binge eating

Are you feeling deprived throughout the day? I tend to binge if I really want something I won't give in to, then I eat everything else BUT that. I find hot chocolate helps with my sweet tooth and fills me up. Also, I tried to give up diet soda at the beginning of the year (I LOVE my diet coke) and during those few weeks I realized that I wasn't craving sweets as much. I came to the conclusion that those studies that say diet soda makes you eat more because it increases your brains desire for sweets.

This has so been my problem forever. I'll eat just silly amounts of chips, chocolate and ice cream. Since I never buy that crap at the grocery, when I binge, I'll actually have to drive to a gas station at night to load up on that stuff. I by no means have this beat, but a couple things seem to help. When I feel it coming on:

Visualize the amount of exercise it takes to burn off a thousand calories (not to mention that it's mostly all fat calories)

Step on the scale. Just actually doing that can be a wake up call.

Brush your teeth and take a hard look in the mirror. This is one of the best things I do when I feel it coming.

I know that my binges are almost always brought on by either boredom or when I'm bummed out. Get on these boards or the Beachbody boards and read. Post. Talk to people to help their problems, you'll find when you work to motivate others, you actually get more motivated yourself!

Hope it helps out. I've had B.E.D. for several years, and while I seem to usually have it under control, it never totally goes away.


Steve

VERY good point on the motivating others. When I started falling off the wagon a few months back motivating my friends really helped me get back on track.

I also forgot to add, I don't keep junk in my house. My hubby doesn't like it and my daughter will be raised knowing "mommy can't have that stuff in the house". I just don't buy it and once my daughter is in bed I can't go anywhere (my hubby works nights) so I'm stuck with what we've got!

I also binge eat late night. Well I just snack. I know why I do it and it's basically because I work nights 3x a week and on those nights my schedule for eating is totally out of whack, so when I get home at 11:00 I want a snack. The last meal I have eaten is usually between 6 and 6:30pm so after working the past 4 hrs I am hungry. What I used to do was pick up something sweet to snack on from work and bring it home or stop at DD and get my coffee and a donut. Now I only snack on dry cereal be it SpecialK or Fiber One. I also use this snack time to read my book. It really is the only way I can wind down enough to get tired. I no longer stop by DD for a Great One anymore. Now I come home and make a cup of coffee or tea in my Keurig. Like right now I am dying for a snack of cereal buy I have already gone over my calories (-57) for the day. What to do...What to do!!! Working a mixed schedule is very hard when trying to eat healthy. On Thursday night I never got a chance to eat dinner as I am a retail manager and if it's busy then I am busy. My job does not entitle me to a punch out sit down and eat dinner break, sometimes it takes me 45minutes to an hr to eat a salad if its busy. So of course on Thursday night I came home from work and had a decent size bowl of Capn Crunch ( the one non healthy cereal that I have in the house no doubt). It made me feel guilty but I was starving at this point and a salad was just not in the works at that time...LOL....Oh well retail management sux for the healthy wannabes!!!

I had this problem for ages, and while occasionally it resurfaces with dry cereal at 3am I've pretty much got it under control now. The things that help/helped me were

making sure your hydrated, the whole hunger/thirst confusion thing brought it on for me a few time

eating seadily throughout the day, and realising that if i was going to be coming home in the early hours of the morning, i would be hungry, so bringing a snack to have while i was out that would stop me from being hungry, or planning and prepreparing what I could eat so that it fit into what I was doing

exercise also helps, even something as gentle as yoga so it doesn't disrupt sleep patterns, distracts you and incrases body temperatue which makes you feel less like eating

making sure you get enough sleep, as lack of energy due to fatigue can trigger


i suppose you need to find out what your triggers are, hunger, boredom, fatigue, thirst and then find ways to overcome them

good luck.

I really don't eat that many sweets anymore. Usually a yogurt, diet soda, a piece of fruit, or a cup of coffee with yummy tasting creamer will do it. Sometimes I find when I feel hungry, I'm actually thirsty. Try drinking a bottle of cold water and see if the hunger goes away. The other thing you really need to do is spread your food out throughout the day so you don't run out of cals 4 hours before bed. The cereal is healthier than most things you can snack on but you need to make allowances for it in your daily cals.

See my brief advice to sdwelk11 (things I learned here or elsewhere) in

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/80619-no-late-night-junk-snacking-feb-8-14

and feel free to challenge yourself and join us this week (link on the 2nd page of thechallenge).

I really have a problem and maybe you guys can help. Every time I binge eat I feel so horrible and abnormal (which is why this group helps) and vow to never do it again. Problem is that the next time I have that urge, nothing gets in my way. People talk about doing a distracting activity and waiting... well I've waited for up to an hour and that urge doesn't go away until I eat whatever it is my mouth can already taste inside of it.

Does anyone else have this tick??! It's like the undeniable urge to eat whatever it is your mind wants to eat. It has nothing to do with physiological hunger - it's all emotional. And you have no idea when the urge will subside - sometimes it's not until AFTER the bag of granola, 5 chocolate chip cookies and two bowls of cereal. And sometimes, like today, a small plate of nuts and raisins will suffice (that is, until after already consuming 4 luna bars in one day).

How can I kill this itch without food??
Sometimes I wish I were addicted to something that didn't make me fat (then again, any addiction is horrible, and food is probably as good as it gets as far as addictions go).