Cause they are GOOOOOOD. I actually think including an ample amount in your diet is a very good idea. Good minerals that are a bit lacking in other paleo foods including magnesium.

Nut butters are easy to over indulge in the same way that drinking your meals makes it easy to overindulge.

Slow it down by buying them in the shell...and eat em with impunity. I don't buy the fear mongering around nuts.

I should say that there are time when I make a supper out of shelling some nuts, eating good cheese, and having a couple glasses of wine in the evening. Eating them WITH a meal or as part of a meal makes them just fine....Snacking on them all day is as problematic as any snacking syndrome, be it apples or nuts.

I find tht using nuts in food n cookin helps me control portion size. Never is it a stand alone snack.

Convenience + palatability + consequences

Nobody really cares or complains when they binge on lunch meat, cheese, fruit, whatever...

Nuts on the other hand are very high-calorie and kind of irritating to the gut when you go over board so the nut binge really sticks out in peoples mind.

FYI I can't buy cashews unless I get the really small bags you see in convenience stores.

You guys are all nuts.

Try raw and unsalted - it really cuts down on how many you eat.

Nodding along, with my hand in my bag of cashews. Large bag. Almost empty large bag.

I have a nut binge story of my own that I hope is helpful to you:

This past summer, I also experienced crazy nut binges. Earlier in 2012, when I first went paleo, I was VLC. I needed this because I had 25-30 pounds of fat to lose from my 5'1" frame. I experienced no nut cravings for the first 3 or 4 months as I was losing weight. However, once I achieved a low body fat rapidly, I began to experience intense nut cravings. I could not have a handfull of nuts or a scoop of almond or sunflower butter without going wild and killing the whole thing. This continued for about six months. I was training hard, running intervals about 4 times a week and doing long crossfit-style bodyweight exercises and kettlebell exercises. All of the calories from the nuts added up, and I gained back some of the weight. Every subsequent attempt to go VLC failed. I would binge on nuts every time. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to add a small-to-moderate amount of paleo starches to my diet. I couldn't personally do fructose. I had an apple and got a sugar headache and crash, finding myself hungry within an hour. However, I found bananas, sweet potatoes, and chestnuts to be successful. I still keep carbs under or very close to 100g per training day. I found that coupled with a zone-style meal with protein and fats, I was fuller longer and no longer craving nuts. I can now eat a scoop of almond or sunflower butter on my banana and be satisfied.

At the end of the day, everyone is different, but this is what has worked for me. Adding a little bit of safe starches prevented the thousands of calories worth of nut binges. I hope this helps! :)

Its like natures junk food. They are salty, crunchy, delicious, easy to eat. I have recently bought measuring spoons and only eat a serving per day. Thats the only way I can handle nuts or seeds or fruit for that matter. Otherwise the bags are a serving size.

I just started buying walnuts instead of almonds because I don't like the taste nearly as much.

There is absolutely no evidence to support this, but I really think that high-Lectin foods are addictive. Beyond high-palatability... After a nut or cheese binge, I'll crave *any high-Lectin food for days (nuts, dairy, a lot of eggs). I wish I had evidence, but I'm sticking to it!

As said above in the wilds we would have walked long and then climbed the tree and had to shell all the things to get them. Instead in 5 minutes I can buy just about any food I want where I live and I can easily eat 1000 calorie packet of pecan nuts at one go. Why is that a problem? As I put on weight and am trying to lose 28 pounds. So answer? I buy a small packet of almonds. Even those I cannot save. I will always eat them the day they are delivered with the weekly food shopping.

Dried fruit I have had to cut out entirely as it is the same.

Chocolate is my very very very worst.

Never met a nut I didn't like. ("That's what she said," ba-dum-bump!)

Seriously, I like all nuts and seeds. And while I can go overboard on plain, raw nuts, I find it's much easier to but the brakes on with those than it is with roasted or roasted salted, especially.

I know peanuts are technically legumes, but I wish I knew what it was about peanuts that hits all the right buttons that almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts, and all the others don't. I can step away from walnuts and pecans. Peanuts? All bets are off. For me, they're what Dallas & Melissa Hartwig (from Whole9) call "food with no brakes." Funny...you would think I was talking about gooey, warm cinnamon rolls or something. Nope, just peanuts & PB. Can't. Stop. So I keep them out of the house.

I do have almond or cashew butter now and then, but I can close the lid and walk away. Not so with PB.

I think only buying them in the shell and having to "work for 'em" is a good method of forced portion control. PITA, but a good strategy if you really, truly can't stop. (Or even better, don't start.)

I had a few 'nut binges' back when I used to carb-restrict. Now that I'm out of that hell-hole, nuts aren't even all that appealing.

I've noticed this trend on various Paleo sites and message boards as well, and I think it sticks out to us more because, frankly, nuts are one of the few snack foods that Paleo-ers can eat that you can just grab from the grocery store and don't require intense cooking skills to make at home (I tried to make my own Kale chips once and they ended up tasting like soggy green turds). Think about all the snack foods that exist on the typical standard American diet- endless varieties of chips, crackers, pretzels, cookies, processed Little Debbie-esque garbage, the list goes on into infinity. With all that variety, you don't notice how much you're snacking because it's spread out amongst an entire ocean of different snack foods, where as when you only have 1 or 2 snack foods to choose from, you feel like you're constantly eating them.

As far as controlling the overeating of nuts, I've found one thing that works for me is to just make them slightly less accessible. I tend to buy mine in bulk because they're cheaper, and I used to just pour them into an empty coffee can when I got home, making it incredibly easy to just pop the lid off and grab a handful every time I walked by the kitchen. Instead, I started keeping them in a plastic produce bag under guard of an intentionally-stubborn knot. Now, if I have a sudden urge to grab a handful of nuts, I tend to shy away from doing so, because I realize that getting that knot out is going to be a pain in the ass, and 9 times out of 10 that's enough to make me say "forget about it" and grab a handful of carrot sticks from the fridge instead.

I think everyone should find little tricks like this to help control the craving as opposed to just completely cutting them out of their diet, because when eaten in normal amounts, nuts are a powerhouse of nutrition. I've recently gotten in the habit of eating a handful of almonds before workouts, and the amount of energy they give me is very noticeable. LONG LIVE THE NUT! That's what she said.

What are the negatives associated with nut binges? Other than "it's easy to go overboard with calorie consumption".

My only issue is with Almonds, I will eat those things all day long if they're roasted. So when I get them I try to keep them raw now. I used to buy them raw and then roast them myself in a little bacon drippings with salt/pepper/red pepper flakes on them. They were great but way to easy to find yourself circling back for "just another handful" so they're not in the house anymore. I still eat some other nuts, mostly Pistachios, in the shell it keeps me from going too crazy on them. I keep some nut butter in the house, but mostly only use that for cooking. Without bread and grape jelly I just have no desire to sit there and eat the stuff. I think it's a great part of your diet if you can keep yourself from just eating them because you're bored. When I travel I always bring some with me to keep from picking up something else just because I'm hungry and it's there.

Peanut butter is my Kryptonite. Give me a jar of peanut butter and a spoon and I can clean it out in minutes. Nuts are a great way to exceed your calorie totals if you are not careful. When you are trying to hold a 1500 cal/day line and a tsp of peanut butter is over 100 calories, well, it's a slippery slope to say the least.

I feel like shit now, i binged again.. last time it was bag of raw organic brazil and walnuts, now pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.. not buying again , even shelled ones, weird maybe that teh tiny amounts of carbs there makes me eat them as im on low carb. i feel like a baloon now