i decided that it could be helpful to have a forum for those of us trying to recover from this evil thing called binge eating disorder (BED). Whenever you have success... post here! Whenever you have struggles... post here! need support to stay out of the cookie jar?.... post here!
i'll be posting my intake of calories everyday in hopes that showing all of you what i eat will keep me from OVER EATING.
anyone with the same struggles??
Reason: moved to Health & Support forum
CC calculator recommends 1250 cals for me. No way. I am doing 1800 instead, since I maintain ata 2200. Goal may be slower getting here, but there will be less chance I will binge.
That is such a beautiful way to deal with a real icky problem...one I've had for more years than I care to count.
I'm going to try it too.
I have to say, I've been on CC off & on for the last 36 hours (and counting). The fact that I can come here and spout off and look at potential grades -- before I eat -- is very helpful.
Thank you.
That is such a beautiful way to deal with a real icky problem...one I've had for more years than I care to count.
I'm going to try it too.
I have to say, I've been on CC off & on for the last 36 hours (and counting). The fact that I can come here and spout off and look at potential grades -- before I eat -- is very helpful.
Thank you.
well i decided to quit my diet coke habit cold turkey.. so far since monday, so good. i'm just concerned as there have been studies linking diet coke to overeating! 
hopefully no binge attacks for me this weekend.. we will see.
Hello. I am a mini-binger. I usually eat four meals a day, each one at about 500 calories, so I end up at 2000 a day. However, sometimes, at those meals, I'll finish my meal and then immediately have a taste for something else. I'll tell myself in my head that I'm not actually hungry but I have to have it anyway. After, I absolutely hate myself and get very angry. It's really upsetting to work really hard the whole day to have a deficit and then end up binging and all the hard work goes to waste. I wish I could take the past hour back (in which I just consumed about 1000 calories). I'm here to stop this! Hopefully tomorrow will be my "No Binge Day 1"!
I binged today. I don't purge, but I do binge -- and I feel awful on so many levels it's not even funny.
Thing is, whenever I start to really pay enough attention to food that I record it, I think about nothing else...the main reason I avoid "diets." I nearly always end up worse than I was before.
I was supposed to exercise yesterday, and I didn't. I did work in the garden, but half the time I was supposed to. And I was completely looney -- go figure.
It's awful when you feel you let others -- and yourself -- down. When I feel so overwhelmed, I just want to crawl up in a chair and munch away.
Ring a bell with anyone?
finally a group with people just like me!
does anyone have any tips for avoiding late night binging??? it's my biggest enemy... more than one small sweet or snack after dinner starts a chain of events that ends in guilt and self-wallowing misery.
Any tips would be great.
Some -- and many -- times the following, alone or together, can delay the impulse enough to slow it down, or at least not do too much damage:
- Make sure to get enough calories in the day: if you only eat 900 kcals before dinner, you're more likely to binge
- Eat breakfast. It's the lighter for your body's metabolism and jump starts it for the whole day.
- Exercise. It will get glucose from the blood stream into the muscles.
You might be taking in enough kcals, but if you have any insulin resistance going, which is very common the more overweight you are (38"+ waist for men ; 28"+ for women -- smaller 3 of "s for Asians), the higher the degree of resistance.
What this means is the currency of the cell, glucose, can't get in because the key for it to get in is insulin...and, the body is just not "reading" it.
As a result, your cells think they're hungry, even though you've eaten enough --> snack attacks.
So, before eating at night, or whenever you're not "supposed to," try to do 25 jumping jacks, run around the block, go up and down the stairs 15 times, etc. before having the snack.
- Drink water. A lot of times, it's thirst, not hunger tht's signaling us to put something into our mouths, but our body's cues are messed up.
- Don't eat anything you can't actually visualize. This is an interesting trick.
- Put yourself into "time out:" Sit in a chair for 10 minutes while listening to meditative music. Native flutes, Pacabel, whatever it takes...but, generally gentle music. Let go of the anxiety.
- Log on...you can't eat with fingers flying across the key board!
