Can't stop binging :-(

[EdinburghLass]

I keep losing weight on fitbit and then ruining it all by binging and putting it all right back on again. I I could stop binging then I would be able to lose this weight. I'm so annoyed with myself right now. I lost 3lb this week, felt great, yet this evening I ate my own body weight in food. I seem to only be able to go about 2 weeks without a binge. I'm just stuck in this cycle. I can't remember a time when I've eaten normally, when I haven't binged. It's all I've every known and I want to stop so much. Does anyone else have this problem. I've just had enough. I know that it's really bad for me, it makes me feel awful, yet I can't stop doing it. I just don't know what to do anymore 😞

[Inga]

re OA, I would assume so, I've only ever connected with them online so I know you could do that!

I kind of plan my day ahead so If I am going to have chocolate I plan it for after dinner and I log how many squares of it I am going to have and include them in my count. the fitbit log combined with something finally clicking in my brain is the only thing that has worked for me.

[JetV]

When it comes to medical students, I wonder how much they actually learn about nutrition and how bodies react with foods and what the effects of different foods are on bodies. I am coming round to the idea that bingeing in my case is a habit. There was a point at which it started and the reasons for that but I think that once I had done so many binges (I don't know what number to attach here), it sort of becomes a habit. I find it very difficult to predict and am a bit vague about what the triggers are, although I presume there are some.

What I am trying to do is slowly substitute bad habits by good ones. I cut out sugar and sweeteners and processed food. Now I have to watch out for things like nuts and bananas - even though they are healthier than added sugar, too much food and too many calories do me no good at all. Now it is summer and very warm, I find that I am able to drink a lot more water and this helps me tremendously. It makes me full and then I don't want to binge so often. Sometimes these strategies work but a lot of times they don't. However, I feel that just by trying to do something about it that I am actually getting some sense of control which helps tremendously.

Ironically, before I read this thread, I had just eaten a huge bowl of home-made muesli. Suddenly, I became aware of what I was doing.

Good luck to all us sorting this out.

[JetV]

I wonder if planning to binge and then forcing myself to do it might help? but then I would binge on tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, spring onions and bell peppers. Or is that a dangerous strategy that might put me off veg? I am not sure really but I do know that eating too much chocolate has not put me off chocolate.

[highflyer]

I binge a lot when I'm alone. I think I do it because I know there won't be someone else around to see me so I won't feel guilty. The problem is, I'm usually alone a few weekends a month and at least one day a week. It's hard to fix that.

I tend to be hungry, head into the kitchen and just start. I pull whatever I happen to find in easy grabbing range and just go. However, I tend to notice, that when I'm bingeing, I end up reaching for something like lunch meat and it stops. Am I missing protein? I almost feel like there is something big there, that I'm craving/missing which is causing mine. 

That and I get bored/lonely, etc, etc. 

It's hard but I just try to resist the urge to not enter the kitchen if I feel it coming on.

[English-David]

Hi EdinburghLass,

I share your demons! Without being judgmental or even understanding the journey (life) you are living right now, personally or professionally, if I may offer some life experience which has focused me through quite similar trends as you describe.

Being retired military, if anything I could take away from 15 years in the Army would be the ability to plan! Four letters that really have changed my life and kept me sane (I think?), to adjust to civilian life.

So what’s “Plan” got to offer you? For me leaving the military I chose sales as a career and now spend my life travelling around the country doing my job and networking with complete strangers as the extrovert I am? (Except I am the complete opposite, an Introvert!) This brings a good deal of stress into my life, but the same amount of stress leaves my “well being” to cancel this out by planning my days ahead, WHAT I WILL EAT, How I will train, put it all in my mobile with alarms to remind me to get it out of the freezer and away I go!

The food tracker on fitbit is excellent and we are all the same beasts as in what we like to eat and local patterns as to what is around you, like sunny Scotland for your good self and rainy Lancashire where I live!

Anyway a military acronym I use to this day has overcome the diet and eating challenge you may face, goes like this. The 7 “P’s”

Prior Planning & Preparation Prevents P*ss Poor Performance

My solution is to sit down on a Sunday and plan 5 (yes five) small meals a day for the next seven days. Put them in your food fitbit section.

I have become a food label reader in a big way. Without being too **ahem** it has educated me as to what triggers my hunger and portion control. Don’t get me wrong I am a guy @ 17 stone and can move up and down 3 stone in as many months dependent on what’s going on in my life. Being a recent buyer (again, loss the last one two years ago) my aim this time is to get back down to 14 stone and yes overcoming some of the demons you have.

Sorry its war and peace, and hope it helps.

Best Regards

David

[SunsetRunner]

You can always just ruin your food. When I find myself eating something unhealthy in excess, there is always a moment (sometimes a very brief moment) when I realize that I need to stop overeating the food that is in front of me... so I pour something disgusting on the rest of my food. For example, tonight I was at a restaurant eating fried pickles and I wanted to eat the entire basket... and I would have, had I not grabbed the leftover bbq sauce and poured it all over the rest of the basket. It may sound difficult or ridiculous, but hey.. don't knock it til you try it, right?

