Binge Eating

SarahJean23 · February 2011

I was trying to eat healthier this week. I bought fresh fruit, veggies, healthy snacks, and planned dinners for the week. Then on Saturday night I came home to 6 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and all my good intentions went out the window. Cookies are my favorite dessert and I have been devouring them like there's no tomorrow!

Most of my life I've been in constant competition for snack foods. Get to it first or don't get any; that's reality when you grow up with three siblings, two of them being boys! It's a hard habit to break, let me tell ya! Nowadays I compete with Ryan but it's completely unnecessary. Ryan is perfectly fine eating moderate amounts of snack foods. I bought Popchips this week and they were gone in 2 days.

They were just sooo good, and in moderation are good for you. They are the snack of choice for fitness guru Jillian Michaels. I just wanted to make sure I got enough of them even though Ryan told me didn't care for them. Ryan's snacks, on the other hand, will last him for weeks at a time! He's had a bag or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups sitting in our pantry for months and it's driving me crazy! If I wasn't allergic to peanuts, they would be gone. But the fact that it bothers me that they're still there tells me I have a problem! I actually get anxious about the snacks. I've considered hiding the snacks when we're running low. It's so bad that Ryan is forced to buy snacks I despise or am allergic to. How sad is that?! I'm convinced that if I wasn't an active person, I'd gain 20lbs in a month.

Does anyone else have the same problem? How do you cope?

Cice · February 2011

I have this same exact problem, I dont know why. The other day I bought a pack of 6 cupcakes and ate them all. I do this with just about anything thats candy or chocolate or icecream, or cookies.I just have to I have no idea why. Its some thing I cant get a handle on. I try to stop but then I am constantly thinking about it.

frubjious · February 2011

Hi,

I have a similar thing, if its in the house its gone. I can eat a lot and fast, its not just snacks for me I can clear a plate and start thinking of seconds before my stomach knows what happened. I'd love to say that I've developed self control but it's not happening (maybe a little). The only thing I can do is never buy multipacks, only buy small one off things and then make sure i have to walk to the shops to get them. My boyfriend has suggested buying snacks you need to make first like powdered brownie mix. That works quite well.

Hope that helps.

tinkerbell1964 · February 2011

it's all about will power , if you lack will power , then don't buy the snacks , simples ! I have a large bar of fruit and nut in my cupboard and i've made a promise to myself not to open it until i've lost all my goal weight ................... maybe you need to set yourself goals, or start parenting your inner child

fuzzymel · February 2011

I recongise this! For me the trigger is boredom. I have stopped having junk food in my house but found distracting myself the most sucessful way of stopping it.

Another way is to portion it out before you eat them. When you feel a snacking binge coming on just have that one portion.

honeypie03 · February 2011

I hear ya! I can toatally relate... my boyfriend has never had to diet, he's 6ft 4 and build like a rake lol, but he can eat for Scotland. I on the other hand am only 5ft 1 and in the last 3 years have put on 3 stone and I put this down to competing with him for the last sclice of pizza, which is usually mine anyway because he eats so fast. I decided that drastic times called for drastic measures.... I, like yourself have been trying to change my mindset about food because I do tend to binge eat. What I do now is eat 6 times per day... I have a shake for breakfast and herbal tea, a snack (which depending on my mood can be anything from a packet of crisps to an apple), then another shake for lunch, snack again, then a healthy dinner e.g. fish with rice and veg, and a snack before 8pm. I try to exercise for at least 30mins per day and eating regularly, while still encorporating a few naughty snacks 10% of the time has boosted my metabolism. One cheat day per month is also allowed, so schedule a day where you don't think about the calories and treat yourself to all those bad things you enjoy. It's all about balance... I'm at the begining of week two now and I've already lost 6lbs. Hope this helps x

Luisan · February 2011

Does anyone else have the same problem? How do you cope?

Take one when you're leaving home.
Put them apart to eat them after a couple of hours or after you got lo leave your house. Anxiety raises because you deny yourself some food. Try not to deny but to delay. Anxiety won't be so strong then and you got a good chance to remain in control.
Eat them as slowly as you can. Make one of them last as if you were eating a dozen. I really think mind counts the time you spend eating your food as a big part its first estimation for food intake (second would be the feeling of being "estomacly" full)....

kpnuts23 · February 2011

I sat down with my Mum on Saturday afternoon and told her i had a problem with Binging. She couldn't understand why and said "have more control"... but i dont, once i have a trigger food one day, thats it.. i feel like im on a serious food frenzy. I just want to eat everthing sweet i can find in the house.

