Just had a massive binge and I feel awful

Stats: height weight age? How big of a deficit are you normally on? Do you exercise? Do you eat the calories back?

What sort of feelings do you have before you binge? Stress, anger, sadness, despair, frustration?

Log it and learn from it. It happens to me every few weeks, and no matter what, I track everything. My triggers are boredom and stress. What are yours?

Tashlovesfood wrote: »

I do try to vary it but find that chocolate is my downfall. If I have one small bar I want more. I'm normally quite good at controlling myself and haven't binged properly in months however I have just been feeling really low this week and it's like I gave in to the struggle.

What sort of chocolate do you like? Have you experimented with different kinds? I love chocolate, and I knew any "diet" that cut it out was doomed to failure so I had to find a way to include it!

I tried a few brands and settled on an 85% dark chocolate for my fix. I can have just one or two squares of that and not feel the need for any more, but if I have something sweeter - even just 72% - I crave more and can't leave the rest of the bar alone.

If you live with someone you could also ask them to keep the bar somewhere and just give you your "ration" each day... the thought of having to ask my husband for another square kept me from eating too much of it when I first started cutting down!

It may not work for you, and obviously it depends on how dark you like your chocolate, but for me the answer was the darker the better to control my cravings. I also found that eventually - and it did take several months - I was able to go without chocolate for longer periods of time and I didn't need it every day or two. The first time I realised I'd had an unfinished bar in the fridge for about two weeks was a revelation that I really could break the hold it had on me. But, like I said, the sweeter it is the harder it is for me to resist so I try to limit the amount of chocolate that comes into the house overall.

Chocolate is my trigger also. I learned to only buy 2 or 3 100 calorie dove bars at a time in the house. And I break it into lots of pieces. I will slowly eat the bar over a period of maybe 10 minutes and it tricks my mind.

I find that if I make myself log every bit of the binge, I won't do it as often. Also when I do binge I stop sooner knowing the difference it makes on my diary. It's a work in progress...I try to count the small successes and not dwell on the missteps. Also, trying to eat too few calories will set you up for a disaster. Try to find a calorie goal that is reasonable for you. It's really hard when you can't exercise!!

I know what you mean OP. I got in a cycle where I couldn't go two weeks without a cheat night. And cheat night for me felt like I was only eating my deficit that day, not a complete bing. And just doing that seemed to cost me two weeks. Meaning I'd plateau that week of the cheat and it wouldn't be until the following week that I'd show a loss again.

I learned the trigger for me is a certain level of hungerness. If I let it go too long I give in to temptation and the flood gate opens. So now I eat an extra snack when I hit that level. I may be slightly over for the day but no where near what it would have been had I let it go.

SueSueDio wrote: »

fascha wrote: »

Unless you're really short that seems awfully low. When I was 210 i was just walking and I cut on 1900 cals.

Depends how active you are, I guess... I'm 5'6" and started at 217lbs, and my maintenance was 1900. I started with 1400 and gradually cut from there as I lost more weight, but now I've adjusted my goal to 0.5lbs/week and I'm back to around 1400 (because I'm very sedentary and don't even get 3000 steps most days).

Yeah I didn't do a lot of high intensity stuff but I managed to get in 10k steps and it slid off on 1900. I can't get over what a big difference just walking makes. 10k steps easily affords me a few hundred in comparison to my binge watching Grey's Anatomy days of 3k lol

@Tashlovesfood Open your diary so that creepy strangers in public can see it and snarkily comment upon it. They won't. Instead, people who want to help will say something very likely to be true and flowing from their concern for your health.

Drink lots of water tonight. It will help flush your system out so you feel a bit better.

Bingeing is a psychological behaviour so if you can't figure out your root causes then it might be worth speaking to someone professionally, for a little perspective. You sound like you definitely want to change and this might be the kick start you need.

Ultimately: food is food. It isn't good or bad, it's just a sliding scale of nutritional value. And please don't think of yourself as a failure. The only time you could be a 'failure' is if you don't get back up and try again. But you are so, just keep trying, hon.

You really ate between 10,500 and 21,000 calories in one evening? One day isn't the end of the world. It's when you do this on multiple days that things become a problem.