Anyone recovered from binge eating disorder? Help please!

Hi there I think I have binge eating disorder, I have been binging a lot lately, around 3-4 times a week. Usually I would be really goo din the day time and go crazy and eat everything in sight at night, after dinner. What'ss worse is that once I start eating one bad food, I'll just give up "oh well i've already blown it up so lets make it a bad day i'll be good tomorrow!" then tomorrow the same happens again. The guilty feeling is really horrible. After binging I'd usually try to compensate by eating around 800 kcals the next day and exercise like hell. Then the following day, I go crazy and binge again.

So basically, it's a vicious cycle and over the course of 2 bloody months i have gained 30 POUNDS! 30 POUNDS. I am now heavier than I haven't dieted before. (yes i was on a low calories diet before and I had immense success. But I guess i restricted too much and gave rise to this binge eating disorder.) anyway, I feel really depressed, especially when I see all my friends around me are so slim and that I sabotaged my own efforts because of this stupid ED. I just don't know where my determination is. Before I had such great determination that I thought dieting was actulaly not hard. But not so true for now :( I feel i'm such a loser when I see how I cannot fit into my clothes now.

I just want to give up. I need some motivation and help. Has anyone bascially been through a similar journey as me, but have gotten out of this?

P.S. Sorry for the lengthy entry. I just need to vent my frustrations and thanks for reading. :)

Been there.  Done that.  Got over it.  I apologize in advance if this sounds harsh, because I completely DO NOT mean it that way.  I just know exactly what you're going through, and I also know that to end the problem, you have to take the initiative and DO IT.

Your problem is one that you've already recognized--the cycle.  Plus, it sounds like you really have 3 eating disorders--anorexia (severe restriction), binge eating (your nightly forays), and exercise bulimia (your attempt to atone for the binging by spending hours at the gym).  All of this adds up to increased weight, screwy metabolism, mental anguish and just plain stress.

You need to stop the cycle.  Period.  That's the only answer.  Spend one full week eating 1300-1500 calories per day.  Take one full week off from the gym.  This will give your body time to rest and adapt to actually getting enough calories and nutrition.  Do NOT weigh yourself.  After that week, work exercise back in slowly.  If you binge, do NOT restrict the next day (all you do is put yourself in survival mode so that the next time you binge, you hold on to every calorie and gram of fat because your body has no idea when you will feed it again).  Forgive yourself.  Move on.

You are binging because you are, quite literally, starving yourself.  Your body is demanding food.  Please listen.  Physically and mentally, it is the best thing you can do for yourself.  Message me if you need anything.  I've been there.  I know how hard it is, and I know how crappy you feel.

Oh my God!!!!! I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH. I could have written your post. Everything you say, has happened to me. This year, I went from 122lbs at Christmas to 145lbs by mid-February. I felt HORRIBLE! No clothes would fit and I was depressed!

So, one day, I could no longer take it anymore. It was another Sunny Saturday around June/July and I was going to stay in bed all day. I was depressed, all I wanted to do was stuff myself with food. I got up and said to myself "only I can do something to change this, no one will come here and yank me out of this misery!!" Without thinking, I dragged my butt to the gym and did what I could. After that I went shopping for some clothes that fit so that I could feel comfortable going to work on Monday. I sat down at my computer and made a plan of how I was going to do this. I made an exercise plan that I could stick to. I made a food plan that wasn't too restrictive. I had started seeing a therapist in March and I went over my notes from the sessions. I also made a committment to go to my usual Saturday morning Overeaters Anonymous meetings - even just to listen - I had to show up. The first week was AWFUL. Exercise made me winded and tired. I was CONSTANTLY starving. The urges to binge where there ALL THE TIME. However, it did start to get easier after that. After a week of exercise and good eating, you lose a bunch of water weight and that bloated feeling starts to go away. You regain confidence and motivation. What was important for me was to realize why I was so depressed - the food was only my "medication," to dull the pain, what pain? What was wrong in my life and in my thinking that was making me kill myself with food? Going over my notes from the therapy sessions really helped. The weigh is now coming off, I enjoy exercise, but its still an uphill battle.

Feel free to message me, or just respond here.

how do you keep yourself from binging, actually? Sometimes it's so hard- especially when my mum is a great cook and that I have supper with my family every evening. Although my family is in support of me dieting, it's ONLY ME who's sabotaging my efforts- it's ME who's ruining my whole diet plan. I'd eat good food at dinner time, then later, the sweet tooth sets in and I'm out there eating everything i can find in the kitchen. It's so hard to resist when you have so much yummy food around you, and i cant ask my family to hide them becaues they'll have to eat as well... so any advice on how to resist temptations?

What works for me in part is NOT viewing food as something negative.  Do NOt be too restrictive.  If I am too restrictive I view my binging as something negative...which depresses me and I start binging more. 

Instead step back and say well you know what I said I wouldn't eat these chips...but I am.  So I am going to have 3 more than stop.  If you can't stop at 3 more...then I usually remove myself from the situation.  Close the food up and put it away.  Or as a last resort I will throw it away if I can't control myself.  Then put each day in the past.  Sure I binged yesterday but today is a new day and I am going to try and stick to my plan today (my plans are usually planned out to 1200 or so calories...then I leave the rest for incase I feel the need to binge and I try and find a healthy alternative, if not its okay because I have some calories left in the day). 

