Binge Eating... Do you Own up?

taunto

I coulda sworn you were talking about PMS in the first paragraph. I was wondering like.. wtf

But yeah. I actually had my first binge after a very long time yesterday. Like after 6 months or so. I logged it. My family knew about it. My sister in law is an amazing person and she knows (even though she never talks about it) that I try and control myself etc so yesterday when I told her "I have no idea why I am so hungry" she didn't said a word and anytime I'd ask for some grub, she's grab me something.

The rest of my family isn't very supportive but, since this isn't about them, I don't really care. I logged my food in the diary, it was close to 4,000 calories and I am sure I can get to that much today too. Its fine. I don't feel ashamed of my food. Log it, ask your supporters (mine would be my MFPers) and keep moving. Tomorrow is another days.

I have owned up to eating 6500 calories before joining MFP. I logged my 4500 calories binges. Nobody said anything but supportive. Own up to it. You will feel AMAZING! I promise.

Good luck

taunto

There seems to be a strong component here related to guilty eating.
How many of you feel guilty about eating food you shouldn't even when you are either within your calories or just slightly above.

I'm not trying to be reductive, but am trying to understand the thinking that goes on during a binge.

There WERE times when I would be under the calories yet feel bad about eating foods. Thankfully MFP have taught me better.

Now the only time I feel guilty about food is when I eat something nasty and waste my calories on something that didn't tasted good. I sometimes feel bad about eating something that was a norm and later realizing that I coulda saved my calories for something yummier.

x_ItNeverEnds_x

Normally I do it in secret, but I can binge while standing right beside him and he'd wouldn't notice. I know, I have sat right beside him and eaten a whole large pizza and then icecream and more stuff. He doesn't say anything if he does notice. Normally it's in secret and I take a bag up to my room and throw all the trash in it and hide it till i can sneak it to the trashcan.

No we don't talk about it. I have a few people on here I talk to about it. No one I know in real life.

spamantha57

I don't really talk about it but if it gets brought up I don't hide it... Well normally anyway. I guess depending on the severity. For example, I wouldn't want my mom to worry about me or something.

Someone asked what people consider a binge, like how many calories. I kinda laughed to myself: The last thing I'd be doing is counting calories.
Sometimes you eat, & eat, & then you start to get full, & eat more, & then make room, & then eat more... But that's kinda more of a severe form of binging.

orangesmartie

If your spouse is around, will you not binge?
No, when my partners are around, i tend to go the other way. They are convinced i 'eat like a bird'. but i make a conscious effort to eat what i consider 'normal'. But there have been times when i fantasise about what I'll binge in after they're gone or what I'll stop for when I'm driving home.

Do you hide your food packaging?
Yep, even though I live alone, so won't get 'caught', i still put the rubbish straight out in the outside bins, so i can't see it. I am very much a 'secret eater' though. I have anxieties about eating in front of people i don't know very well (like at work) so i'll just nibble, then stuff my face as soon as I get home.

Does your spouse know about it?
No, noone in my life knows except my MFPs and my personal trainer. I'm too ashamed to admit it to people who know me for real, I think it will change how they think about me. After all, how hard is it not to put food in your mouth?

Do you talk about it? To who? Therapist?
No, i don't talk about it. I'm on the waiting list for therapy, still got about 6 months to wait. My GP is not very understanding on this issue.

Since joining MFP I am more aware of my binge eating behaviour. I am an emotional eater, I eat when happy/sad/stressed/angry/tired. So now i try not to have junk food in the house so if i feel a binge coming on, the food is healthier. But there are occasions when they need for junk is so overwhelming that I have to go out to the shop and buy chocolate/ice cream/crisps whatever I'm craving.

For me, binging isn't so much about the food being eaten but the complete loss of control. Even though my brain is telling me I'm full and not hungry, i can't stop myself eating, just shovelling in, fast. I don't even taste it. Its just got to be in mouth as fast as possible.

