Breaking the "binge is a total failure" mindset

hotel4dogs

Just wanted to share something that has helped me recently. Your mileage may vary....

I used to "throw in the towel" for days if not weeks (if not years!) when a binge or two got in my way. It was a mindset of, "I've totally blown it, might as well keep eating".

Recently, however, I've been using MFP to log my binges faithfully. Every.single.bite. And what I see is that, while I certainly couldn't do it on a very regular basis, the binges result in NO MAJOR HARM DONE! It has opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking.

For example, last night I went on a carb binge, probably brought about by a lot of cardio workouts recently and a generally low carb diet. I ate LOADS of food. Now remember, this is after my 1200 allotted calories for the day.

Here's what I ate. I'm sure some will notice that, for the most part, it's not high fat calorie dense food, but it's still a lot of food volume:

3 cups of cheerios, 1/2 ounce of peanuts, 1 cup sugar free jello with 12 tablespoons canned fat free whipped cream, 10 saltine crackers with a little butter and 1-1/2 ounces mozzarella cheese, 1 slice of bread with butter, 1 small chocolate chip granola bar, 1 tablespoon peanut butter, and 6 Hershey kisses.

Yes, loads of food. Not good. But when I added it all up---1199 calories!!!

Wow. That's only 1/3 of a pound. Just .3333 pounds I *gained* last night (probably less if you figure in my calorie deficit for the day from diet/activity).

Now instead of throwing in the towel today, I just feel that for some reason I needed to do that, and today will be a better day. That 1/3 of a pound is just a small speed bump on the road of my goal (which right now is maintenance).

I hope that mindset will help at least a few others overcome the "binges break me for good" mindset I struggled with for so long.

To paraphrase a sign at my health club, Would you slash the other 3 tires on your car if you had a flat in one of your tires? Nope. Fix it and move on.

Cheers!

CattOfTheGarage

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

The binge monster loves drama. Don't feed it. All that happened was you ate some stuff. Log it and move on. Eventually the monster will start to get bored if you refuse to play the self-loathing game.

MelodyMomof2

I totally agree. In years past once I blew my diet, I pretty much gave up for a long time. Now if I blow it once in a while, I just get right back on track and it hasn't really messed me up. I try to stay at 1200 and eat about 1/2 of my exercise calories back. It's been a year and I've lost about 90 pounds. I have 20 to 25 more to go. Sunday night was super bowl. We had friends over and I ate WAY too much. I new I would. I haven't went off of my diet like that since end of December. I logged it all and it was about 3100 calories for the day. When I calculate what I actually burn in a day including the exercise, it's not too bad. Nothing that can't be reversed pretty quick. Right back at it Monday morning and I don't feel bad about it at all. I have to live a little now and again. If I didn't, I never would have stuck with it this long.

fitoverfortymom

We'll never be perfect, so focus on progress.

French_Peasant

I love how most of the things you binged on are actually pretty healthy and very trackable...so even when you were binging you were keeping it under control. Great job, and wonderful insight! (I "binged" the other day on three servings of frosted mini wheats, and had the choice of either beating myself up, or rejoicing in the great fiber serving I got for the day...I chose the latter).

GottaBurnEmAll

Indeed. I found logging every bite of my binges to be incredibly helpful in moving past the behavior. I also found decreasing the size of my deficit to be helpful too. The other thing that helped was learning not to restrict to "make up" for the binge.

GottaBurnEmAll

French_Peasant wrote: »

I love how most of the things you binged on are actually pretty healthy and very trackable...so even when you were binging you were keeping it under control. Great job, and wonderful insight! (I "binged" the other day on three servings of frosted mini wheats, and had the choice of either beating myself up, or rejoicing in the great fiber serving I got for the day...I chose the latter).

