I have just noticed in my calendar that today was my 1 year binge-eating free anniversary. I have been binging since my teenage years and it was driving me crazy. Then last year a miracle happened...
I was on a business trip, sitting in a hotel room with sweets, potato chips and cola on my bed. I felt so lost and ashamed as I ate my feelings with no control whatsoever. I was close to tears, that's how pathetic I felt.
That's when I found this book "Brain Over Binge" which I'm most grateful for. The first few months were so difficult, I was constantly fighting myself. But looking back, it was all worth it.
I'm still eating my feelings from time to time but a small amount of junk food is enough to satisfy my cravings. I'm much more in control and I feel that I can win against myself because I have succeeded at this.
I can't believe it's been 1 year already. Seems like it was ages ago. I can only hope that on 28th of November 2017 I can say that I'm still doing well.
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LouGr
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Hi LouGr and congratulations on reaching your one year binge free anniversary đđđ Well done for having the courage and strength to get yourself out of that situation
Most of us eat 'junk' food occasionally, but you are now in control of it, it's not in control of you - that is impressive đ and long may it continue.
Very well done LouGr đ That is an excellent achievement đ You have done very well in recognising the issue and taking positive steps to overcome it. I firmly believe weight loss starts in our head, we need to get into the right place psychologically, and you have done that đ Onwards and downwards đ
Congratulations on a superb achievement! Another book that I am finding helpful at the moment with the brain side of dieting is The Beck Diet Solution - it's helping me realign my thinking.
Hello there LouGR....... I am absolutely delighted for you đđđđđ as a binge eater in recovery I know how you must be feeling..... I don't know you but I'm so so proud of you and for you ...... I too have the odd, eat my feelings blip, but as a whole my eating habits have been turned inside out for the better.... I'm so much healthier in my mind too.... but it's not 'given' we have to work at it, hard sometimes, that's why I'm so proud of you !!
Hello Trier, I'm so happy to hear another success story! It's a big deal and you should be proud of yourself too! Usually people don't understand what it's like and why it's a big deal "to just stop eating" but I know so I'm sending you a big virtual hug - you rock!
Would it be okay if I asked you what helped you in the battle with your own mind? Just fishing for tips in case I fall off the wagon one day (fingers crossed it never happens though :D)
Ok I've given this a lot of thought as I didn't want to give a glib answer to this.......... I prepared to support myself by & with anything and everything I thought & still think would help, it was like preparing for war ! Which in a way it is isn't it..... I bought 'overcoming weight problems' a book I found so useful and 'real' ..... one of the exercises is a 'five year in your future' bit, where you imagine what you, your life your health etc will be like if you keep going without changing anything ......... Then you flip it and write a five year plan in which you are now at a sensible weight, are more active, whether it be in a gym or walking or whatever as long as it's some form of exercise, you no longer have many of the mobility or health issues you once had and are enjoying good health, you are living now not just existing ....... get the picture ? I won't lie, doing it was very grim, the 5 year no change plan frightened me, really frightened me because I wasn't a million miles away from that future when I started probably.... it's powerful stuff..... I keep an online diary ( still) I check in about every six weeks or so and write how I'm feeling, things that are going well things I could maybe improve on, we do get complacent and backslide a bit don't we! It's also a good opportunity to read the whole log and re-acquaint myself with the motivational things I've previously written in there, I always feel good after reading it.....
At 50 I've finally accepted that I will have issues with binge eating forever and ever amen..... it won't go away, there's no pill I can take to prevent it, losing weight doesn't solve it either, fool to believe all these years that it would... it's about managing it isn't it !!!!!! ALWAYS being 'aware' of it, no matter how slim I may become........ but that is so good to realise, time and time again we get to put it in its place, we don't let our feelings bully us .... and every time we don't cave in, that's more power to US not the bingeing ..... look to your health ! Since controlling the bingeing better, losing weight has kept me off diabetes medication, blood pressure medication and cholesterol medication ...... I've done that myself, for myself and I try to recognise that for the huge boost to my health that it is ...... The old devil pokes his head up every now and then and always will, I realise that now, but, I will always fight back now..... it isn't easy keeping things going all the time, I won't pretend it is but I'm not so special !!!! Millions of people have to watch what they eat and force themselves to take some form of exercise, so I'm not alone..... just so I don't fall into the self pity stage of 'my god I have to do this forever ' so do most of the population so I give myself a kick up the backside then ! I adore food and won't compromise, I eat whatever I want but.......... only small portions then heap it up with vegetables or salad... I bulk cook dishes and freeze them down in the small foil containers so I've always got tasty food to eat.... I make about 5 different dishes, lasagne, curry, casseroles, soup and just rotate them..... I also write down what I eat..... I do this to add up how many grams of fruit & veg I'm eating per day, and I give myself a pat at the end of the day when I look and see a good days eating...... I'm also learning to be kind to myself, if a friend was trying to eat healthier & lose weight but had binged, I wouldn't dream of calling her a failure, or saying she was useless or disgusting! Yet we think it's ok to do it too ourselves , it's not ! It also does absolutely nothing to help get us back on track either, so now I'm trying to be my own 'best friend' again, this really does work very well, you'll be amazed !
Good god I've rambled on and on âšī¸ If you find any of this helps you now or in the future I'll be delighted, as, if you're like me, I take all and any advice on fighting the bingeing beast I can get, the more tools the better the job!!!
