anyone who has overcome or is dealing with binge eating...

I have been trying to stop binge eating for the past several months and just cant do it no matter how hard I try. There's no one in my life that I can really talk with about this, and I need some help from someone. I was wondering if anyone who is in/has been in the same situation would be willing to email back and forth with me? I just need some support from someone, and it will be totally anonymous. THanks

Hi Jenna

My name is Jennifer and I hear you it is hard to stop yourself, and then you feel guility for doing it.  I have a bad binge eating problem, I an trying with to lose weight with diet and exercise, but sometimes I really mess myself over good.  Anyhow, If you want be buddies I'll be here for you 

Maybe we can help each other over come this problem.

I was a binge eater.  It took a lot to quit this habit.

One thing that really helps is to make sure that your daily protein is at least 20%.

You can PM me anytime if you like.

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Please do not post your e-mail addy in this thread. You can PM the OP with them please and thank you. Otherwise you may get e-mails from other members that you might not want to have you addy's.

i'm current dealing with binge eating, and have been for around a year now.

my advice to you is to maybe invest in some counseling or group therapy. like you, i have nobody to talk to about it, but i do have a counselor, and he helps.

im also dealing with it. it sucks. once i start eating i cant stop

hi there! 

i have overcome anorexia and then binge eating. i would love to correspond with you and help you any way i can. i don't know how to give you my email though! lol. 

Im am currently suffering the same problem...any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.  I would love any correspondence as well!!

Does anybody truly recover from this? Or is this a life-sentence:(..

I'm 31 and after 20  years of binging,... i'm starting to think its something i'll just always live with.

 

Any truly recovered bingers.. please please give advice!

well, i can't really say that i've overcome it. i've just learned to keep it at bay some times. just like an alcoholic i dont think i'll ever be able to 'shake that monkey' fully, but who knows. at least as an alcoholic you can say tell yourself to never drink again but we all have to eat.

at the moment im reverting back to some of my old habits. the worst time for me is when i come home from work. a couple of years ago, my eating got out of control between the hours of 6-8pm. it was those two hours a day that i just couldn't deal with, without food. i had other previous triggers as well starting from years back before, due to a hectic schedule. & had to work on those as well.

right now i think my problem stems from anxiety at work, it being depressing winter here, some other minor issues. the worst part (depending on how you look at it) is that i dont think i have any real reason to feel this way. if i had something to blame it on i could work on that.

but there is hope, i know what i need to do that has worked in the past. i need to come home & unwind in ways that do not use food. i tried to do it last week, but couldn't. im going to try again this week.

but i know ill get over it & i think that is the first step. believing that you will eventually overcome it will put you in the right frame of attitude. its then a matter of discovering what will work for you. ive been working on it for perhaps the last 4 years, a couple of years after this 'problem' started for me. i want to binge when there are emotions that i can't or dont want to deal with, like this constant anxiety i feel (mainly coming from work). but i think its mainly because im not taking care of something, i just have to figure out what now.

anyway throughout the years i had to do a bit of self-discovery of how i need to take care of myself. i hope this helps a little, as i said im dealing with it again right now, so things are not that clear for me.

Hi Jenna:

Well, I think I have finally conquered my binge eating and I'm about to share with you how I did it.  I've lost 80 pounds since I started dieting in December of 2007.  I started on a popular diet plan and then changed over to Calorie Count after I had lost 50 of those 80 pounds.  I wanted something I could do for life and purchasing my food by mail was very expensive.   Not the food, the shipping.  So it was not to practical if I wanted a food program I could follow for for life.  But while I was on the my weight loss journey, I met a woman on the message boards that also had a problem with bingeing.  She gave me a piece of invaluable information that untimately changed my life forever.  She dealt with her bingeing by eating the very foods she craved.  She loved chocolate, so every day she scheduled her chocolate into her daily allowance of calories.  She said it freed her of her need to binge because she didn't feel deprived anymore.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought, I'm going to try this to see if it works.  I had already been on my mail-order program that allowed sweets in the daily calories, so it made even more since that that was probably why I had been bingeing all these years too. 

So how am I doing today.  The thing I missed the most when I was on diets was my sweets.  I love cakes, pies, candy, etc.  You all know what I'm talking about.  If you are watching your weight, you are constantly depriving yourself of these things.  Now I schedule them into my daily calories and I have something sweet everyday.  I have not binged in almost a year and I have no desire to because I get what I want on a daily basis. 

I don't know if this will work for everyone, but it worked for me.  One thing I do practice though is that I don't keep red-light foods in the house.  If I can't control how much of it I eat, I just don't keep it around.  But I do have sweets every day now and I feel like a ton of bricks has been lifted from my shoulders.

