Hey everyone. I'm brand new to the group but I like what I've seen so far! You all seem so supportive and that is a really great thing to see!

I was wondering if anyone has any kind of personal strategy to keep from binge-eating. I think I've pretty much been a binge-eater all my life, even as a kid, and I've noticed that at least for me, there are patterns. I've found that the longer I wait between meals, the more food I want to eat at the next meal. The worst days are when I accidentally can't eat during work, so I go almost 10 hours with no food. Guess where my next stop is after that? Straight to the fast food joint around the corner, and I always end up with WAY more food than I should. Another pattern I have noticed is that when I am by myself, I tend to binge more because there is no one else around to see and judge me. That's when I devour entire pizzas, or eat a whole loaf of pound cake, or an entire bag of chips. I know it hurts me in so many ways, but once the craving is in my head, sometimes I just can't get away from it.

I've heard that the best way to change a habit is to change other stuff in your life first. If you make good choices around the habit, then eventually you'll start to make better choices about the habit. So I make myself concentrate on eating small meals more frequently instead of thinking about trying not to binge, and so far that has worked really well for me. I don't want to eat too much for breakfast when there is the promise of a delicious lunch waiting in a couple of hours. I don't want to fill up on lunch because I know that we will be having something awesome for dinner.

I still go through periods where my brain wants as much food as I can fit in my mouth, but I'm down to the point where I can only "binge" on like three pieces of pizza instead of the whole box because I get full too quickly. Mostly I think I've just tricked my brain into thinking about eating more meals instead of thinking about eating more food in one sitting. MyFitnessPal has also been a really amazing tool to have, because it helps me plan out how much I'm allowed to have at each meal. By planning out how many calories I'm allowed to "spend" on my meals, I make sure that I don't go over my goals each day. I also have become somewhat of a cheapskate about my calories, because I feel cheated when I eat something that's really delicious, but not delicious enough to be worth the amount of calories I had to use on it. Like with money, I don't like when my food is too calorie-expensive!

So what strategies have you found that help? Do you have any advice for coping with binge-eating?

Thanks for being such an awesome group of people!!!