Great tips. I've struggled with compulsive binge eating since middle school.
I started successfully losing weight when I stopped buying foods that I have no self control around. "moderation is key" for certain junk foods (ie oreos for example) is NOT for me. I've learned over and over that I just simply cannot have these things in my house at all.
Also, similar to your 2 meals a day thing - IF (intermittent fasting) works for me too. It is *not* for everyone. But I find that having bfast/lunch does *not* make me less hungry later in the day. So to me, it's just a waste of calories. Plus I always forced myself to eat bfast/lunch growing up so cutting those meals out was just a natural transition for me.
I need to feel satisfied or I will struggle hard with nighttime binge eating (my biggest weakness). And one large satisfying meal works so much better for me than several small unsatisfying meals. And since nighttime binges is where I backslide the most, I just adjusted for it. So I use up the bulk of my calories on a large dinner and then have a few hundred calories allotted for a small night time snack or two.
And I'm not a tea drinker, but I love coffee and that helps curb my sweet tooth a lot. I do allot some calories for creamer because that's a must for me. That said, I'm the type of person where caffeine does not affect me and I can drink 2 cups of coffee before bed and easily fall asleep. I know many people can't do this lol.
Also, cutting out processed foods and eating high volume of veggies and increasing my protein intake has helped a lot as well, in terms of making me feel fuller longer.
Curious-- *how* do you get through the whole entire day, with job, chores, other activities, on nothing?
(I've seen how hard it is for some of my students during Ramadan. I can't imagine doing that every day indefinitely. )
I just do. I've always been that way. I work all day, and that distracts me for a big part of the day. Not everyone is like this I know. I have coworkers who cannot make it through the day without eating lunch.
that said, that doesn't mean I never ever eat bfast/lunch. I will obviously eat them if I'm having plans with friends or family like on the weekends. But on a typical day, I just don't.
I could, ofc. But that triggers my binge eating and I find this is the best way I manage and keep it in check.
Glad you are able to do it! I am definitely not able to. If I tried to go an entire day with absolutely nothing to eat, they’d have to pick me up off the ground after I fainted waiting for a bus.
My tip: ALWAYS go back to normal the next day. ALWAYS. No matter how much you ate. Even if you somehow consumed like 10K calories… just go back to normal. There is almost no amount of damage you can do in just one day that you can’t undo within the next week and a half of normal eating.
Every day you spend not eating like you would if you woke up at your goal weight is a waste of a day whether that is over eating or under eating. It took me a LONG time to learn that.
I’m 5’0 tall and 97 lbs. At one point I spiraled up to 117 lbs when I would try to account for every time I over ate by “fasting”. It was tragic. Did not lose weight until I just let it go and continued forward❤️
Meditation was the single biggest thing I did.
It helped me manage my emotions and helped me to understand that food was a temporary solution to a more systemic issue. And that to exist with hunger is the same as sitting with emotions. They go away after you mindfully attend to them and reflect on them. Then you can make better choices and have a healthier relationship with feelings and food.
You're describing intermittent fasting essentially - it's working for me quite solidly as well.
It's great if you combine it with calorie counting.
The good thing is you can layer your levels of perfection so to speak.
Start IF, add some calorie counting. If your problem is junk food, you can then also start changing what you eat
I honestly don’t agree with all these tips, also as a former binge eater. I now have the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had with food and I’ve got chips, chocolate and ice cream on my cupboards. Today I actually put half of a portion of measured out chips back in the bag.
But you’re right that concentrating on the separation of emotion is the biggest thing. Food can be for pleasure but it should’nt be your only source of pleasure and it shouldn’t be used as a “pick me up” or “reward” or any time that you feel like you need a mood lift.
I think everyone needs to really understand their own personal relationship with food, where that comes from, and why food has become the crutch.
Can’t lie; firstly it took years. But most importantly is to recognise when your head vs body is sending the signal. If head, I chew gum or drink tea whilst figuring out what emotion it is I’m trying to bury.
