I absolutely used to have these episodes. I would eat 1400 calories every day during the week, and then when the weekend would hit I would gorge myself. I was disgusted and confused by my behavior and felt completely out of control. It wasn't until I met with a eating disorder therapist that I realized that my body thought it was starving itself so it would compensate on the weekends. We worked out a plan to increase my weekly intake and the bingeing went away once I started eating to fit my activity level.

Now that I'm trying to get my weight to a healthy range, I'm taking weight loss extremely slowly (1/2lb a week at most) so that I don't fall back into that binge cycle. This past week I was at a conference so I didn't hit my calorie goals, but I didn't binge or feel deprived either and I count that as a huge win!

I've never felt like my eating (or drinking) was out of control, but certainly did not control my eating because I was enjoying it. That seems to be one huge difference -- anyone I've ever heard talk about binges doesn't seem to have enjoyed them.

Murple

Pretty much I felt like this eating out of control last week and really hasn't quite ended yet. As a results I'm up about 10-12 lbs in a week. Have I done it in the past and the answer would have to be yes. In the last 6 years I have been keeping it to a minimum. It still happens to me but now I do my best to stop it before it gets out of hand. I'm actually as I'm writing this having this problem. DW and I had a Prime Rib roast that needed cooking and was going to eat on this past weekend but it had not thawed out yet. So we had it tonight and I ate a whopping amount around 17 oz. I've been trying to keep my meat and protein intake to between 6-9 oz. So I blew right through that for sure,

Tomorrow is another day and I mch begin a new.

I think I had more than my fair share of these events prior to joining WW, but I'll limit my response to my behavior since. As became more mindful of when and what I eat, I noticed my urge to move toward mindless eating is usually when I'm stressed. The potential for out of control eating gathers steam at those times; it's like mindless eating kicked up a notch.

Out of control eating for me (now that I think about it) is a choice, but not always a conscious one. That's where the mindfulness comes in. In the last year certainly, but maybe more like two, I generally know when I'm slipping into that mode; in the past I didn't.

I have come to realize that for whatever reason, food provided (more past-tense, but not entirely) a crutch or coping mechanism for me. Of course, it didn't really work that way, but that's how I used it. In my stressed times now, I still do. I haven't broken that auto-response. What I have done is changed what I eat under stress.

In the days before WW, cupboards and desk drawers were stocked with pretzels, chips, cookies and candies. A stressful day would often be followed with a pigfest of food and drink. It was the way to unwind and a socially acceptable way at that. Now, I keep low-point foods on-hand. I'll eat loads of them, but the difference is I'm usually very aware of what I'm doing. It can be over-the-top, but it's mindful and I'm OK with it. It may add up to more points than I'm allotted on any given day but it's loads less than the old days.

The other tool that I try to employ is just feeling the stress. If I can figure out where it's coming from (often obvious, but not always), I try to find a direct way of dealing with it, if there's something I have control over to address it. If it's not something I can "fix", I try to let it go. I'm a 'worst case scenario' guy but I'm trying to at least be open to the possibility that there's always an equally imaginary 'best case scenario'. Why wouldn't there be? I find if I slow down, don't go too far too fast in my mind and just address things as they come, they often turn out better than I imagined in the worst case.

Through the work I've done on weight loss the last few years, I've learned that this behavior of eating of control really does me no favors. In fact, in the long run, it just continues the destructive cycle / spiral. While I'm not ready to stop leaning on food under stress, changing what I eat has helped me to limit the damage from doing so. I rarely drink under those conditions anymore; that's a whole 'nother realm of destruction that I choose to bypass.

This change in behavior has really helped with my weight loss. It's not a perfect system. I'm not totally "cured" but it has helped with the mindfulness as well as helping me stay closer to where I want to weigh (and all the benefits that go with it) than the alternative.