Binge eating/food obsession

Necro thread

Feel free to add me. Long history of struggling with this behaviour since childhood (and I’m in my 40s now). Right now I’m in a better place but a month ago I was struggling to get myself to this place.last year my health and fitness routines took a hit when I had a major health issue which hindered my energy level and exercise - and i became depressed. Then the binges started again. 8 months later after losing much of my fitness (muscle tone gone, gained fat instead of muscle, shorter less difficult workouts, etc,) I had surgery for that same health issue, and the recovery was 4-6 weeks - I was unable to exercise the entire time. I ate my way through it - lots of binge behaviours...and because i was on bed rest I’m pretty sure I gained 10 lbs of fat. Then, after 6 weeks i was able to workout and starting to get active again, but it didn’t last because ....then I got the flu! I was down for another month. For the last six weeks I’ve been active again and weight training. My binge behaviour issues have been difficult but I finally got to a good place about 10 days ago and can say that I’m definitely in a healthier place. I’ve lost 6lbs, almost an inch of fat is gone. I’m not where I was but I’m happier because I’m not binge eating.

The issue is the behaviour. It’s a cycle. The most important part for me is to remember that healthy behaviour feels better - I’m happier! When I binge eat, I beat myself up and it becomes a cycle.

I was once told that behaviours are like drawers in a bureau. There’s a certain amount. So if I wanted to change a behaviour, I’d have to take it out and replace it with something different.

Every time I’ve been healthy, it’s been because I’ve replaced the binge behaviour with something else. For me, using these forums and this app, and doing new things at the gym has helped replace the negative behaviour, and the sense of happiness that results is a positive reinforcement of the change. It’s working for me right now, but Im always going to struggle with the tendency to eat my way through things. Fact is, I feel better when I deal with life in healthy ways.

Anyway, pardon the diatribe here but feel free to add me. I’m just now crawling out of a hard year with binge eating and food, and looking for people to relate with. It helps a lot.

Intermittent fasting helped me to stop binging. You can’t binge if your eating time is only 4 hours. Although my eating window is 8 hours now and I purposely make it so that it’s not late at night, I know I can’t binge because it’s not my eating time. I eat from 12:30 to 7:30 every day if it’s 10 pm, I can’t eat because I’m fasting so too bad.