Anyone have Binge Eating Disorder Success stories (BED)

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Replies

  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
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  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    I would love to read more about how people are coping with BED
  • alligatorob
    alligatorob Posts: 736 Member
    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!
  • gwenmadlynclarke
    gwenmadlynclarke Posts: 1 Member
    It's been said a million times already, but there really is no cure for BED, just a number of ways of taking back some of the control that food has over our lives.

    There are two things that I have found the most success with: IF and "treating myself" a bit. I worked with a nutritionist for 6 months as well, which was very effective from an accountability standpoint. Letting someone in can be more effective than any strategy by itself.

    With IF, I have my morning coffee, but I do not eat until 12 or 1pm most days. Personally, my hunger levels are almost completely unaffected when I eat breakfast (I am never particularly satisfied after a morning meal) but I do not struggle with waiting until lunch time to eat. My binges always come in the latter half of the day anyway, so I'm not putting myself at risk of bingeing if I don't eat in the morning. I also exercise in the morning and prefer to work out fasted. Eliminating one meal can be super helpful with reallocating your allotted daily calories. I used to eat a 400-500 calorie breakfast, so getting rid of that meal has given me so much wiggle room in other meals. On a perfect day, I eat two meals that are around 700-800 calories each. I'm a huge fan of seltzer; drinking a carbonated beverage with a meal always fills me up faster without making me feel bloated or heavy.

    I put "treating myself" in quotes because, from a binge standpoint, treating myself used to mean potentially eating 3,000-5,000 calories in a day. I know anyone reading this can relate: oftentimes when you have exceeded your calories for the day/ fallen off the wagon, that day is already considered a loss and it's easier to rationalize continuing to binge and throwing the whole day away. If I have met my calorie intake and I am craving something sweet, I usually get anxious and restless because I don't want to exceed my calories. However, it's important to remember that eating more calories than you've allotted for yourself doesn't automatically mean you'll gain weight. Aside from natural weight fluctuations, you have to eat 3,500 calories over your resting metabolic rate to gain a solid pound. One pound! So I "treat myself" to something when I really want it. I like to keep Halo Top and sugar free chocolate syrup on hand, because even if I am in the mood to eat an entire pint of ice cream, it's still under 350 calories. In most situations like this, because I am taking such a level-headed approach, it never feels like a binge. It feels very controlled, which has been huge for me!

    Although I am desperately trying to move away from tracking every calorie every day (sorry MFP), I do find it helpful to track everything I eat, even during not-so-perfect days. It has helped me see that even when I am overeating, I'm not doing as much damage as I think. These days, when I go "crazy", I'm not typically going too far over 3,000 total calories.

    My mindset is still the way it was when I was bingeing for weeks at a time and doing actual damage (gaining weight, completely neglecting movement), but my strategies to combat it get stronger and stronger every day. I still have bad days! But the most important thing is following them closely with good days. Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and strategies in this forum.
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    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
    jxwaters Posts: 3 Member
    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.
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    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!
  • mtruitt01
    mtruitt01 Posts: 370 Member
    I attend Zoom Food Addicts Anonymous meetings and keep addictive foods out of the house. Mostly things with sugar, flour, wheat. I find with their support and the literature I rarely binge (three months now) and I've lost 15 lbs without being hungry. It's not a diet, but a food plan for life. I've improved, although I doubt I'll ever do the food plan perfectly. I'm actually surprised something is working. I have less pain, self-loathing and all that emotional stuff.
  • angelfoodcakee
    angelfoodcakee Posts: 24 Member
    edited September 2020
    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.

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