Dieting and Deprivation

I had my psychiatrist appointment yesterday and am pleased to report that I'm almost down to 200 lbs (it was 200 point something), and that there's a plan in place to address "the bad feeling," that awful mood that strikes between dinner and bedtime.  My doctor suggested switching one of my dinner time drugs to the morning to see if that helps, and also to take Klonopin in the afternoon as a preventative measure.  But back to the weight loss.  Talking about long-term plans for my eating and exercise got me thinking about diets and deprivation.  As much as I enjoy all of the foods I eat regularly on my diet, there are often times when I feel deprived.  Whenever my husband suggests getting takeout or a croissant at a cafe, I have to say no because I don't know exactly how many calories are in the food.  And when I think about the endgame of this whole dieting process, I wonder if that will ever be able to change.  There are times when I estimate calories based on Google searches of various foods, but there is usually quite a range for prepared foods.  My instincts and my history with food (and with binge-eating) tell me that any sense of deprivation is a bad thing and will only lead to dieting backlash.  After all, something like 97% of all dieters gain back the weight plus more when the diet ends.  So what is the plan for me?  Yesterday it occurred to me that restricting my calories might just be necessary for me to cope with my mental illness.  Like a diabetic, I might have to accept the "diet" as a necessary component of my continued health.  Eating without a plan seems to inevitably lead to bingeing for me, which leads to weight gain, which triggers my depression and suicidal ideation.  So perhaps my life does, in fact, depend on restricting my eating.  That's difficult for me to swallow.  There have been many times in my life when dieting seemed unhealthy psychologically.  One instance was following my first significant weight gain, around the time I had a breakdown and had to go home to live with my parents at age 27.  I soon found work in nearby Cape Cod and lived there for a time.  I vividly remember the spare meals of rice noodles and cabbage with cottage cheese for breakfast.  I remember running around the neighborhood, alternating between a relaxed jog and a forced sprint in an attempt to rev up my metabolism.  I also remember sporadic donut binges, eating half a dozen Krispy Kremes in a sitting.  After eating my entire day's calories in donuts, I would subsist on cabbage and broth to get through the night.  Another era of dieting occurred when I was living in New York.  I had recently left Overeaters Anonymous, which had left me quite thin, perhaps the thinnest in my adult life.  But I had fallen off the wagon and started bingeing and dieting again.  There was a point where I was eating about 1500 calories a day, then running to burn off about 600 of those calories, leaving me with a net total of 900 calories for the day.  I can't say that any of this behavior was healthy or even desirable, but certainly indicative of my strained relationship with food.  There have also been periods of time where I rejected dieting altogether.  I read feminist theory on how to restore one's eating from the damages dieting had done.  I "legalized" all foods, giving myself the freedom to eat any foods I wanted, worked to embrace my body at any size, and learned to cope with my emotions without using food to do so.  When I was younger, say in college and in my early-mid 20s, this system led to great success.  My weight stabilized and I could eat like a normal person.  But more recent attempts at this process have failed miserably, resulting only in weight gain, panic, and a return to dieting.  I don't feel my current state of mental health is sufficient to make this system work.  So this whole issue of whether or not to diet, and how to end a diet without undoing all the hard work, is a tough nut to crack.  Is dieting the answer or the enemy?  Perhaps if I look at it through the lens of exercise, I can see it more clearly.  I am gradually increasing my exercise in order to achieve a certain level of fitness: to be able to run for a half-hour three times a week, and lift weights three times a week.  Once I reach that goal, I plan to continue this routine ad infinitum.  Maybe this is the right way to think about the food - that while there is a goal to achieve, there must be a plan to continue the healthy regime.  And for me, it helps to think of it as necessary for my mental health.  Because if my eating is restricted indefinitely, I need a greater motivation than just maintaining my weight.  Because no particular weight has ever brought me happiness, but restricting my calories has brought me relief from some extreme symptoms of my illness.