- Just tell yourself out loud: "STOP IT! You're worth more than all this food put together!" Walk away...
- Call someone. Hopefully you have a friend or relative on a different time zone that let's you do this in the middle of the night! I'm on EDT and can call my daughter in CA, who's on PDT and who is also a night owl.
- Take up a hobby that uses your fingers: knitting, crocheting, painting, sewing, woodwork.
- Take a hike...go for a walk...look at the moon, see your garden (or others') at night. Meditate on a balcony or at an open window.
- Pray for other people and for yourself.
- Decide on what steps you'll take before you give in and how much you will give in.
- Keep trigger foods out of the house...but, if you really visualize the food -- you might journal it -- make a date with yourself to indulge on a limited basis. There is no such thing as "good" food or "bad" food, just food that gets you where you want to be -- or not, if it's eaten on too regular a basis.
- Make a list like this one for someone else...then print it and put it on your refrigerator. THANK YOU all for "helping" me do this!
Now, I need to take my own advice!
i hope this helps!
Hello everyone! Im new to calorie-count and I've been having "food issues" for the past year or so. I've always been an emotional eater but since I've been back at university I feel as if bingeing has literally taken over my life. Nearly everyday for the past month I've eaten very healthy during the day, and then night time comes- only then, when I'm alone, I stuff my face with whole tubs of ice cream, bags of chips, packs of muffins ect. until I am so full I feel as if I'm going to explode. I've never been overweight, however I gained about 5 pounds my freshmen year (last year) and that was when I first became "weight conscious" I guess you could say. In an attempt to lose those 5 pounds, I lost nearly 30 pounds in the summer by becoming a little obsessive about exercising and calorie counting. I seem to have taken a 180 spin in terms of my eating habits. Sept. 1st I weighed 110 lbs (I'm 5'6.5 tall)...I weighed myself yesterday and the scale said 122lbs!! My bingeing has caused me to gain 12 pounds in less than a month :( It scares me to think about what i'll weight this time next month if I don;t get a handle on this now. Thats why I've decided I need to take action...
The negative impacts bingeing is having on my social life, school work and bank account are making me so unhappy. I've decided that I'm going to stop letting food control my life starting now! I know it will be hard but I'm confident I can do this :) I'm just so glad to have stumbled across this forum, its so nice to know I'm not alone...
Days without bingeing - 0 (this is going to change!)
In some ways, writing down the stuff I eat takes my focus from just using food to live, instead of living to eat!
All I know is that most of the time, when I start a program, I end up eating or thinking about eating all the time! I HATE having food take such a prominent place in my thoughts!
There have been times that I actually put masking tape over my mouth when I'm doing something like canning or baking cookies!-- I so relate to EVERYone in this club!
Anyway, at first I logged in all the time to keep track of everything I ate, but I ended up spending way too much time SITTING in front of the computer -- and eating! 
Go figure.
Now, I plan to log on maybe 3 times a week and limit the time...and, I keep a cross off list of things I want to have in my eating plan: e.g., 3 dairy, 3 meat/beans, 6 veggies, 3 fruit, 6 whole grain, etc....and try to cook the food, using very few processed foods.
However, I still have a really, really hard time at night. I'm hoping rearranging my "home" in the barn and cleaning up these piles and piles of junk will help focus me better at night.
hummus86 --
Close your eyes, either for real or mentally. WHAT do you want to eat? You can't just go to the cupboard or refrigerator and look...you have to figure out what will "satisfy" your "hunger" without those cues.
Find ways to battle the impulse eating. Just because you see cookies -- even delicious, homemade chocolate chip cookies -- doesn't mean you have to have them...you weren't really "wanting" them until you saw them. You need to find some way to short circuit the impulse to grab and eat on sight.
Sometimes I get triggered by food in a commercial or by simply someone talking about food. Go FIGURE!
We all know how it is to have cookies, crackers, or whatever around that we'll have "just one" of!