I can't have a packet of biscuits in the house. If i eat one, i have to eat the whole packet. They call to me. My whole brain is focused on the packet in the cupboard. I can't concentrate on anything until they're gone. Sometimes i just take the packet to the outside bin. Sometimes, i eat them all. Its like an obsession If I'm at work and I hear there's cake somewhere, my brain can;t think of anything else and it takes every ounce of willpower not to go get some. Sometimes i win, sometimes cake wins.

lolollama

I am so sick of being a binge eater. I will control myself and be so good all day, I even manage to have a healthy dinner. As soon as 9pm hits I turn into some kind of insane binge eating monster and I will devour anything and everything in the house.

I can't keep bad food in the house or I will eat it all in one night. I will have a full meal after i've already had dinner and I'm not even hungry. I feel like I can't control myself no matter how hard I try. I feel unbelievably guilty and I hide all evidence of my binges.

My boyfriend works away during the week and when he came home for the weekend he saw that I had eaten almost all the mayonnaise (the really evil stuff) and asked me about it. Well I just lost it and ran away crying which left him standing there confused haha.
Anyway to answer your question I don't own up to it and log it. I figure it will just make me more depressed :S

lambchoplewis

When I binge I eat a normal amount of food, then a normal amount of another food, then another food. For example, I might have a bowl of salad, then 2 cookies, then a bowl of soup, then carrot sticks, then a zuchinni, maybe a bowl of chips. Just keep going back for more.

That is exactly what I do when I binge; I don't have the excuse of PMS as I am postmenopausal. I think for me it is a habit when I am bored, lonely or upset and there is no one at home to stop me. And yes I used to hide what I ate from others frequently..
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This is me!! I am post menepausal and binge when bored and lonely. My hubby travels and works a lot so... sometimes around 4:00 I am done with everything for the day, and it starts. I eat until I am sick - I know it is over 5000 calories!!! I get depressed and want to go to bed. I wish I did not do this as it takes 3 days to feel good again.

tammihart

YES! I usually binge in the afternoon. I have an in home daycare and will go to the kitchen and eat something, and just keep going back (cookies, candy, cake, ice cream, chips its always junk food) . Its crazy I am hiding it from toddlers! I think it might be stress related because it seems to be on crazy days, with extra kids or crying babies that I can't calm down.

Do I tell anyone? NO this actually the FIRST time I have admitted it.

redflame

I used to be incredibly secretive about it, and still am sometimes. But now, I have a very supportive boyfriend who understands, but at the same time doesn’t baby me for it. Now, if I binge, I force myself to log it all on here, and I text him to tell him. He gives me back the perspective on the situation which helps in a huge way, as otherwise I tend to wallow in it and it turns into self pity. I’ve been having therapy for 12 months for another issue, but the binge eating has come up and I understand it a lot more now.

diadojikohei

It took me a long time to realise I am a binge eater. I haven't spoken to anyone about it but I've replied to a few posts on the subject.

I can't find a pattern to my binges and I'm just as likely to binge on a punnet of grapes as I am on crisps or sweets. I always do it alone, and it has a cycle, something sweet, something savoury, something sweet etc. I can hoover up a large packet of crisps in about 60 seconds and inhale a bar of chocolate before most people have got the wrapper off!
I try to log it, just to shock myself into how much I've eaten, and it has helped me manage it a bit better. I have fewer binges now.

mogletdeluxe

Regarding the mentality of a binge, for me it's not related to calorie count as such - rather the way it makes me feel. Does the need feel urgent, forbidden - and then the subsequent comedown leave me with guilt and shame? Then yeah, it's a binge. My last binge was a few weeks ago with 10 ginger nut biscuits. Not a massive calorie count, but excessive and uncalled for, and certainly down to my loss of control (my binges of old were far larger, and far more frequent. But, for me, a binge is a binge is a binge).

I often binge alone, unless it's a party with a buffet, for example. Then it seems perfectly acceptable to go back for thirds. I actually am worse at buffets these days than when I was fat, as I was painfully aware that I would be a parody of a Fat Chick.

