Coming clean

bethad5
bethad5 Posts: 176 Member
edited December 25 in Social Groups
I thought eating at TDEE would stop my binging. I was wrong.

Starting tonight, I am logging everything. I used to optimistically 'complete my day' with my bedtime snack - and then, if I binged, never track it. Maybe seeing it in writing will motivate me to stop doing this. I don't measure my binges, but I'm going to estimate the best I can.

I feel disgusting.

Replies

  • bethad5
    bethad5 Posts: 176 Member
    1700 calories over. MFP says I'd weigh 174.5 if every day was like today.

    I wish I could stop this.
  • moss11
    moss11 Posts: 236 Member
    I do feel for you. On the whole I am finding eating at TDEE is controlling my binging. I guess I had about 20 years of binging and all the mental trash that goes with that. Since March this year I have started logging every morsel. It does help keep me accountable although I do have too much sugar but mainly still within tdee! I have found that trying to eat completely clean does not work for me, I just cant sustain it and it would end in a binge. I now figure in some sweet treats. A small one after my mid day meal and average size choccie bar after evening meal. Knowing that I am having these really helps me not feel deprived. I still have the occasional binge but nothing like before. I eat loads of veg and try to keep the protein up but I need more work on that. It really is trial and error. For me EM2WL works, as long as I am prepared to take it extremely slowly and not consider I have failed with a little slip. Have you calculated your TDEE accurately is it possible you are under eating, resulting in binging, could you be burning more in exercise or work than you think?. Just try to explore every avenue!
  • JadeRabbit08
    JadeRabbit08 Posts: 551 Member
    Keep plodding on. :)

    If you binge again stop and think about what is triggering it..for me it can be thirst, (I grab sweet stuff instead of hydrating). Also some foods trigger further binging behaviour. Some people can have small amounts of junk food and be fine. For me opening a crisps packet is the start of a binge episode. I found the very worse of my binging behavior stopped when I cut out foods that I had an intolerance to as well.
    I avoid "gateway" food types. If I really want to eat over I try and make it fruit at least I am getting extra nutrients and its less likely to turn into binging. Mainly now its anxiety that has me eating too much, thats my last big hurdle.
    Not having binge type food in the house will help. Shop with someone who holds you accountable if you dont trust yourself not to impulse buy crappy foods.
    Make sure you are eating enough.
    If you feel too ashamed to log when you do have a slip up maybe put your diary to private for a couple of weeks and log everything accurately.

    Good luck, your not the only one! I'll be cheering you on. :)
  • terrigrace
    terrigrace Posts: 199 Member
    I think you are absolutely on the right track by tracking and keeping yourself accountable. Be proud of that fact! I wish I had some wonderful, sage words of advice for you. I've never been a binger, more of a constant grazer. Something that was helpful to me was writing it down when I had one of those grazing nights where I was constantly putting something in my mouth, from 4 pm until I went to bed. I found out my triggers - i can't have mini chocolate bars around, I put them in the freezer and think "oh, one, isn't that bad" Well, one every 20 minutes for 5 hours is!! And my emotional triggers, I'd get ticked off at my husband, mother in law, or stepson and head for the kitchen. Now I log onto MFP and vent instead. LOL Maybe a note book? Or even a blog post? It might help you find out if it's emotional eating. With all the cardio you do, though . . . it could just be that you are legitimately hungry? You'll figure it out. That's what reset is for . . . it's a time of discovery and learning new things about yourself and your eating habits.
  • On the flip side logging binges can show they are not as bad as expected e.g if I log a mini splurge over say 250 kcal as is happening it normally stops me from getting that ' oh s@& it I've done it now I might as well just blow out' thinking cos I can see the numbers infront of me and remembering 3500kcal makes a lb helps me to rationalise it.

    I agree with reviewing pattern of binging too so you learn your triggers. For me thirst, fatigue or anxiety play a big role.