Betty Jo 

thanks for your responses everyone. im not sure how to find people's email adresses just from your responses, so if you are willing to talk to me some more please message me and we can exchange emails!

jenna,

I can't help you with the binge eating but CAN help you with the email thing. If you click on a persons screenname in their post, it takes you to their profile. towards the right side in the box is a little envelope that says send message. this will allow you to email someone privately through calorie count and then you can exchange private emails or just use calorie count's email. Good luck!

~andrea

Hey Jenna, I have recently stopped binge eating, and I would be happy to share my experience with you, and give you any support or advice!

For me, I was not eating enough for the exercise I did so my body felt like binging on the food - it was mainly a physiological thing.

Once I learnt how much I needed to eat, and a good ratio of carbohydrates/protein/fat that kept me satisfied and stopped me craving specific things ( like carbohydrates or fats when I did not get enough) THEN I was able to stop binging.

Even when I started eating enough food, I STILL felt urges to binge because my body was used to it, so I just had to resist the urges, until it got easier and easier and then one day binge eating was not part of my life any more.

Please feel free to write to me any time, binge eating can make you feel horrible and you deserve support and some one to talk to when times are hard.

By the way, my name is Leigh, I’m a 21 year old personal trainer from Australia and stopped binge eating a couple of months ago.

Jenna, beside every members picture there is two links, one to see their posts and one to send a message to them. Just click on the send message link.

I think I need to realize that although sometimes i give into binges, there are many many times wheere i have controlled myself and the urges. It is so easy to forget about the times where i have controlled myself and only think about the negatives.

Original Post by whatever07:

I think I need to realize that although sometimes i give into binges, there are many many times wheere i have controlled myself and the urges. It is so easy to forget about the times where i have controlled myself and only think about the negatives.

 good point. maybe for me to remember i should make one of those 'swear jars' of money everytime.

Hi Jenna, I never expect that so many people are having the same problem as me and you. My binging just started a few months ago, i use to go on a one meal per day diet basis until when i start to take in all kinds of snacks that my binging life begins. I feel so awful after binging but on the next day i still continue the same routine. I hope to find a solutions to this problem and lost a few pounds off. 

 

 

I don't think you can "fully" recover from binge eating, but what you do need to do is come to the realization that you do not NEED to eat that much food.  I used to restrict my food all day (I would have only eaten about 400 calories by dinner time) and then I would tell myself it was ok to have a scoop of peanut butter.  But if you are a binger you know that one scoop of peanut butter can be lethal, and that is when thing would get out of control.  After a binge I would tell myself I would never do it again.... but I did... so begins the cycle.  But I REALIZED that I needed to stop because I was beginning to really hate myself and my body.  So this is what I did:

• I made sure that I ate around other people so I wouldn't sneak food.
• I took a picture of my belly after I binged (bloated for sure) and put that in a journal.
• In the same journal I put a good picture of me as motivation.
• Whenever i had the urge to binge I would write, or at least bring the journal with me to the kitchen (the journal was kind of like my watch dog).
• I eat more during the day so I don't have "leftover" calories to play with, because we all know that that can lead to a long night of stomach pain.
• If I am feeling hungry I always drink water before I eat something because it fills you up.

Don't eat anything straight out of the box, jar, container... because you literally do not have the need to stop yourself if it is all in front of you.  USE A BOWL!!!

wow-

i dont feel quite so alone now dealking with this problem. ive just started binge eating but ive always had problems with my eating habits. before october this year im pretty sure i was pretty close to anorexic, i ate 900 calories a day and burned 500..i do0nt really remember how it happened, but one day i just snapped and probably ate close to 4000 calories in 1 sitting. but then it kept happening. im in the process of trying to get over it. im just tired of promising myself to do better and failing 2 days later with a whole knew wave of guilt. anyway i know what youre going through and im here anytime to talk : )

This has been my experience...

Find whats missing in your life, that you have been using food to fill by binging, and fix it. The binging soon stops.

For me, I had had trouble with binging alot over the years. I would eat huge amounts then feel terrible on a regular basis. I was lonely and felt unloved. Literally the DAY after I was asked out by a lovely guy I had adored from afar for ages (and was too scared to tell him!) something inside me just clicked. I had no desire to binge anymore, literally none. I can't explain it. I just feel like my life is more complete now that I'm with this man, and I don't need huge amounts of food to make me happy. I eat like a 'normal person' now - I eat until i'm satisfied, and have been doing this for over a year.

Whether it be lack of a hobby, or unhappiness with your life in some way, pinpoint what it is thats missing and try and fix it. I think binging is tied up hugely to our emotions, and is a symptom of bigger feelings, rather than the problem itself