I put quotes around the words "hunger" and "satisfy," because I know when I binge -- I call it "grazing" -- I'm just going hit or miss at getting something to finally be THE thing that satisifes the craving -- and, of course, I don't find IT. I'm usually not physically hungry at these times.
So, it means, then, that before you put anything into your mouth, ...
(1) you need to find out is you're actually hungry. Has it been at least 5 hours since your last meal? -- or 2-3 hours since your last mini-meal, if you eat 6 times a day? If yes, make a meal that includes ALL food groups (veggies, whole grain, protein, dairy, fruit). Check portion sizes of everything but veggies. Munch on iceberg lettuce while making (almot no cals, but almost no nutrition, either!)
If you've already eaten, test your hunger level: drink a glass of water. If that makes you feel satisfied, you've avoided a binge ("grazing") If not, ...
(2) you need to identify what one food or meal will fill you up. So, sit and be quiet in a chair for at least 10 minutes. Zone out...relax. Does this quiet time calm the cravings? If not...
(3) take a brief walk outside, get into a yoga pose, blog, or journal for 10 minutes... Will distraction of some kind avoid grazing? If not...
(4) ask yourself what you are avoiding by bingeing: what is the real benefit you're getting from the food?
Decide that you won't eat anything off your meal plans unless you can form a picture of what you want to eat specifically that will satisfy that emotional/ physical/knetic need.
At the end of the visulization you should be able to see, feel (in your mouth) all the sensations associated with the food), smell it...you should get it down to one specific food...not the cookies you already see as you're passing through the kitchen.
I frequently need a boost in energy. I also tend to put too much on myself. I get overwhelmed and use food as an escape from those things I can and should do. It's like I need permission to do good things for myself. I start with a cup of tea and a soothing CD.
If you can be true to this sequence, make the decision to limit what it is you want to eat. Put some stops in.
So, when I get a "sweet tooth," I don't just plunk a bunch of different sugary food into my mouth...I have to identify that what I want is 10 M & M peanuts. I can feel the melting candy, then the chocolate, and finally end with the crunch of peanuts.
If all the food you and I ate were mindfully eaten, we wouldn't have this issue to the degree that it interferes with our health.
The heart of it is to identify your emotional needs, your physical needs (at one point, I determined I was eating to deal with physical pain), your kinetic needs. I really believe there is a neurochemical at work here -- or rather one that doesn't kick in when it should. Also, it's likely we have a smaller repertoire of mechanisms to cope that we learned in our environment -- "family habits" that don't name the emotion, but seek relief from discomfort of any kind.
What do you think? Are my assumptions/"conclusions" on the mark? Do you have some thoughts about it?
i've had problems with binge eating for a good part of my life... and it's even worse now that i live alone in a college dorm, and i further justify my binging with the thought that i'm the one who has to finish up all my food in the fridge anyway.
yesterday, i ate 10 energy bars, 2 slices of toast with jam, a bag of nuts, 3 cups of cereal, and an apple in a single binge, and then i just so very awful because i couldn't even taste the food anymore... and i went on to have another slice of toast and a glass of milk, just to neutralize the paralyzed feeling in my mouth, that i get everytime my taste buds are over-sensitized in a short period of time. (the whole thing lasted only about half an hour). Even though i'm technically at a healthy weight, i know that the way i'm eating is just wrong, and i'm so scared of myself right now. I think being alone in college is making me stressed, homesick, and all the more inclined to just stuff myself with food. (i scared myself last week, when halfway while doing my very incomprehensible readings, i bolted out of the dorm room, ran to the nearest walgreens, and rampaged through the store for a jar of nutella. turned out that they were out of the stuff, so i bought a jar of peanut butter and a snickers bar instead. The whole thing was gone before the night, together with a new box of crackers and a new box of cereal. i don't know whether it's normal or not... that i sometimes go up to 5000~6000 calories in a single binge. I'm not bulimic now (i used to be for a period of about 6 months, but that was almost 3 years ago, and i don't reckon that i even want to go down that path again).
every day is a constant struggle, and i've been binging every single day for the past 2 weeks now. i want to stop, and i hope that i'll be able to with this site.
one day at a time.
just needed to get this off my chest. please please please help to keep me accountable?