I am in a long-distance relationship and see my partner every other weekend. I train hard every day, so when I go to see him I tend to ease off a little for some serious R&R (he's adamant that I relax a bit on our weekends, for my own good). Our weekends largely involve long strolls, punctuated by pints in the pub and comfort food. Prime example - we were cuddled up on the sofa munching on pizza, salted peanuts and Dairy Milk on Saturday. I don't doubt that I went over my calorie goal. But he has taught me to realise that, personally, it's not the end of the world. I won't be Fat Girl all over again because I put a few more slices in my gob.

But! He knows I will get a little antsy, and therefore will pack our rucksacks and we'll go for a long, leisurely walk the next day.

In sharing my anxieties about binging and overeating, I've managed to feel a lot more in control of the situation and thankful that someone has listened without judgement. Binging was one of my greatest shames, and by being more open about it (and logging them when they happen) makes me feel like I have some semblance of control.

irenematilda

I've always had a tendency to binge eat, but it's been such a part of my life for the last six years that the binges have been virtually end to end, and I'm amazed that I haven't binged once yet since starting with MFP.

My food issues go back decades, literally, but I gave it some real thought over Christmas and did manage to get a handle on what's prompted me to stack on most of my excess weight and what I've been doing to encourage it. Six years back, I was a single parent and was so broke that there was one time when me and the kids spent two weeks living on not much more than slowly rotting peaches and the half a dozen ready meals that I'd had stashed away in the freezer for emergencies. I'll never forget how the baby cried because all I had to give her was a pre-packed chili that was too spicy for her, and how soul-destroyingly bad I felt about it. This is not intended to be a sob story, but to shed some light on what happened next.

Not long after that, I got with my husband and we ended up living close to a huge 24/7 hypermarket on the edge of town. At a certain time twice a day, morning and evening, they mark the the perishable food down in price, often quite substantially. Fruit, vegetables, sometimes the meat and fish, creamy dairy puddings etc and cakes and buns. Especially cakes and buns. Sigh. Finances had improved, and I began to pride myself on just how much food I could get for our money by being in the right place at the right time. There were always pasta salads in the fridge (drowning in highly calorific dressings) and sugary chilled desserts, and a big pile of cakes and pastries on the back of the counter that never seemed to go down - all boasting vibrant stickers which told of how cheap they were.

And of how close they were to the 'eat by' date too, which was where it was all going horribly wrong. There's actually only so much that a family with normal appetites can eat, and I hate waste. The only thing I hate more than food getting wasted is listening to my husband banging on about how much HE hates food getting wasted. Keen to prove to him, that my 'bargains' weren't getting wasted, I'd spend all my time eating them myself - but having to pretend that everybody else was eating them too. I became an expert at taking a dessert out of the fridge and sticking two in my pockets while nobody was looking, or carrying a doughnut through the lounge in a really deep bowl so no-one would notice that there were another couple stashed underneath it (I always eat upstairs away from the family - I've had a problem with eating in front of people all my adult life, and they're used to it).

A lot of the time I didn't even want the stuff, but I was so determined to get my bargains that sometimes I'd even stash a few cakes in my handbag before I got home so that my husband wouldn't see them and complain about how we couldn't possibly eat everything I was buying. And then I'd feel obliged to eat them in secret before they went stale whether I wanted them or not. You'd have thought it would have taken me a lot less than six years to cotton on that this wasn't normal behaviour, but no. As long as food was coming into the house, I didn't care. I didn't tell anyone, much less my husband. It's only recently that I've realised that a lot of it was down to an unacknowledged dread of being left to feed the kids rotten peaches again.

Understanding why has made a huge difference. I let the pile of cakes on the counter dwindle to nothing in January, and haven't bought any more. It says a lot that not only has nobody complained, nobody has even noticed. I still find it hard to resist a 'reduced' sticker, but I'm a lot more careful about what I give into now and give into a lot less. This morning's haul amounted to four boxes of end-of-line energy bars with a very long date on them, a low calorie betroot salad and the reduced price stewing steak that we're having for tea. I can't call myself a reformed character though, because even though I stay within my calorie allowance most days I find it really difficult to take food from the kitchen without hiding what I'm doing.