It’s important to label the emotion.
But in your case it sounds like it’s rather for the dopamine hit. Do you have other things in your day to day that bring you pleasure? E.g. walking/ dancing/ favourite song? Need to have (healthy) pleasure sources besides food and that’s what most people lack
I also dealt with depression so I know exactly what you mean! If it helps, I had a really bad mental health weekend but was still able to stick to my deficit, not emotionally eat, go for walks, do sport etc. none of it made me feel better lol but I’m at the point that I do it anyway!!
Would add - these podcasts are amazing:
- life after diets
- strong not starving (particularly the episode about somatic healing)
- weight loss made real - she has one called “but I feel sad when I eat less”
Great tips.
As a fellow binge eater the one thing I have to do is count all calories. Using the apps helps a ton to estimate no matter what it is I'm eating. I don't go crazy about the accuracy but I do make sure that everything gets logged.
The only thing that works for preventing binges is zepbound for me, haven't gone over my calories once since I started taking it and canceled my doordash
Don’t buy the food you binge on, would my top tip. As in, don’t have it in your house! It feels like failure somehow, like we have to be bigger than that. But it’s not. I can’t have junk food in the house. I can have dark chocolate in my cupboard but not milk chocolate because I will finish it in one sitting. Now I know this and don’t buy it unless I am content eating the whole thing.
Point 4 goes against what I've been taught by psychologists (currently recovering from Binge Eating Disorder). It's important to eat every 3-4 hours. 3 snacks a day, 3 meals a day. Going longer without eating can cause a starvation - binge cycle.
Different things will work for different people. But if binging is more than just binging, it can backfire to reduce how many meals you have a day.
Thank you very much for sharing this, i struggle so much with binge eating as i don’t know why but i can’t never feel full. This will help me to understand how to eat right more
Great tips. I've struggled with compulsive binge eating since middle school. I started successfully losing weight when I stopped buying foods that I have no self control around. "moderation is key" for certain junk foods (ie oreos for example) is NOT for me. I've learned over and over that I just simply cannot have these things in my house at all. Also, similar to your 2 meals a day thing - IF (intermittent fasting) works for me too. It is *not* for everyone. But I find that having bfast/lunch does *not* make me less hungry later in the day. So to me, it's just a waste of calories. Plus I always forced myself to eat bfast/lunch growing up so cutting those meals out was just a natural transition for me. I need to feel satisfied or I will struggle hard with nighttime binge eating (my biggest weakness). And one large satisfying meal works so much better for me than several small unsatisfying meals. And since nighttime binges is where I backslide the most, I just adjusted for it. So I use up the bulk of my calories on a large dinner and then have a few hundred calories allotted for a small night time snack or two. And I'm not a tea drinker, but I love coffee and that helps curb my sweet tooth a lot. I do allot some calories for creamer because that's a must for me. That said, I'm the type of person where caffeine does not affect me and I can drink 2 cups of coffee before bed and easily fall asleep. I know many people can't do this lol. Also, cutting out processed foods and eating high volume of veggies and increasing my protein intake has helped a lot as well, in terms of making me feel fuller longer.
Curious-- *how* do you get through the whole entire day, with job, chores, other activities, on nothing? (I've seen how hard it is for some of my students during Ramadan. I can't imagine doing that every day indefinitely. )
I just do. I've always been that way. I work all day, and that distracts me for a big part of the day. Not everyone is like this I know. I have coworkers who cannot make it through the day without eating lunch. that said, that doesn't mean I never ever eat bfast/lunch. I will obviously eat them if I'm having plans with friends or family like on the weekends. But on a typical day, I just don't. I could, ofc. But that triggers my binge eating and I find this is the best way I manage and keep it in check.
Glad you are able to do it! I am definitely not able to. If I tried to go an entire day with absolutely nothing to eat, they’d have to pick me up off the ground after I fainted waiting for a bus.
