.

Mike