Chooch -
I <3 you. I hear you struggling and would like to offer you some chinese-food love:
When you are craving Chinese food and feel like you reallllly need it, order it...but me smart about it and eat it in proportion.
We have Chinese food about once a week. Most of the time it's out at a buffet which has historically been a minefield for me because buffet= pig the fuck OUT!
What I do is get my plate and load up on those yummy steamed string beans with garlic, the broccoli out of the beef and broccoli mixture, a few boiled shrimp, some hibachi chicken, a little pepper chicken and other stuff that I know is ok. Then, when there is very little room left on the plate, I get the stuff I'm really craving: the honey garlic chicken, the crab rangoons, and that WONDERFUL General Tso's chicken.
I might get one or two little nuggets of the honey garlic chicken and General Tso's and then one or two crab rangoons. That way, I get the taste of what I'm dying for and don't feel deprived but I've eaten it in super moderation.
It's still a heavy meal point-wise but when I compare it to a full-on binge, it's healthier for me to eat a little of what I want instead of binging for thousands of calories on bullshit that I don't really want but am cramming into my face because it's what's available.
Chinese food is your friend. Overeating it is not.
xo