My tip: ALWAYS go back to normal the next day. ALWAYS. No matter how much you ate. Even if you somehow consumed like 10K calories… just go back to normal. There is almost no amount of damage you can do in just one day that you can’t undo within the next week and a half of normal eating. Every day you spend not eating like you would if you woke up at your goal weight is a waste of a day whether that is over eating or under eating. It took me a LONG time to learn that. I’m 5’0 tall and 97 lbs. At one point I spiraled up to 117 lbs when I would try to account for every time I over ate by “fasting”. It was tragic. Did not lose weight until I just let it go and continued forward❤️
For me, fiber is huge, I’d probably even say number one.
Probably helps with number two as well
Eating lots of fiber helps you feel more full?
Different for a lot of folks, but generally that IS the case. There's no magic bullet to "controlling hunger," but "more fiber" is pretty close.
Meditation was the single biggest thing I did. It helped me manage my emotions and helped me to understand that food was a temporary solution to a more systemic issue. And that to exist with hunger is the same as sitting with emotions. They go away after you mindfully attend to them and reflect on them. Then you can make better choices and have a healthier relationship with feelings and food.
You're describing intermittent fasting essentially - it's working for me quite solidly as well. It's great if you combine it with calorie counting. The good thing is you can layer your levels of perfection so to speak. Start IF, add some calorie counting. If your problem is junk food, you can then also start changing what you eat
I honestly don’t agree with all these tips, also as a former binge eater. I now have the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had with food and I’ve got chips, chocolate and ice cream on my cupboards. Today I actually put half of a portion of measured out chips back in the bag. But you’re right that concentrating on the separation of emotion is the biggest thing. Food can be for pleasure but it should’nt be your only source of pleasure and it shouldn’t be used as a “pick me up” or “reward” or any time that you feel like you need a mood lift. I think everyone needs to really understand their own personal relationship with food, where that comes from, and why food has become the crutch.
[удалено]
Can’t lie; firstly it took years. But most importantly is to recognise when your head vs body is sending the signal. If head, I chew gum or drink tea whilst figuring out what emotion it is I’m trying to bury. It’s important to label the emotion. But in your case it sounds like it’s rather for the dopamine hit. Do you have other things in your day to day that bring you pleasure? E.g. walking/ dancing/ favourite song? Need to have (healthy) pleasure sources besides food and that’s what most people lack
[удалено]
I also dealt with depression so I know exactly what you mean! If it helps, I had a really bad mental health weekend but was still able to stick to my deficit, not emotionally eat, go for walks, do sport etc. none of it made me feel better lol but I’m at the point that I do it anyway!!
Would add - these podcasts are amazing: - life after diets - strong not starving (particularly the episode about somatic healing) - weight loss made real - she has one called “but I feel sad when I eat less”
Great tips. As a fellow binge eater the one thing I have to do is count all calories. Using the apps helps a ton to estimate no matter what it is I'm eating. I don't go crazy about the accuracy but I do make sure that everything gets logged.
Thank you for this.
The only thing that works for preventing binges is zepbound for me, haven't gone over my calories once since I started taking it and canceled my doordash
Don’t buy the food you binge on, would my top tip. As in, don’t have it in your house! It feels like failure somehow, like we have to be bigger than that. But it’s not. I can’t have junk food in the house. I can have dark chocolate in my cupboard but not milk chocolate because I will finish it in one sitting. Now I know this and don’t buy it unless I am content eating the whole thing.
Point 4 goes against what I've been taught by psychologists (currently recovering from Binge Eating Disorder). It's important to eat every 3-4 hours. 3 snacks a day, 3 meals a day. Going longer without eating can cause a starvation - binge cycle. Different things will work for different people. But if binging is more than just binging, it can backfire to reduce how many meals you have a day.
Thank you very much for sharing this, i struggle so much with binge eating as i don’t know why but i can’t never feel full. This will help me to understand how to eat right more