'Healthy' Eating Causes Deprivation??

Although I have no problems abstaining from my food allergens, because those cause obvious painful reactions, avoiding or reducing other foods to 'eat healthier' can make me feel deprived, overeat and occasionally binge. I didn't realize how much that kind of 'unintentional' restriction influenced my overeating until recently.

I thought I began to overeat because I felt so frustrated and hopeless about coping with yet another bacterial infection. However, after I began to overeat more often and eventually binged, I considered exactly what and why I had restricted and whether I would be 'healthier' by just eating small amounts of 'unhealthy' foods, rather than abstaining and then overeating 'healthy foods' or occasionally bingeing on what I had considered 'unhealthy'.

Specifically I decided to eat less sweets after I developed an upper respiratory infection while I was still treating an intestinal bacterial infection. Initially I feared the achromobacter (intestinal bacteria) had spread to my respiratory system, because patients with cystic fibrosis often develop achromobacter respiratory infections. I had read that consuming sugar lowers immunity and decided to cut waaaay back on sweets. However, I had not actually noticed that eating sweets made me catch more colds or anything else. I was just desperate to recover from whatever I had and naively believed what I read. I also binged one day when I was feeling really physically crappy and obviously very deprived of favorite foods.

At that point, I realized that I had binged, because I had restricted certain foods, not just because I felt stressed. When I don't restrict unnecessarily, I just don't have any 'binge foods'. No matter how stressed I feel, I don't binge. So I decided to restock my favorite foods (ala Overcoming Overeating) and eat those regularly in modest portions. I also took more zinc and consumed more oranges (with Vitamin C) which I craved.

Within 2 days I completely recovered from the cold symptoms, that seemed to hang on for weeks, even though I felt my worst 4 days ago. So I could conclude that eating sugar raises immunity, because my cold quickly disappeared after eating frosted valentine cookies and agave sweeted ice cream for the past 2 days. However, I suspect I just became more aware of my cravings, when I ate what I wanted. So I also ate exactly what I needed to recover from my cold (like oranges, green and yellow vegies, etc.), when I decided to also 'feed' my sweets cravings.