Don't view the food as a temptation or something forbidden instead try and view it as something you can have...but don't want to have right now.  There is a difference. 

Well, I don't restrict anything. I can have any food I want as long as I keep within my calorie range. I don't deprive myself of cookies, chocolate etc. However, some have said that one bit can send them off, so maybe its could be just a good idea to not eat your binge foods for a while. Find something else to do. Drink tea, watch TV, come to this forum, read, take a walk something to get out of the house and away from the food. To be honest, I haven't had any problems with temptations and binges since about July. Once I figured out the reasons behind my bingeing its been easier. We eat to dull our feelings - you need to let those feelings out. One other thing that I didn't realize in the beginning, was alcohol. When I would drink, it gave me license to eat whatever I want. I never had a binge when I wasn't drinking, or if I didn't drink the night before. Alcohol was a huge depressant for me, and when I was depressed I ate. Once I cut out the alcohol completely, I haven't had the urges to binge. And its easy to give up alcohol, compared to food - you need food to live. I just basically said, I will not drink for 90 days NO MATTER WHAT. I'm on day #48. I now totally have a different view of drinking and actually am not sure if I will ever go back to it even after the 90 days are done. It did too much crap to my life to make me want it again.

Don't view the food as a temptation or something forbidden instead try and view it as something you can have...but don't want to have right now.  There is a difference. 

This is GREAT!  Thought I would quote it!  Thanks gfrisbie.

Seeing a counselor helped me a lot. I've had all of the eating disorders imaginable except for purging through laxatives or throwing up my food. I learned to talk about and eat food without being afraid of food, to treat myself in healthy ways rather than try to get healthy in an unhealthy way, to focus upon what my body can do for me rather than what I can do for my body, etc.

My therapist said to me, shortly before I was deemed recovered, that "You can start a new day right now, this minute. Who says that a day has to go from when you wake up to when you go to sleep? If you had a binge, just start the day over. It can be from 9 pm one night to 9 pm the next night. Learn to forgive yourself, because the blame and guilt is part of what continues the cycle. Treating yourself and food as something to make you healthy rather than something to make yourself fat or skinny is an important change."

Feel free to PM me if you want to. I finally consider myself recovered so maybe some of the things I've learned can help you to. 

Sytso,

I relate very much to what you're going through.  This has nothing to do with rewarding yourself with a single treat after dinner, or splurging calorie-wise on a single item at the end of a successful week.  This has to do with full-on consistent binge eating.

While I have been able to keep my binges at night after dinner in relative control lately, it is a very intense struggle for which I feel like I have absolutely no control over my body.  On several occasions I have actually thought to myself on the way to the refrigerator "You couldnt actually turn around right now if you tried, could you?"  It was like I was hypnotized.

For me, it was a matter of breaking the cycle of binging and guilt by analyzing what was mentally causing me to do this.  I am very active, I work out 4-5 days a week, and eat around 12-1500 calories healthfully each day with no struggle.  I never find myself starving and am full after dinner.  What I found when I really looked at what I was doing, was that I was eating because I was intimidated by the thought of getting up in the morning and doing it all over again.  I have a great life.  I'm not depressed.  I just have a full schedule every day, and the thought of going to bed just to wake up and do it again really overwhelms me sometimes.  So much so that I feel like i want to make myself feel good and treat myself with food, a lot of food, as a reward for getting through the day and as avoidance of thinking about getting through tomorrow.

I cant offer suggestions to distract yourself, or even myself, after dinner to make you not think about binging.  What works for me is to think real long and hard before the start of a binge, "When i eat this, am I going to be satisfied or will I want one more?  After I eat one more will I be satisfied or will I want a third?  After I eat a third, isnt it true that I'll feel guilty and ashamed but still not feel full and want a 4th to make the guilt go away?  When the guilt goes away momentarily won't it come back immediately?  Will you finally go to bed feeling like you've failed at your entire day?"  If I answer yes to all those questions before I binge, then I am able to head it off. 

I have been doing this every day now for awhile and it is so empowering!  Guess what, we DO have self control and when you exercise it the mental reward is tremendous.

Good luck! 

OMG, I'm just starting to recover from it. So bad that I gained so much weight because of it that my husband left me. I can understand him, because he married a nice, slim and happy girl, but after and during my pregnancy I became a binge eater and gained 40 kilograms :-( And I also became very nervous, angry, etc.

To cut the short story long, almost 3 years later I managed to understand myself and the bad attitude I had towards eating. First of all I ate way too fast, so I never knew when it was enough and had more than needed. And the second problem was that I only ate after 4-5PM. Now I try to eat really slow, chewing every little bit and I order food from a company for the whole day. So I have small portions for breakfast, snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner and of course I use the calorie counter! I do it for more than a week now and it's working. I never eat more than I should and I don't feel hungry, because I'm eating something in every 2nd hour. I hope I'll have the power to continue with it. And I lost 1.5 kilograms already.