I doubt I've knocked the bingeing on the head entirely, but I'm definitely trying to make better choices now. Thanks to the OP for asking, and sorry you almost got a novel back in response. I meant it when I said I'd never told anyone and I know I never will, but I think that getting it out there somewhere is one more step towards getting it gone

patty1138

Bump

BeachGingerOnTheRocks

I haven't "binge eaten" in a very long time. At least not how I would define it. I exceeded my calorie intake this weekend by several hundred calories on Friday and Saturday, but it was a planned event that I allowed myself.

When I was having a particularly bad day, I would leave the office early and eat fast food in my car in a parking lot somewhere, dispose of the food bags and go back to work. Then I would pretend it didn't happen and go to lunch with my co-workers and eat whatever we decided as a group to eat. When I got back to the office, I would get in the elevator, find a different floor from my office, and I would go purge. After all that, I would find someone to lie to about the whole event -- tell them that I was skipping dinner or that I had skipped breakfast. Then I would go home and tell whoever would listen that I had skipped lunch and was starved for a big dinner out.

The lying was almost as important as the eating. It used to be a serious problem for me and often ended with me trying to purge, with panic attacks, anger, grief, and more stress. Then I would cycle back into taking diet pills and starving myself. It took me years to overcome this.

Valerie_Malone

I'm guilty of this as well... It usually happens when I get home from work. I know I have a good 45 minutes before my husband comes home, that's when I strike, start stuffing my face with whatever little snacks I can find in the pantry. I just joined a gym, so now instead of going home and binging, I go straight to the gym from work. This is the greatest deterrent for me so far, but it's only been since Monday that I've started going to the gym.

suewestcountry

I have always been a binge eater but last night was the first time since December 2012 I had a very stressful day didnt eat anything because I was so stressed then last thing I ate a whole pack of weight watchers chocolate biscuits. It obviously didnt take me over my limits as I hadnt eaten but I felt so bad that I had let myself down.

goldiejoe

My food issues go back decades, literally, but I gave it some real thought over Christmas and did manage to get a handle on what's prompted me to stack on most of my excess weight and what I've been doing to encourage it. Six years back, I was a single parent and was so broke that there was one time when me and the kids spent two weeks living on not much more than slowly rotting peaches and the half a dozen ready meals that I'd had stashed away in the freezer for emergencies. I'll never forget how the baby cried because all I had to give her was a pre-packed chili that was too spicy for her, and how soul-destroyingly bad I felt about it. .... As long as food was coming into the house, I didn't care. I didn't tell anyone, much less my husband. It's only recently that I've realised that a lot of it was down to an unacknowledged dread of being left to feed the kids rotten peaches again.

Thank you for your honesty and I have to say I identified with your feeling of desperation of being hungry and not having enough. I do get very panic-y when I fear my need to eat will not be met. Thinking out loud here, but for me, maybe the memories of starving when poor and the memories of starving when dieting somehow get all mixed together in my head. I really hate to be hungry and I have to promise myself that I'll eat, that I won't go back into the starvation mode super low calorie diets I've endured in the past.

Wow! I'm surprised at my emotional response to what you wrote and the feelings it stirred up in me.

sgv0918

binging is in the eye of the beholder....its all very personal. When i am emotionally and i cram food down my throat, regardless of calorie count, its a binge to me. 2 candybars for breakfast, half a banana cream pie at midnight. both binges for me.

PonyTailedLoser

It's a secret when it happens. I'm sneaky

SoDamnHungry

Everyone knows I binge eat. My coworkers see it, my family sees it, and at the very least, I talk about it with my friends. I think that it isn't treated as shamefully for thinner people as it is for overweight people. Please note that I don't think it's a shameful thing for anyone; it just happens and it sucks and it makes you feel bad.
But with thin people, others don't take it as seriously. "Oh, so what if you ate 7 doughnuts in a sitting? You're skinny." Whereas if I was overweight, it seems likely people would be more critical: "You ate 7 doughnuts in one sitting? You need to stop that. No wonder you're overweight." They're dismissive when the person is thin even though that person is struggling, and they're critical when someone is overweight and struggling.