I'm a Binger. I have been since I was a child, after an incident of sexual abuse. My mother would say I'd take my entire Halloween bag into my room and demolish it in one or two sittings and shove the candy wrappers into somewhere "hidden" (to a child it's hidden, to the parent it's very apparent). As a teen I'd buy out my entire allotment of fundraiser candy I was supposed to sell and just eat it all myself. In college I'd gotten to the point of eating nothing except a huge amount of chocolate chip cookies or Ben and Jerry's. I could maintain my weight for a long time because I'd restrict in other areas and save up my binge calories. It was very intentional on my part, and no one ever said anything because I maintained a healthy weight all that time(5'6" and 125-140). I got married and started eating meals...and still binged at night or in the car, sometime when my husband wasn't around. But I couldn't keep the weight off anymore and ballooned up to just shy of 300 (including 3 90 lb swings between 200 and 300 with 2 pregnancies).

I have struggled with depression and anxiety for years, and this is when I binge the most often. Last summer I turned 40 and thought I was okay with that, but crashed into a horrible depression for most of the fall and into the winter...and packed on the 50 lbs I'd lost the year before. And didn't care.

I've tried restricting calories with WW, but that sympathetic head tilt was enough to set me off on another binge. I actually don't feel hungry very often, but I hunger for the binge. The feel of chewing until I'm tired of chewing. It's hard to explain, but maybe other bingers will understand.

I'm 5 days in with MFP now and so far so good. It's always easy at first. No binges. It'll be a struggle to not binge. I don't think it's necessarily difficult to keep under the calorie count, just from wiping through an entire box of Oreos in one sitting.

No question, really, but just putting it out there that there are bingers out there who struggle each and every day. It doesn't make us less worthy people, nor does it make us weak. We have an eating disorder. That's all. It's an illness. A very misunderstood illness.