Reasons behind a binge?

So many reasons:

-Boredom
-Emotional eating--which could be literally ANY emotion. Anxiety, sadness, anger, happiness, fear, love, etc.
-Undereating for a period before the binge occurred
-Not undereating, but having too restrictive a diet that is mainly comprised of things you don't like much but feel you "need" to be eating while forsaking all treats and favorite foods

If you can, try to think about what happened just before the binge. See if you can identify anything you were feeling. Write down what happened immediately before the binge (were you watching TV, talking to someone, reading, doing something with your kids, ruminating about some issue or problem or your workday? Whatever it was, write it down). It's good to write own what happened just prior because many emotional eaters have buried so many feelings for so long that they honestly couldn't tell you what they felt when the binge began, but keeping a log can start to show a pattern of stressful situations and start to help identify the feelings and triggers.

Also take a look back at your diary and see if you may have been undereating or being too restrictive in some way. Either of those situations can instigate a binge.

Hang in there--one bad day is not going to ruin your weight loss. It's a bump in the road and we all have them. Learning how to recover from the bumps is a huge part of learning how to be more healthy. You can do it!

- Boredom
- Coping with emotion
- Deprivation (If I put myself on a crazy strict diet, it generally ends with a binge)

I don't really have any helpful answers to your question, but I want you to know that I am going through the same thing! You are not the only one. It actually helps me to know someone else is going through the same thing. We can get through it!

I found this article to be very interesting:


Positive Energy: The Third Prescription

© Dr. Judith Orloff MD
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The following is one in an ongoing series of columns entitled Ask Dr. Orloff about Intuitive Healing by Dr. Judith Orloff MD.View all columns in series
Adapted from Positive Energy Harmony Books, April, 2004

As a psychiatrist and intuitive, I know that there is more to overeating and obesity that meets the eye. One big reason that many diets fail is that traditional weight loss programs don't factor in how we process subtle energy, what Chinese medicine terms life force or chi. Subtle energy penetrates and surround the body. Sensitive people who I call intuitive empaths unknowingly overeat in response to being overwhelmed by negative vibes. Empaths not only can sense energy around them, they absorb it into their bodies. If this is you, Positive Energy will teach you to center and protect yourself when the impulse to overeat hits.

Here’s the energetic premise of obesity: When empaths are thin they have less padding, are more vulnerable to soaking up negative vibes. For instance, early twentieth century faith healers were renowned for being grossly obese to avoid absorbing their patient’s symptoms-a common trap I've seen modern-day healers also unconsciously fall into; food is a convenient grounding device. Similarly, many of my patients pack on pounds to protect against overwhelming vibes, massive or minute. Energy is at the root of an empath’s hunger. Whether your sensitivity to negative vibes is minimal or intense, for a diet to succeed it's important to develop alternative coping strategies other than overeating. In my book I will show you how to cope with negative vibes without abusing food. Whether accosted by an angry colleague or global threat, apply them immediately. Stick to those that work best for you.

8 Emergency Intervention to Halt Energetic Eating

When the impulse to overeat hits:

Identify an Addictive Craving from a True Need
Addictive craving, a symptom of nutritional abuse, is a frequent response to energetic overload. Bottomline, you eat certain foods like a drug addict; this leads to obesity. Cravings feel intense: whenever you keep lusting after sweets and carbs especially, be suspicious. (I’ve yet to see someone binge on brussel sprouts!) For instance, chocolate turns from simple pleasure to crutch when you gorge on it, use it to self-medicate stress, or to get a sugar high--also if you experience mood-swings, sugar hang-overs, can’t control your intake, or it makes you sick. With cravings, you eat to relieve stress, not to build energy. Try to identify addictive foods, and limit them.

A true nutritional need lacks such sturm and drang: there’s no lusting or lunging for food to guard against negative energies. A true need comes from a centered place, has nothing to do with soothing our emotions (comfort foods) or obsession.. Feeling healthily nurtured from food never involves moodswings--sedation or elation--rather an even feeling of satisfaction. A true need lets you enjoy your meal, optimizes energy, and doesn’t lead to obesity.

Quickly pinpoint energetic stressors that trigger addictive cravings
Immediately ask yourself: Have I been exposed to bad vibes? A loud- mouth neighbor. An ordeal to pass through airport security. A siege of overbearing phone messages from your mother. Don’t write off the “smaller” incidents which notoriously send empaths motoring to the refrigerator. Avoid panic. Methodically pinpoint cause and effect. You don’t have to be victimized by negative energy. The trick is to clear it as soon as possible once you’ve been slimed.

