Anyone have Binge Eating Disorder Success stories (BED)

Not specifically BED but bulimia after anorexia and I found that simply letting myself actually eat and learning not to demonise food. Food is your friend once you don’t restrict hard you learn to love it. I put on a lot of weight after ED recovery, but hired a PT (I realise not an option for everyone) and she gave me a calorie restriction of 1650 which is way mor than my old 400-1000 I would restrict in when I was in full ED. It has helped so much in my life and have t binged since I began with her in may, I can’t believe it. Here’s to healthy weight loss!!

conniewilkins56 wrote: »

There is a big difference between eating a few cookies and eating a few bags of cookies!

Hey Connie: I think that similar stories are common to many of people who get to a larger size.

I was a bit late in going back to edit my post after I wrote it a few weeks back. I wanted to go back and highlight what @Duck_Puddle has since talked about: that there is definitely a difference between non BED driven, even if frequently occuring, over-eating episodes, and situations that would be diagnosable as BED.

I think that if someone reads through something like this: https://www.verywellmind.com/diagnostic-criteria-for-binge-eating-disorder-1138164 and has a strong feeling that their reality matches... then they really should engage with a physician because they're probably dealing with more than garden variety over-eating.

Beyond that though... yes, there IS a difference between a few cookies and a few bags of cookies... and under the right circumstances that bag better watch out if it is near me!

Stay in the game and adjust Connie: as long as we're engaged... we're winning!

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I would love to read more about how people are coping with BED

One more thing, I am not in OA, but am familiar. I got the one day at a time idea there, it is a great one!

I think it is really great how honest everyone is being about their BED struggles and how they deal with this problem every single day!

jxwaters wrote: »

The thing that has helped me the most are to pre-portion my typical "binge foods" into the serving sizes in advance (putting them in containers or baggies or whatever) so when I go to reach for them, I'm reaching for 1 serving, not for the whole supply. I noticed that if I only take one serving, I am more reluctant to walk all the way back to the kitchen for the next part of my binge (previously, I'd grab a slew of snacks, sit down, and then eat them. Now, one snack, one serving, and if I want another, I have to go get it). Additionally, accountability. I have a friend who is okay with me texting everything I eat to her (a picture), so I look at the food and if I know I have to send her a picture of it, sometimes I'll second-guess eating it in the first place.

Those are great ideas!

Okay so story time:
I had pretty severe BED for about 4-5 years. I was binge eating every 2nd - 3rd day and sometimes every day (for a 1-3 weeks at a time).
Because I was trying to hard to fight the binge urges and restrict calories at the same time, I had unintentionally taught my body to desperately crave a lot of food because it thought every time I ate that this would be 'the last time' I was going to binge eat or have that type of food.

After trying to properly recover for about 2 years I can finally say that while I'm not recovered fully - my binge eating has dramatically decreased.

I'm sorry to say that in my case - there was absolutely no way I could go about restricting calories while trying to recover from binge eating. I tried so many time. I really wanted to be that anomaly that could do both but it just wasn't the case. I'm diffidently not going to say that it's impossible because it depends on how your binge eating started and etc etc. But if your binge eating is connected to restriction in any way I'd say the best possible option for you would be to not focus on weight loss for now and focus on stopping the binging.

I recommend checking out Stephanie Buttermore's all in approach videos on youtube.
I did something similar in that I just said "stuff it" and stopped all food tracking and just ate what I wanted.
The key was though - rather than just mindlessly destroying my entire fridge full of food, I really focused on listening to cravings, allowing myself to have those cravings and put in A LOT of thought towards removing the guilt I had towards eating and craving those foods.

Over time, if you can remove the guilt associated with craving and eating those binge foods and really put focus on mentally making every food available to yourself when you want it - well the funny thing is you stop wanting to eat those foods all of the time and stop wanting to binge on them.

This is because your brain and body know that if you do want X food - you can have it. It isn't this off limit idolized thing in your brain that you feel this huge urgency to consume as much of as you can for fear of not having it again (even if you didn't necessarily realize there was this fear).

For me it went like this:
1. Stop restricting food intake entirely and eat what I crave
2. Put effort into removing guilt around craving and eating those foods (this is the hardest part and takes time)
3. Focus on eating 3 moderately sized meals a day of what ever I want and a small dessert (for me I LOVE dessert and removing it entirely always makes me mentally feel deprived and like I'm missing out - so I let myself have it! I also try not to snack as it tends to lead to mindless eating - however if youre really craving a snack - then have one! Just stick to your 3 meals a day as a base guide line and then see how your body feels)
4. Try swapping out one meal per day for something healthier - Don't try and swap every meal for a healthy alternative at the same time or binge eating my reoccur
5. find the balance you like between meals that taste great and meals that are healthy.
By really focusing on this I was able to lose all the weight I wanted and lost the 10kgs I gained during my time of suffering from BED.

As an example, I may typically eat:
Breakfast: some sort of chocolate cereal (my favourite haha!)
Lunch: Vegetable soup with some buttered bread
Dinner: Vegetable stir fry with rice
Dessert: chocolate!
(Personally I feel that this is a decent balance between healthy and 'fun' foods)

If I ever find myself slipping back into the restriction mindset I often find myself binge eating. But for the most part - I would consider myself recovered and was able to lose weight BECAUSE I stopped binge eating.

Everyone is different but I hope this helped even a little.