[robbackatya]

EdinburghLass

I think the majority of people suffer from what you are talking about to some degree. I know I do and everyone I know does. There are thousands of ways to lose weight but the battle you have out lined is the biggest one for most of us. How do I not eat when I am not hungry, but I still want to eat?

The fact is that indentifying this challenge is huge. I can tell you what I do to battle it.

1. I know exactly where my 0 weight loss and gain number is.

2. I use a program that autumatically adjust for me. For me this is important. My program has to be very simple. This is how much you can eat today and not gain any weight and if I stay underneath I will lose weight.

3. Once I have the above solved it all comes down to my spiritual exercise. Last night I ate most of my allowable calories early in the day and I had a stressed out day. Bottom line is I wanted to eat although I was not hungry. I had to turn to my spiritual program.

The mind of a dietingaholic if you are one is the 20/80 rule (not to be confused with the 80/20 rule), 20% of my eating constitutes 80% of my food intake. The other 80% of the time I am on some type of diet. This is why often you will hear people that are overweight say they don't eat that much, they do not account for the 3,000-5,000 calorie or more binges and it really does escape our memories.

4. The key for me was focusing on the real challenge which was the binge or eating when I am not hungry. I track my spirtual and mental exercise and how it relates to my weight loss. For me this is key.

[Anniesusie]

I wanted to re-open this thread since I am having a problem with binging at night. Lots of good ideas here. Need to change the habit of the drive home, watching TV at night, figuring out what I am craving and making substitutions. Looking at OA. I am losing and gaining (after losing 40!) the same 10 lbs. for over six months now. Haven't gained it all back, but haven't made my goal either.

[EdinburghLass]

Thanks for your comments. I have been working with a programme called 'Beyond Chocolate' for over a year now and can say that it has really reduced my binge eating behaviour. The key thing in Beyond Chocolate is only to eat when hungry and stop when satisfied and to not make any food 'good' or 'bad'. It's basically listening to your body and eating what you like without any restriction on what types of foods you can eat. I don't count calories anymore and have lost 37lbs by eating what I want when I want and listening to my body. If you're at the end of your tether with binge eating it's worth looking at their website. They have an online course which is fantastic. I don't work for Beyond Chocolate. They have changed my life and I am eternally grateful to them. What we often don't realise is that restricting our diet leads to binging and we go round and round. A restrict/binge lose weight/gain weight cycle over and over again. As I say, I'm not endorsing their product but they have helped to transform my relationship with food and I really recommend heir approach if you are sick of binge eating x

[Anniesusie]

I will definitely look into it! Thank you.

[J3ff]

Yeah I do this especially if there's free pizza! (I work at a college, so free pizza is something you encounter pretty often).  My favorite advice that Ive gotten, which has been really helpful to me, is, "so what?" One instance of eating a lot is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. So, maybe I ate 1000 calories more than I wanted to today. It takes 7000 excess calories to gain a pound of fat (actual fat, not water weight, which *will* swing up and down if one's diet swings up and down, but that's just water and it'll go away easily).  So, if I binged on Tuesday by an extra 1000 calories, and every other day that week I'm running a 500 cal deficit (7x500=3500 cal defiit for the week, way more than that one binge), it's no big deal. I'm still losing weight. Just a bit less this week. The things that I need to actively keep my brain from doing are:

• Please, brain, don't pay attention to the daily numbers on the scale. Just record the number, and later on I'll look at weekly averages. If I eat a bunch of pizza one day this week, my weight the next couple days might swing up a few pounds, but that mostly is not fat, it's mostly water. Just go back to the diet and it's all totally fine.
• Please, brain, just see this as a one-off vacation from the diet. It is NOT a failure. I have not broken anything. Now that the pizza box is empty, that's that, the diet vacation is over, back to my regular routine. It's not a problem at all. And, please brain, feel free to have enjoyed that diet vacation!

The thing to be careful about is to not use this as rationale on a daily basis. If I go on a diet vacation every day, then I'm not really on a diet.  And, it's not for the whole day, even. It's just that one meal, or that one snack, that went a little overboard, and the rest of the week can still be totally on track. It happened, now it's over, and there's nothing wrong with it. 

You mentioned that you binge about once every two weeks or so - maybe that's totally fine and healthy if you just let yourself have that one binge and then just go on with eating healthy. I don't seek out or plan binges, I'm sure they'll happen on their own once every few weeks. Or maybe we go out to a nice restaurant, or maybe I'm at a freinds house for dinner, etc, I just let that meal be what it is, consider it a short and infrequent break from the diet, enjoy it, and move on. Except for Christmas which ends up being a week-long vacation from the diet and really *does* set me back a few pounds of actual fat, but oh well, back to losing it again!

[J3ff]

Ha, sorry, I just noticed that the original post I responded to was from a while ago!! That's what I get for not reading the whole thread before commenting. I need to listen more and yammer less! 🙂 It sounds like things are working well for you, that's awesome!