Binging and overeating too much? (Recovering anorexic?)

It's normal to eat much more, and feel like you're bingeing in recovery. You're constantly hungry because your body really needs all the calories it can get to repair itself. Honestly you shouldn't be logging, weighing, or trying to count calories while in recovery. All that will do is sabotage your progress.

It's not overeating, because you've starved your body. Your body is just trying to get back what it's lost, and get to it's "happy" weight. You're not a glutton, you're not disgusting. You're doing well by giving your body what it needs.

With no breakfast, exercise then only a 160 cal lunch your body will be starving try splitting cals a bit more evenly to stop binging eat more regularly without limiting yourself and that should help good luck recovery is hard x

The day's food is healthy - chicken, spinach, fruit etc - but - yes the evening's food was fairly typical binge food. ( I've been there too with that roll of Ritz crackers and random spoonfuls of sweet stuff ) As the others here have rightly said - you didn't really take in enough calories during the day so you needed more and craved more. Psychologically you were maybe also depriving/punishing yourself and the binge may have been a rebellion.

I'm no expert (sorry!) but I'd suggest firstly: 'Only put into your mouth that which you truly believe/know to be good for you'
This was said to me by a specialist in eating disorders and I have found it helpful in conjunction with other strategies.

Also - maybe - it might help to plan your day's food in advance to include good nutrition and enough calories for you to either maintain or gain - whichever you want to do.

Maybe as a recovering anorexic you should try to maintain for a while, until you get used to eating that little bit more food?

Also perhaps try to accept that you will binge. Don't blame yourself. Seek the causes and learn from that and move forward with that extra knowledge about yourself. The binges should get fewer with the better nutrition and with less self destructiveness.

Wishing you strength and success. Good luck! xx

Just eyeballing calories from your post, that can't be more than 1200-1400 calories anyways, and I have to ask, WHERE THE HECK IS THE PROTEIN? lol

If you want to gain lean mass, you need protein in your diet. A piece of chicken at dinner is not going to cut it. You should be trying to eat 1g of protein per 1lbs of body mass. Based on your cal intake, I'm guessing you are somewhere between 100-150lbs range. That means, at minimum, you are shooting for 100g of protein per day.

Also, I promise eating more protein will help you feel way more satiated and it will reduce the urge to "binge", you will feel too full to think about food.

When you're recovering from anorexia, it's not binging it's reactive eating. You can find a lot of info on this phenomenon if you just do a bit of research on reactive eating. It's quite common in recovery, however you could definitely minimize it by eating more healthfully during the day. You should be eating 2000 to maintain, significantly more since you still need to gain (specialists recommend between 2500-3500; you should really contact a dietician to address your specific needs). You ate less than 1000 during normal eating hours (breakfast through dinner). That's clearly WAY too low if you're trying to recover. Your intake throughout the day needs to be doubled or tripled.

I agree - When I went through the ED program I ate upwards of 3500 calories. You need someone to work with (professional) because what you are currently consuming is not going to get you to your goals

I am not an expert!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week I lapsed into another Bulimic episode, now I'm recovered again.

Considering your diet for the rest of your day, then I can see why you feel that the evening is a binge.

When I was visiting the eating disorder service support groups, it became apparent that a lot of the sufferers had moved from one eating disorder to another.

The way I view it is that mental disorders are like rivers in our minds, we start thinking or acting one way and our river starts carving a pathway. Yes, you can block the river or divert it, but it's always going to be that much easier to flow that way again.

To me anorexia is total control.

Food addiction and binging is lack of control.

Bulimia is the need for place control on something that's out of control, and that's never going to end well.

You are doing fantastically by working towards getting over one eating disorder, I would take any advice that rings a bell for you if it can help prevent your 'river' from staying on exactly the same unhealthy path, just changing color from one ED to another.

Now whatever you do... don't let any of this advice prevent you from continuing with the same great steps that you're taking to get over things. Don't stop trying to eat more, just to avoid triggering a binge episode! Enjoy eating, just try to recognise where your 'danger' areas are.

I'm almost at the end of my journey of recovery, I've had to:

Empty all of my cupboards of anything that I would be likely to binge on.

