-

Not a bad idea at all!!

Since you can control what you bring in the house, fill the cupboards with non-binge trigger foods, and healthy options.

Once I moved out to university, and am living in a house I have so much more control over my bingeing! Thanks to no amazing home-cooked meals and millions of snacks lying around.

As a person with a binging problem, I can tell you how it would be for me.

-When I stay alone, I can cook the food I like, as healthy as I like it, and therefore no complaints about feeling pressured to eat by others. The food I buy would be healthy and nutritious.

Which is really good.

-However, if I'm alone and I enter any form of binge-mode, then theres no way out of it (well there obviously always is, but its difficult). I could just as easily run out to the market and buy loads of binge-food as i can binge on healthy food.

Which is not good.

It can go both ways. It depends on how you deal with your binging problem. If its more due to pressure, or the availability of junk food, then living alone might work well. But if its just a mental issue that you have with controlling yourself, then it might not work. I find it easier to control binging when I'm living with others. But that's just me

I live with housemates, and I am a university student who goes out almost every weekend! So this is why I am still struggling with bingeing. But just not being around mass amounts of food, cooking and shopping for myself have allowed me to have WAY more control over my eating habits!

I expect you're going to get a lot of different answers because everyone will have an individual take on it.  Some find that living with others means they are less likely to overeat because they feel 'somebody else is watching'.  And yet you'll find those that say living with others makes them more likely to overeat because the people they live with have bad eating habits....  One person living on their own will say it helps them control their eating behaviour because they only have to cater to their own tastes.  Another will say living on their own means they feel unaccountable to anyone and they drop their inhibitions.  In any scenario there are lots of different outcomes.

If you don't want the problem to get worse maybe don't approach it with the assumption that 'if I live in this environment (alone/with others) I'll do nothing but eat'.   Because it'll be a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Instead if you approach it as 'how can organise things within the environment I find myself that is going to make it easier for me to eat well than to eat badly?'... you might find it's more constructive and therefore more successful

oh my goodness. definitely worse for me when i'm living alone. but it's tricky. i have to be living with people i know and trust in order to even venture out of my room and be amongst them. if not, i'll binge even more. 

but yea. living alone with BED = bad bad bad idea for me. 

right now, anyway.  i will conquer this someday. 

i'm actually terrified about this myself. i'm living alone next (school) year and i'm so scared that i won't be able to stop myself from binging. i usually binge when i'm alone or drunk (and when i'm drunk i'll leave my room so that i'm alone). i'm just afraid that the chronic loneliness will just lead me to binge until i'm so fat that i don't even want to see anyone else :[

Wow, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.

I moved into a place where I lived alone after having been in residence the first two years.

I thought it was a good idea, being a health-freak (& I didn't have to eat the limited residence healthy choices) 
--> at this point, I only very rarely binged on trigger foods.

But when I lived alone, being a perfectionist, I tried so hard to be healthy and perfect -- ie. whole grains, low fat, etc. I knew the calories of everything because I did all the grocery shopping. I found that it became very obsessive, too many options and planning. And very time consuming. It just intensified my food addiction/obsession so much more.
This past year, I've become a binger. In fact, I've been binging almost every other day recently :( Its so stressful and depressing for me. It affects my life.

I wouldn't necessarily contribute it all to living alone, but it definitely played a factor.

For me, I used to think that living on your own may encourage more binging cause you're always alone. I know I stand around the fridge for over an hour sometimes, stuffing my face. However, even when I go back home on wkends, I do the same thing as well. EXCEPT there are more high cal junk foods in the cupboard for me to binge on, which makes me feel even more guilty. At least when I live alone, I make sure to keep these things away -- but as someone else above said, its so easy just to go out and buy junk food during a binge, Ive done that before. Everything is just really close.

If I had a chance to redo this year? I would have chosen to stay in res with my meal plan. I really miss residence food and the convenience. But that's just me.
But than again, I mightve become a binger even than, and having that hugeee meal plan would mean unlimited access to cakes, cookies, etc. So who knows for sure? Maybe it was for the best that I moved out. Only time will tell for sure....and even than, you can't know for sure. Good luck though... :) I know binging is so tough :( and scary.

Feel free to msg me anytime if you have any specific conerns/questions.

I'm also a University atudent, living in a house with three boys and another girl. The boys obviously have terrible eating habits and the girl is almost as bad.

I've found that even though I'm not living alone per se I eat so much better just because I have to buy my own food (and they keep most of their junkfood in their rooms). My diet is so much different here to how it is back at my family's house, purely because I'm able to make my own grocery decisions.

So in my opinion it's a great thing :)

i completely agree chel. bingeing is a solitary activity. i know that i binge due to lack of self esteem, and normally what sets me off is when i know i'm going to be alone for several hours. i'm so ashamed of the thought of it, and during it i'm in such a frenzy, and after the shame is there 10 fold.. and i don't want to be around any one.

it sucks. i've been doing well for a few days.. but i'm always on edge for the next time that urge will hit me and be stronger than my ability to beat it...

*sigh*

c'est la vie..

Chel, Iam in the same exact situation. I live in a woman resi. and we share a main kitchen. The women are nasty and mean and they fight all the time to use the kitchen. when I am stressed out, I binge. The location is beautiful and I love it but I started to hate it because I can't cook healthy as I used to. I also try to stay out of my room as much as I can.  when I stay in my room and have access to the food, I eat a lot.

I have been thinking about moving out and get my own place but I am scared to be alone as I don't know whether or not it is a bad idea for an overeater.

I am so glad i found this thread. this sums up my problems exactly!!  when i live with other people, especially when i am at home with my family, i eat completely normally and stay the weight i want to be.  don't even have to try, i just eat naturally.  but when i'm alone, i binge soooooo much!  food takes over my life in a strange way.  i try *harder* to eat healthy foods, but in the end i just eat lots of healthy stuff, skip lots of meals, and binge on chocolate and peanut butter and chips and all kinds of bad stuff.

i am trying so hard to change this behavior.  others on this site have pointed out that living alone is a great opportunity to eat healthy.  you ccan bring the right foods into your home, you dont have anyone else there convincing you to eat ice cream or to finish your fifth slice of pizza......etc.

i think it's all about attitude!!  it can be so hard to get the right attitude tho  ):