I had the same problem back in September after a lovely holiday in France with my friends family. They love all fresh food.. but a lot of it.. it was heaven to me.. 1 week of lovely french food, bbq's and wine.. then i got home and i was in the same frame of mind and carried on munching my way through snack foods. It got to the point where i knew i would be going out to dinner and i'd be snacking on chocolate bars, biscuits right up until the moment i left the house to go and eat... usually pizza. I sat with my friend and told her i need to break this, so we shook on it... No chocolate or biscuits.. i didnt give myself a timescale to begin with, just thought i would see how long i could go for. So from October 2010 to 19th December i went cold turkey and didnt have anything that resembled a cookie, biscuit, cheesecake (biccy base) chocolate of any kind... instead if i had a serious sweet tooth craving i would turn to a granola cereal as it would never set off my binging. I lost 14lbs... Then it was christmas.. i enjoyed chocolate and biscuits.. but didnt have a blow out... put on 4lbs.. then it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago.. and for some reason or another i just didnt care, i would be eating large amounts of sweet treats till the point of feeling so sick.. This had to stop i kept telling myself. Also my boyfriend fractured his ankle 3 weeks ago so i took it apon myself to pick him up from work, spend the evening with him as he couldnt drive.. so that meant no gym for me.. ive put on another 3lbs.. Now being in the healthy BMI range, a couple of lbs is quite noticable (to me anyways) so im really frustrated with myself...:grumble:

Anyways, Sunday night, me and the boyfriend shook hands on it, NO chocolate or biscuits until easter.. get back down the gym and get myself back into shape (not his words.. mine... he said i dont need to worry.. but i do).

I know i have a problem with binging so i have to be extra careful with what i eat... 7-10 biscuits add up in a sitting.. especially the ones covered in chocolate or filled with buttercream.. your looking at 800-1000 cals over your daily allowance.. and a very bloated face and tummy... and thats before ive had the added chocolates.. :embarassed:

I know what i have to do to be healthy.. just got to stick at it..Being on this website for the last 2 1/2 years has been a complete learning curve and i will always be on a food journey... Im lucky to have so many lovely people supporting me.:flowerforyou:

Thanks for reading, im so glad i saw this post this morning, i needed to get this out... :frown:

lrns88 · February 2011

Love you and your honest kpnuts.......this is something I definitely battle with too. I had the weekend off healthy eating as it was birthday celebrations, but I logged what I ate and was quite shocked it wasn't as high as I thought it would be. Don't think this was good though, as now in the back of my mind I think ah well I can eat a bit more junk etc.........when I can't! I'm definitely an all or nothing kind of girl, so this week I'm concentrating on getting back to the nothing (even though I'm out again on Saturday, I'm getting myself mentally prepared for just allowing freedom between 6pm and 10am the next day!).

I find it really difficult to avoid the shame spiral too, of the whole "well you blew it this weekend, so you might as well just not bother this week", when in fact I need the complete opposite and need to do damage limitation. I also need to throw away all the leftover cakes and muffins from this weekend so they aren't haunting me whenever I'm in my kitchen. That's a job for tonight!

Positive Mental Attitude everyone - we can overcome this

xxx

pamp1emousse · February 2011

I can totally relate - and I don't even have the sibling excuse! (I have a sister but we don't like the same food)
I can wolf down SO much food, and not even in one sitting - it's frantic eating all day if I'm set off. I struggled with it more near the start of MFP - there've been a couple of things which have really helped me

1) I've never posted on this (and I don't have the disorder - I'm just a binger) but reading this thread really helped
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/135792-support-for-binge-eating-disorder?hl=support+for+binge
I'm not quite sure even why - maybe just the thought that there are plenty of other people who binge too helps, or that some people struggle with it a lot more than me (I'm far worse than all my friends (real world, not MFP ones

))

2) I've noticed that there are 2 main things which set me off - fresh bread and chocolate. I now have 85% dark lindt chocolate and I can ACTUALLY just have one square (granted, they're quite big