Breathe Negative Vibes Out of Your System
Take a five minute break for damage control. Slowly inhale and exhale. As you’ve learned, breath activates positive energy; it also releases negative vibes. Notice if they get stuck in a specific part of your body. For instance, negative vibes go straight to my gut; I feel irradiated by a toxic stun gun. Identify your vulnerable points. Then practice this visualization: Just as your lungs take in oxygen and expel toxic carbon dioxide, you’re going to breathe in light and clarity, breathe out stress. Breathe in vitality. Breathe out fear. I also visualize negative vibes exiting through the spaces between the vertebrae in my lower back. You can try this too. Breathing out toxic vibes is a proactive cleansing process. You're in charge of the flow. Allow well-being to permeate every inch of you. Repeat this exercise until you’re free of negative residue.

Pray to Release the Addictive Craving
If you're gripped by a craving, go into praying-mode. For a few quiet moments breath slowly. Bring your awareness to your heart, and aim for self-compassion. The craving may feel impossible to handle, but that’s okay. In this calm state ask your higher power lift it from you. No mental nudging needed. If you surrender your ego-involvement, this simple heartfelt request works like a charm. What you're doing is calling on a cosmically influential positive energy to supplant a material-world negative drive.

Take a bath or shower
A speedy way to dissolve negative vibes is to immerse yourself in water. My tub is my refuge after a busy day: it washes away everything from bus exhaust to long hours of air travel, to personal unpleasantness. While you relax water works on you. It has alchemical cleansing properties which will purify your physical body and energy field.

Burn sage
Just because vibes are invisible doesn’t mean you don't eat over them. Try burning sage to counteract negative energy someone deposits in your office or home--a strategy that has kept pounds off my patients with a lot of people-contact in their space. Vibes accumulate, can cause stress if not eradicated. You may not realize that left-over subtle energies trigger addictive eating patterns, but these vibes subliminally wear at you. Sage has been used by ancients cross-culturally to purify locations. Burn it, and the desire to eat over lurking negative vibes will wane.

Visualize a Protective Shield Around you
Visualize white light surrounding every inch of you from head to toe so that negative energy cannot penetrate this shield and deplete your energy.

Eat with Attunement
Develop a diet that satisfies your energetic needs. I’d like energy to motivate why you eat, more important than taste or any dietary dogma--a priority to impart to children. Whatever you put in you mouth, run by your energy meter; see what truly nourishes or depletes. Even foods you’ve shunned become more attractive when your experience their energy lift.

Food is no place to be passive. The interventions offered in Positive Energy will allow you to an active stance in eating healthily. You don’t have to let poisonous energy lodge itself in you. To stay on top of your eating, do a daily check-in. Stay alert for cravings prompted by negative vibes. Watch your responses. I promise, your eating habits will change.

Judith Orloff, M.D. is a board-certified psychiatrist and a medical intuitive. This article is adapted from her newest book, Positive Energy: Ten Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength and Love (Harmony Books). She's also written the bestsellers Guide to Intuitive Healing and Second Sight. Dr. Orloff is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and an international workshop leader. For more information on Dr. Orloff's workshops and national book tour schedule visit www.drjudithorloff.com.

Alcohol. I'm always convinced I need to eat something if I'm a little tipsy. Drives me crazy. As if the alcohol calories I'm getting aren't enough!!! >:(

bump

I eat angry. Something I have to be aware of if I have a rough day and can't resolve things before late evening.

Triggers for my binges include

Overly hungry due to not planning properly

Tired

Stress or emotional hunger

Boredom

Identifying your triggers may seem difficult at first. Often, you may think that binges just pop out of the blue and you may not be able to see the real cause. The truth is that they don't just appear unexpectedly. They may not be planned but there is definitely a template that leads to them.

Try keeping an emotion journal along with your food journal. Track your emotions throughout the day and around the times that you are eating. This may help you to recognize what is eating you when you start heading toward that binge.

(((hugs)))

I have been there many times myself, my heart goes out to you.

I binge but that's because I do intermittent fasting. I've always been a binge eater my entire life and trying to eat 6 meals a day is just a tease to me. So instead of trying to fight what I've always been doing since i was a kid, i found an eating habit that goes along well with my binge and still allows me to lose weight.

I'm reading Women Food and God by Geneen Roth it's a light read but addresses why we use food. This is my second time re-reading and working on my food with MFP I'm beginning to understand why I turned to food all those years. It's not about the food. The reason is within. I'm learning slowly.