Need to hear from former bingers/food addicts

Therapy was really helpful for me. My therapist taught me that it was never about the food. I was eating to fill something in my heart that was never going to be filled with ice cream. I highly recommend talking with someone. They can help you develop new coping mechanisms and get to the root of why you binge. Good luck! :flowerforyou:

I've been known to binge eat..................I make sure not to have the food that I would Binge on and I too brush/floss my teeth as soon as I'm done eating dinner as a way of preventing a binge in the evening.

For me personally, I can't just have one piece of candy.....................so I don't start eating it at all. One piece leads to 2 and so on!

Find something else that you enjoy doing and do that when you feel like binging...........I grab my nook and start walking on my treadmill as a leisurely pace.

Buy smaller portions, and prelog your food for the day. This has been very effective for me.

If I NEED ice cream, I can go buy either a pint or a single serve portion. I stick it in the freezer, and cheer myself on for putting it away. Then I log it first thing in the morning, planning the rest of my food around it. High carb and fat, so I get a chicken breast instead of coconut peanut butter sandwich for lunch.

I have a Snickers egg in my desk that I look at several times a day, just so I can cheer myself for not eating it. One morning, I will log it and see if I can hold off until after dinner. No problem if I give in early- I allowed for it- but YAY me if I can wait.

Basically, I make a game of it where I am always the winner.

If I go full out binge, I work out extra hard the next week, maybe let my net calories dip into the 1100s for a few days, and balance it out over a week. You can't work off a binge in a day, but you can always salvage the week.

I used to love to eat giant portions. I knew that I was full but I kept eating anyway and dealt with the consequences later. What worked for me was just trying to get under my calorie goal every day. I started out eating around 1520 calories. This was not easy. It definitely showed me that I needed to cut out calorie dense junk food and find something that would keep me full. In the beginning it was a struggle to stay under my goal because I was so used to eating enormous amounts.

But then my stomach shrank! I got used to eating a reasonable amount of food and now I get full much faster. The exercise and specific health foods came later. For me the added calories that I get to eat after working out is a great motivator.

It seems like you have gotten the first step down.. admitting you have a problem haha. So now just try your hardest and focus on calorie goals. You will learn what foods and what schedule works for you. Don't keep junk food in the house. And keep busy so you're not sitting around snacking all day.

Best of luck!

I still do occasionally eat more than I want to so my advice is really not a cure.

I stopped buying the foods I would binge on. For awhile I had to keep nothing but fruit and veg and lean meat on hand. I still only buy a bag of chips or cookies on days when I know they are going to be consumed in one sitting and I try to be at peace with that and get back on track the next day. Accepting and forgiving the rare binge eating episode makes it easier to get over and avoid. The episodes are fewer and far in between when I accept and forgive versus when I would rant and rave against myself.

I would force myself to do other things when the need to binge would strike. If this means doing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush then that is what I would throw my focus at until the need to stuff myself would pass.

I keep a 'fat' picture on the fridge and look at it before I take second or third helpings of something.

Drink several glasses of water and then go to sleep. This is good for late night binge urges because my stomach feels full before I go to sleep.

I also saw a doctor and found out my thyroid was not working. I would excuse my eating because I thought "No amount of hard work takes the weight off, so who cares what I eat?" but now I know with medicine and hard work (theoretically) I can lose weight it is just very, very difficult.


I had little to no food at times when I was a child so I feel like binging was my way of trying to negate the food anxiety I used to suffer from. I was always scared about where my next meal would come from so when I got into foster care and got fed regularly, I overate. I went from a very thin, skeletal child to a very plump child quickly. No one was kind about this transformation. I started extreme food restriction in my early teens to alleviate the pressure that gaining weight had put on me.
Then I slipped back to overeating in my 20's when I couldn't keep up with restricting anymore.

To this day I have to have a full fridge and pantry or I get very anxious. Going to the grocery store and loading up a cart makes me feel amazing because I can provide. No one in my house goes hungry and that makes me feel successful. Spending money on food gives me a sense of being a good person and eating the food gives me more comfort so binging is really a coping mechanism I grasped when no other help was available. Unfortunately it became more harm than solution. I still have all those terrible feelings and want to smother them with food. I'm trying not to and more and more I'm succeeding.

Food issues are awfully complex so I hope I gave you a new perspective. Everyone who binges does it to fill some kind of need and not everyone's reason will be the same. Not everyone will know why they do it, but figuring out why you do helps you overcome it. Spend some time with your feelings and see what you come up with.

I can say that I am not tortally over binge eating, but it is getting fewer and farther between having a major binge day. Over the last year I really took a deep look at the pattern behind the binges and noticed two things-If I do not eat enough protein and feel like I am starving that will lead to a binge(I eat protein at 5 small meals a day now) and if I am stressed and turn to good ole favorites that contain wheat or are highly processed, it is all downhill from there(Ritz, brownies, honey bunches of oats are all major trigger foods for me). Not sure why certain foods set me off, but they ALWAYS do.....brownies.

Going cold turkey on sugar can 100% backfire because if you take away all that your body has been accustomed to at once, after a while the cravings will get horrendous......at least that is what happened to me.

The major things that helped me to get the binging under control was to break "habits of eating" which led to binging late at night and to really remind myself how much working out it takes to burn off food by adding it up along the way during a binge. Keeping stress low and not depriving yourself, but finding suitable low calorie alternatives should help.

Good luck and best wishes!

there are 12 step recover programs for food addiction. for me, i have had to continue to accept that i can't eat "trigger foods"
refined sugars and flours and reduce my fruits and certain carbs.
along with this on a daily basis i ask God to help me