). Sugar = horrific if you're prone to snack food binges. With fresh bread I try to have either rice cakes, rye bread or those really small sliced loaves in the house to have instead. It's sad, but less yummy = less likely to gorge. If you can figure out which are the foods which trigger you off (as opposed to the ones you devour once you're in a binge) maybe you can come up with alternatives? The less sugar the better (it is a drug at the end of a day)

3) Log your binges! It's depressing and horrible and you feel so ashamed and disheartened afterwards, but in the long term it helps so much. That idea of "well now I've started I may as well carry on" may not disappear but in my experience you'll be able to rationalise with it more. And slowly, some of what would have become binges will just become little slip-ups where you ate 5 squares of chocolate instead of 2, but at the end of the day that's only, what, 250 calories max? The day is not lost! I used to be in a thread about logging which was sooo useful but it's over now... there may well be another out there tho. I'd recommend.

Anyway, I hope they were at least a little helpful. I just want to say that I totally sympathise (having your partner living with you and him being able to moderate himself must make it so much more frustrating though!) . Even if you have some days where you go overboard it doesn't mean that you won't get to your goal - loads of people here on MFP seem to have a similar problem and they're doing great! Good luck :flowerforyou:

loupammac · February 2011

Sometimes I look at my junk food and go "I need to eat ALL of that so I can be good for the rest of the week!" and then I eat it. Packets of chips - gone. Cookies - gone. Chocolate - gone. Terrible, terrible. Mind you then I'm good for the rest of the week. Today I said to myself "Self, you can have two rows of chocolate with a cup of coffee" and I did. I didn't try and bargain with myself. It helped that my chocolate was the generic brand and wasn't as delicious as the brand-name stuff.

Perhaps if you split everything up into little packs of say 100 - 150 calories, which becomes your junk food allowance for the day. You could use ziplock bags and pop cupcakes, chocolates or whatever your want. Once the bag is empty, that's it. You could even label them with the day if you wanted to. I think that would ease anxiety because you know you'll have something junky each and every day. Over-time you can decrease the amount of calories in each pack and you might even get through a day without one! If you don't eat Sunday's bag for example, you can't have Sunday and Monday's bags on Monday -- Only Monday's bag. A bit time consuming but helpful.

Bzbear2 · February 2011

Here's a little tip I have discovered - FREEZE the extras. Freeze the extra cookies, the bread slices, everything you don't need now!

This has two benefits -

1) you won't have to worry about the foot disappearing or going bad
2) it takes time and effort to reheat it. So if you really want it, you have it but you have to really commit.

InnerPinup79 · February 2011

I relate to you and most of the replies so much. My husband and I have our own snack cabinets in the kitchen because there are things I just can't have near me. Sometimes I'm stubborn and think I've got this then the empty package of Samoas (my favorite girl scout cookie) is in front of me after wolfing it down in less than 30min! My husband doesn't like coconut so I'm not trying to get to them first. My mentality makes no sense. I think more like, well this stuff shouldn't be here (mind you after I bought it) so then I eat the whole thing to get rid of them. It's so stupid to do that and I know it but I still do it!

And for over a week he has had 3 6packs of recees peanubutter hearts in his cabinet and I'm screaming on the inside "why haven't you eaten these yet? I could destroy them in a week!" Haha then I go look in my cabinet if nuts and dried fruit and baked crackers and ff popcorn and just talk myself through it. It's really stinking hard and I know ill break down and binge again (im being realistic with myself), I just need to do it to something that's not cookies (my first trigger) even those low calorie b.s. don't stand a chances.

AngelUK1985 · February 2011

I have a big sweet tooth and its really hard to resist sweets/snacks i dont cut them out my diet completely though i will have something sweet every day as a 'treat' but i try and excercise for it

superwmn · February 2011

I don't bring it in the house.

If it does make it into my house, I (1) have my husband hide it or (2) throw it in the garbage if I find myself eating more of it than I'd like.

YOU CAN DO THIS!!!

Charmagne

SarahJean23 · February 2011

Thank you all for your support and suggestions! I really appreciate it!

guess I'll have to take it one day at a time

crystal_sapphire · February 2011

i can relate to you so much. l'm going to add you.

sim247 · February 2011

Bump for later!

Binge Eating

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