PureColor:
Here is what I heard:
1. You live alone. Do you partake in any of the other activites available at school?
2. You are a student. What is your class load like? Do you feel prepared for your classes or overwhelmed with having to organize your classes and studying? Are you scard you will fail?
3. You are homesick. How far do you live from home? What do you miss the most? How often are you able to go home for visits?
4. You've had problems with binge eating before that included purging. What were the circumstances when you did this before? What were the trigger feelings? How are they similar now?
From what I can tell, you stuff...you don't graze.
You have the answers within you about why you do this to yourself. What do you think they are?
The first question: do you want to be healed?
Second: what are you afraid of?
Recommendation: you have FREE health resources at most universities and colleges...see a counselor about this problem. You are just in time to make this a good thing. The way I like to think about counseling, is that a counselor helps you develop a vocabulary you can use to articulate what you need ...you DO have the answers. Trust that.
Hope this helps,
sandra
Sandra:
1. Yeah, i do partake in activities... but it's also part of the problem, i think, because most of my activities are food related (i work in a restaurant, and i'm in a vegetarian society whose sole events are pot lucks and cooking classes)
2. my class load is somewhat overwhelming. and i think that i tend to turn to food whenever i've got work to do. I'll just keep eating and eating and eating, and i don't seem to feel full. just yesterday i ate 16 energy bars and a whole block of chocolate yesterday on top of my meals... and i ate it just cause 'it was there'. and halfway through i was even tempted to go out and buy myself a tub of icecream and a jar of peanut butter/nutella. i never used to be like that back home, and what i've become really scares me...
3. i live halfway across the world, and i won't be able to go back home till january. i miss my family and friends mostly... and i think not having friends to study with here is also why i turn to food...
4. i think the trigger was that i felt fat and disgusting... i think i'm similarly feeling that right now... but i've heard so many things about how throwing up ruins your body that i don't want to do it anymore.
i did bad yesterday, i know. i think i went over 5000 calories... but my cupboard is empty of snacks right now... and that's a good start... right now, i just want to get through today normally.... and i'll probably go to the university hospital to see a healthcare advisor about this... >"< keeping my fingers crossed!
PureColor ~
I am proud of you...you are taking some positive steps and a chance to get some help. That is a BIG DEAL!!
One thing I want to mention though, is that you are NOT bad...look yourself in the mirror and say to yourself really...and out loud!) ..."I am not bad. I'm having a hard time making healthy decisions. I am changing this. I am strong enough to get help and to do what I can to treat myself well. I am worth it."
Say this OUT LOUD to yourself in the mirror...really...look yourself in the mirror. You are worth it!
When you get that voice calling out for more and more and more...sit down and ride it out. Put yourself into time out. You might put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it (LIGHTLY) whenever you get "the urge"... If that doesn't work, try to have at least one full glass of water. Then, time out again ... and make your bed, take a walk, do 50 jumping jacks...try distracting yourself.
I get like this some times...and I don't have to eat "forbidden" foods..it can be just normal food, but too much! I have physical limitations that don't allow me to always do jumping jacks, and right now my treadmill is inaccessible, but I could walk. Fast walking increases endorphins, the same neurochemicals released when you binge eat...they make you feel good. You might try this, too.
Also, I keep an open bag of baby carrots on the inside of my refrigerator. They are the first thing I see and inevitably, I'll grab a few, close the door, and munch...and it seems to hit the craving for at least a while.
Purecolor...you're okay. You're having a difficult time right now, but it will pass...it's not a forever kind of thing.
Do you think some assistance in developing time management skills would help you be less overwhelmed with your classes? Universities usually have access to these kinds of resources.
Could you find a buddy in every class? It doesn't have to be a bosom buddy, just someone who will take notes for you if you're absent and maybe will study with you for exams or toss around ideas for projects? This might help get you out of just food-focused groups.
Good luck and keep in touch!
Sandra