I miss frosted mini wheat so much (I have celiac disease and can't eat them). They used to be one of my favorite snacks. I'd eat them straight out of the box. Trader Joe's has a maple and brown sugar variety that my daughter just adores that I would simply love to be able to try.

lightenup2016

I'm with you! This time around, I've logged my overeating, and while it's amazing how much more I can eat compared with my deficit days, it's also amazing how that one time really doesn't affect much in the long run. Some sodium-induced water gain and food weight, and a few day back on track and it can be gone. Even at Christmas/New Year's, I overate for several days at a time. While I didn't stick with my deficit, (I didn't even log much, really), I did maintain my weight overall. I find it very much worth it to enjoy myself (okay, totally indulge myself!) here and there and get right back on track, than to just get depressed about it and continue the behavior day after day. I used to get derailed like that as well.

I do have a problem with the term "binge", though. I never consider the times that I overeat as "binges", maybe because there's a negative conotation I remember from when I was a teenager hearing about people binging and purging. I know this is a particular ED some people have. For myself, I just figure there are going to be some days, especially when restricting and then coming upon a holiday or special occasion, when I'm just plain going to eat over my maintenance calories. It could be 500 calories over, or it could be 1500 calories over. Still, even 1500 over would only take 3 days at my regular deficit eating to get back to where I was. I just never consider myself "binging", but maybe it's just a mental block, and that really is what it's called?

CattOfTheGarage

I think people mean different things by "binging" - for me, there's got to be some element of feeling "out of control" for me to call it a binge - otherwise it's just eating more than I intended to.

TheBrocheter

I used to be in the mindset of "Wellp, I had a ton of peanut butter might as well finish the jar." Counting my binges really helps me get perspective of them.

leejoyce31

lightenup2016 wrote: »

I'm with you! This time around, I've logged my overeating, and while it's amazing how much more I can eat compared with my deficit days, it's also amazing how that one time really doesn't affect much in the long run. Some sodium-induced water gain and food weight, and a few day back on track and it can be gone. Even at Christmas/New Year's, I overate for several days at a time. While I didn't stick with my deficit, (I didn't even log much, really), I did maintain my weight overall. I find it very much worth it to enjoy myself (okay, totally indulge myself!) here and there and get right back on track, than to just get depressed about it and continue the behavior day after day. I used to get derailed like that as well.

I do have a problem with the term "binge", though. I never consider the times that I overeat as "binges", maybe because there's a negative conotation I remember from when I was a teenager hearing about people binging and purging. I know this is a particular ED some people have. For myself, I just figure there are going to be some days, especially when restricting and then coming upon a holiday or special occasion, when I'm just plain going to eat over my maintenance calories. It could be 500 calories over, or it could be 1500 calories over. Still, even 1500 over would only take 3 days at my regular deficit eating to get back to where I was. I just never consider myself "binging", but maybe it's just a mental block, and that really is what it's called?

I agree totally. I overindulge up to over 4,000 calories hormonally. I never call it binging for the same reasons.

AnnPT77

So true. Measure it, and it just becomes part of the fun science-fair project for grown-ups.

You can see how many much weight it added like you did, or estimate days delay it caused in reaching final goal (not many), estimate how long it will take to get back to previous weight (not long), etc. It enters the realm of "can't do that very often", and gets rid of "I've ruined evvvvverrrrrything!".

Good insight.

nowine4me

I finally came to the same realization this year. It's truly liberating. It's also really helpful go go back and look at patterns over time. Great insights OP.

JeromeBarry1

Hooray! Being honest and truthful with the food diary and yourself is the necessary key to success.

katjennings

This is life changing for me. Tracking has been a huge emotional struggle for me. If I can't get it perfect I don't want to do it. This perspective helps.

Vorenus85

You almost sounded like you were in total control of your "binge", which is probably a good thing. When I binge I devour everything in sight, and then I keep doing that for hours. I don't think I bother to even care about tracking anything after a certain point (not that it would even be easy to). I think my binges easily exceed 10k calories in the course of a day. What I do is probably more on the spectrum of disordered eating, which I should probably be seeking help for.