    I luckily now no longer experience big binges but still have difficulty cosistantly sticking to cut more often than not hitting TDEE although I'm aiming for -10 % cut ( mini splurges of 2- 400 kcal every few days) which I wonder if is a relic from my binge purge days. In the past (12-24 years old) I used to have big binges so my point is you can recover from this pattern but for me it took time for my body & mind to trust me... I didn't however have such a great supportive and healthy site as em2wl in my corner which I think would have sped things up!
  • Second thought is it might be worth posting here to get your activity level reviewed. Perhaps you are trying still to eat too little / underestimating your burns and your body is protesting? A doctor once explained the binge cycle to me saying that each day you are at deficit it's like squashing a spring... So over the course of a week the spring gets more and more compressed until what's holding it in place ( your mind) just can no longer cope with the pressure and let's go... The spring pings back out with all the tension it's built up leading to a binge... And the more deficit and so tension you've put the spring under over the week the more the
    Power of the 'ping' and the bigger the binge! Hope that makes sense!!
  • bethad5
    bethad5 Posts: 176 Member
    I work out right around 5.5ish hours a week so I'm eating at the 5-6 hour of activity level. I did move this week, so had a bit more exercise/movement- I also binged like this Tuesday (the day we moved) but it was much worse last night. Yesterday I had decided to take an extra rest day to compensate so didn't go to the gym yesterday (Friday) and wasn't going to go today (Saturday). Now that I ate all that last night I feel like I should go, but I don't want to permeate the cycle. I've gone to the gym 4 times this week so I've formally exercised a little over 4 hours. It might be possible that I simply didn't eat enough? I don't know.

    I'm just really beating myself up because I promised myself that once we moved to our new place I'd start fresh and not binge. I ruined that the night we moved in and yesterday was day 2 of binging. Im not sure if I should have logged it all on yesterday but I did- maybe I should log a bit on today's. It's 4:30am here and I'm nauseous and can't sleep so my mind is just going a mile a minute. I'm just finishing week 5 of resetting at the strenuous activity level and it is so hard for me to be okay with eating 2655 daily. I don't think I could handle it if I had to jump up to the next level (which is about 2900, I'm 5'10").

    I don't know. I'm going to try to chalk it up to the fact I moved and still worked out (even though it was just yesterday that I had planned on still getting my 5th day of exercise in, but after a long and difficult conversation with myself I decided I should rest instead). So maybe now I'm double compensating? Maybe it's because my period starts this Sunday? .... Or maybe I should just stop making excuses???
  • Totm plus stressful day moving sound like an understandable trigger.

    My feeling and personal experience is that setting yourself goals of 'never going to binge again' is actually setting yourself up for failure. I think managing binges and practicing forgiving yourself when they happen might be more effective. Recovery n changing habits like binging are not unfortunately going to happen over night... for me I guess it was a way my body had learnt to deal with stress, mental (fatigue) emotional ( upset) or physical ( hunger / deficit). Now as you can see from my post on this forum im still struggling to cut but my weight and generally my intske is static ... here is what I learned about curbing my binges:

    Don't rule out treats... Plan and enjoy them when you are out daily but restrict the amount you have at home. My big thing is that id much much much rather actively choose to relax and eat say a mars bar and enjoy it mentally and physically than binging 10 soggy bourbon biscuits from the work biscuit tin in a fury cos I'm stressed. Often choosing to plan daily treats leads me to feel more able to resist other unplanned stress eats.

    Resist the urge to 'binge then start again tomorrow' or other black and white thinking. This was and still is a biggy for me. Often a few extras got me stressed... My kcal count was no longer perfect so i paniced and then i binged but comforted myself with the idea/ promise this was the last time I'd ever do it so I might as well go out big!! If id accepted the few extras as human and forgiven myself i would have saved eating an awful lot more out of guilt and then feeling terrible. Maybe try and visualise this as a monthly not daily goal/ process. So if you go a over it's not a failure and does not lead to a tail spin just a little spike day.


    Now this is an idea but ive not used it recently but did before....And now writing it think I might ho back to. set aside a box of food almost like a packed lunch , maybe 800-1000 kcal worth ( if your typical binge is 1700) which are moderately healthy but still satisfying (dark choc, nuts, protien bars, nice yogurts, fruit) If you feel the urge to start binging go to this box and allow yourself what you want, just concentrate on eating slowly and mindfully and track it. This might help you take charge of the binge. You would then be choosing the foods you enjoy but still have some goodness, removing the panic eating of the binge and can slowly perhaps reduce the amount from the box you choose to eat too. Although it might sound odd planning to binge history has showed me that they were unfortunately going to happen if I liked it or not. And my rational brain could see that eating 1000 of nutritious filling food than 2000kcal of junk was ultimately a win.