Recognise what my triggers for a binge are, for me that includes stress and unhappiness, tiredness and boredom. If you think that it's a binge, make a note of how you're feeling and why you think you did it (just for you, so be totally totally honest!)

Forgive myself. It's not the end of the world. I've just over eaten a bit.

I DONT HAVE TO RESTRICT TOMORROW TO MAKE UP FOR IT! Restricting is one of my triggers, so I'll only fail if I do this. I just have to work out how to avoid doing it again and start tomorrow as a happy new day.

Acknowledging and coming to the realisation that I will fail.
(Yes I know I should be able to eat normally, I've done it before, I should be able to do it again, but if I try to re-introduce a trigger food before I'm ready, I'm going to feel a lot worse than if I don't try to rush myself. And that's ok)

Be ok that it's going to take a long while.
The older I get the more I realise that time isn't wasted by going slowly, if you ACTUALLY GET THERE! What's wasted is rushing it and hoping you get there soon. Then flopping on your face. A lot of MFP philosophers will back this up.

Love myself.
(Now this is a tad odd, but I'm baring my journey here so please no-one laugh or mock, and I certainly don't and never have intended to insult or demean anyone; one of the most wake up calls moments was when I realised that personally, part of the reason that I didn't want to become fat was that I believed all of the media lies that fat women weren't sexy. So I worked on trying to see larger ladies as sexually attractive, the erm.... internet... is very good at providing situations of larger ladies not only being attractive but also being honest, confident and enjoying themselves a lot more than I was at the time. Yes a tad dodgy, *embarrassed* what can I say, it helped shrink my body dysmorphia)

For me the first step had to be focusing on one thing at a time, so I started with the stopping purging.

I'd try to cover as many of your nutritional bases as your ED comfort zone will let you. (Baby steps remember, no-ones born perfect. And when you feel comfortable, build up the layers little by little)

Try to be aware of for you what situations/feelings/foods are triggers and work out how to avoid them. It's easier to cut them out or replace them with healthy alternatives out to begin with and build them back into your life later.

If at the moment you're not purging, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T START.

There's a certain level of low in life, when your heads in the lavatory bowl, you're bladders leaking because you couldn't control it at the same time as vomitting, your eyes are running and burning from the fumes from your stomach acid and you're still trying to purge your stomach lining - Yeah, that tub of icecream? Not really worth the price of that quick fix solution to overeating.

If you have started purging, do as much as you can to STOP IT NOW! Dead! Before it becomes an ADDICTION in itself.

Yes you might hate yourself after a binge and think that you're a waste of space in this universe. I know personally that a lot of my suicidal times were after a bingeing session. But with those levels of extra binge calories it will still take a long while to add up to anything serious.

If you want to binge, take out your back up delicious and divine meal from the freezer, zap it in the microwave, four minutes ping and away we go, yeah it's calories you were intending to eat, but it could have been a lot worse!

I don't know if this waffle will help you. I doubt it, everyone has to do it for themselves, it's only afterwards that we go, "awwww yeah, I see what they meant now. "

Be kind to yourself hon.

I strongly agree with Graelwyn. That doesn't sound like a binge at all. I think it seems like a lot of food to you because you are SO used to limiting yourself. You've gotten some great advice in this thread and I hope you will listen. Best wishes!!!!

you are starving yourself throughout the day so you eat more at night. Still see anorexic qualities by using black coffee as appitite supressent.,

1. you probably should be eating breakfast. if you're not feeling too hungry in the mornings, it's probably because you're still feeling full from the night binge. maybe try liquid calories? i try to force myself to at least get a protein drink down or make a smoothie (i'm the same way, though, i'm never hungry in the morning). it doesn't have the same bulk as a meal, but it's something to fuel the body.
2. your lunch is making me sad. i perked up a bit when i saw your snack, but it's still not nearly enough, especially depending on how long you wait to have the snack. maybe throw some cheese and condiments on that wrap at least?
3. just in general you need to balance out your meals. eat more during the day, maybe give yourself a sweet or two during the day so you aren't breaking down and eating ALL the sweets at night. i know it's tough, but you're not a glutton, your body is just desperate for nutrients and hitting up the nearest and most delicious source. i promise if you maintain a good balance the binges will stop.