    This is just my experience but hope it helps xx
  • HeidiHoMom
    HeidiHoMom Posts: 1,393 Member
    I find the more protein I eat the less likely I am to binge, especially if I can get it above 150 grams.
  • moss11
    moss11 Posts: 236 Member
    Some great advice given here and quite varied. Different things work for different people! CleanandLean3 ^^^ makes many good points re the stress. You must have burned a lot of calories, moving AND working out, no wonder you were hungry! Do what you can, no one is perfect!
  • mphlab
    mphlab Posts: 187 Member
    I had the urge the other night. I made a conscious effort to eat the 300 calorie between my cut & TDEE since I did feel hungry. Normally I would get out the ice cream and a spoon so this was progress! Maybe try to eat extra food if you feel compelled to eat but up to TDEE then set a break. If after 30 mins or an hour, you still feel like bingeing, eat another quantity of food. One of my issue with bingeing is that if I flip the switch, it is like I go off on a tear... anything to interupt it... If you give yourself permission to eat more, maybe that will break the "forbiddeness" of food. I know from experience it is crazy hard to stop-good luck!
  • Raynn1
    Raynn1 Posts: 1,164 Member
    I'm just finishing week 5 of resetting at the strenuous activity level and it is so hard for me to be okay with eating 2655 daily. I don't think I could handle it if I had to jump up to the next level (which is about 2900, I'm 5'10").

    This jumped out at me. If you are struggling to eat this much, and are turning to binges to get in your cals (which then mean you go way overboard).. then My suggestion would be to cut back on the exercise, and take yourself down to the moderate level, which will in turn drop your calorie intake. That way, you can concentrate more on getting the eating down, rather than working your butt off in the gym for 6 hours a week, which is not helping you if you are bingeing so badly.

    Might be something to consider for a bit.. cut back on the exercise, then once you get the food part down, and can control your eating again, then work on adding back in more gym time if you like..


    Also, STOP beating yourself up over it. It happens. It happens to all of us in varying amounts. We always feel like total crap, failures, horrible people afterwards.. Why??? We arent horrible people.. We didnt fail in life, or in the day just because we ate more than we should have.. We have to learn to accept there are days when crap like this happens. ALLOW yourself to forgive yourself. Learn from your past indiscretions in the fridge. Why did it happen? What can you do to stop it from happening again?.. How can you lessen the amount of binge you end up having?? We arent perfect. We have to be able to learn, and move on in order to get past it. Give yourself the opportunity to forgive. Put a smile on your face and start anew.

    HTH
  • elly1979
    elly1979 Posts: 79 Member
    1. What HeidoHo said about protein is spot on for me with binges. Enough protein keeps me very satiated, so I try to get in a lot of it (around 50 grams if I can) in the morning at my breakfast.

    2. I went through a period about 3 months after my attempts at weight loss (doing the VLCD, then moving into a TDEE way of eating) where I was just psychologically annoyed. It wasn't necessarily deprivation (though arguably it could have been!) but more "Damn, I'm TIRED Of keeping track of this crap." It was like the little kid in me wanted to throw a tantrum and stop having to be so grown up about tracking calories, worrying, etc.

    What I found was the first few weeks of upping my calories into the TDEE range had me binging. Once I settled into TDEE for a couple weeks, they stopped. I don't think I've had a binge now in at least a month. Part of that is because I plan treats into my week. I still have a burger, or pizza. I don't do it every day, and I don't chomp at the bit awaiting my "cheat meal" (because I refuse to call it that anymore), but I know if I have around 2 of those types of meals a week, coupled with many 'treat' type snacks (e.g. a small ice cream cone) the little kid in me feels less deprived.

    Balance takes a while. If you've come off a lifetime of binge eating, that's not gonna reverse itself over night.

    Over at the em2wl website forums, I recommended books by Geneen Roth to another woman there. They were tremendously helpful in me working through both the physical & psychological issues about why I binge. A random one: I realized I kept myself fat (through binging) as a 'gotcha' to a family that wanted me on a physical/looks pedistol.

    Working through that kind of stuff takes time. In the meantime, b eating yourself up over it, as others have noted, don't help you in the long run. Be sympathetic to the person within you who longs to binge. OFten there is something else in her life lacking, or that feels unfilled. Peeling away layers of stuff to figure out what that is takes a while, so be kind to yourself during the process.

    One final thing that has helped me with binges: 750 words of daily, long hand, stream-of-consciousness writing. Seriously. It comes from the book called The Artist's Way. You write for no other reason than to get your 'stuff' out and on paper. It needn't be pretty or up to Hemingway standards. The idea is to purge the dust from your brain.

    Sorry to ramble, but I've been in your shoes and wanted to say that with time, kindness to yourself, and consistent, small steps, it is very possible to reduce binges over time and ultimately eliminate their hold over you.
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