Oh wow, thank you for being so detailed and taking your time to share your story and tips. I do have so much to learn from your experience!
I'm so gonna check out that book that you mentioned, I could use a good kick in a butt and the whole planning-5-years-ahead thing sounds tempting, even if terrifying.
And self-love... it's so smart of you to work on loving yourself. In theory I know it makes sense to be your best friend like you said, and being your own enemy would only harm you but it's so hard, you know? I know it would be more powerful to have the mindset of "I need to lose weight because I love myself and my body and I want it to be healthy" instead of "I need to lose weight because I'm fat and ugly". But it's like a rocket science for me - impossible. I don't even know where to start... Any more tips you have up your sleeve? Maybe another book that would magically make me love myself?
Hey LouGR.... I'm no guru đ Nor an expert.... I'm just like you ! Feeling my way thru, 'trying' to make sense of this food issue, AND tips work both ways! You probably have things in your bag of tips I've not tried or thought of so please please share them with me too ! I suppose what I'm doing is building up a store of weapons to fight the war and as we know you can never have too many !
The friend/loved one tip is really good LouGR!!!! If you've got someone you love very much, try your hardest to imagine 'they' are having a bad time with weight loss/food related issues, or are back sliding a bit, OR being really unkind to themselves.... what would your verbal & emotional response to them be like ???? I found a brilliant review of some books on Amazon I'm in the process of checking out I'll forward in to you later. I'm definitely going to buy one, and the precision nutrition blog website is definitely worth a look LouGR too .......
I could speak for hours from my experience of 10 years of dieting. So yeah, I do have tips and tricks but when you think about it, I'm still at my heaviest weight at the moment, so maybe they aren't good tips after all
Okay, I'll try the friend approach. And check out the books you recommend A lot of work lies ahead but I'm tired living the way I am right now so it's worth it
I'm happy you are! It was such a freeing experience to learn how to separate "human" and "animal" brains, as the author calls them. For the first 6 months or so I wore this ring with a spider and everytime I got tempted to binge or buy junk in a store, I would touch the ring and repeat constantly to myself: "I'm not an animal, I'm not an animal, I'm in control of my actions". Technically humans are animals but you get the point
Hello LouGR , The review below is for a book called 'the beck solution' which was mentioned in one of the replies you received...... I was checking out the reviews of it on Amazon and came across this review..... it's one of the best reviews I've ever read on anything !
"I think this book is attacking the right issue, but for me the approach taken doesn't greatly appeal.
The issue that Beck addresses is perhaps the most neglected in the whole fat-loss field: the formation of robust habits of constraint and moderation around food. It's based on the assumption that we simply lack the right tools to change our behaviour successfully.
The diet industry's obsession with finding some magical eating formula (low-fat vs low-carb vs paleo vs vegan etc etc ad infinitum) is all but drowning out the much simpler and more important issue of how to control our eating. The human body is highly adaptable and the search for the perfect diet is surely futile. I'm increasingly convinced that what we need to relearn is how to eat in moderation, consistently, for the rest of our lives.
It's when you compare the US and the UK to other countries that you release how gluttonous our eating culture has become. In Japan, for example, where only 3% of the population is obese as against 33% in the US and 24% in the UK, moderation in eating is highly valued socially and people eat sensible portions of nutritious and tasty food without continuous snacking. In the US and the UK, we've somehow fallen into eating too much and too often. We eat in the office, in the car, in the streets, in the cinema, in front of the TV...And portions get bigger and bigger. The reasons for the changes in our eating habits are complex, I think, but if 120 million Japanese can eat moderately there is surely no reason why I can't learn to do the same.
But how do we get from here to there? How do we relearn restraint? Simply telling people that they are weak and greedy is uncompassionate and ineffective. We now know that food is as addictive as opiates and mere willpower is all too often overwhelmed. We need effective tools for changing our addictive behaviour, and in many fields CBT is much the most proven modality for achieving behavioural change. Judith Beck is a highly respected figure in the CBT community, so surely this book is the answer?
Except that I feel it has a couple of major flaws.
First, it greatly complicates the process. It is highly programmed, with no less than 42 steps (and there's a supplementary workbook too), by which point there are 24 activities you are supposed to review on a daily basis. Good grief - does it really have to be so complicated? It's pretty hard to form 1 good habit, never mind 24. Most of us need to cut back by 500 calories or so to reduce, and then by 200 or so to maintain our weight. It's not really such a big deal and it seems to me that 24 changes is overkill. In my experience of psychology and counselling, attempting to change 24 habits in 42 days is very over-ambitious and failure prone, and the research backs me up. Far better, I would argue, to identify the 3 or 4 priority issues that are sabotaging your personal weight-loss and focus on them laser-like one at a time till each new habit becomes bomb-proof.
Secondly, and this is more subjective, I found the book uninspiring and joyless. Food should be a celebration, and I feel that this approach has lost touch with that. The first time I read it, some years back, I liked what it was trying to do but it didn't inspire me to take action. I really don't want to have this kind of relationship with food.
My first attempt at permanent fat loss has failed as the weight crept back and I'm looking to focus more on the habit-forming dimension second time around. So I've re-read this book, but still feel it's off-track. I'll mine it for ideas, but I've learned more from the habit-forming advice on John Berardi's Precision Nutrition website (prioritize the issues and tackle them one at a time), from Leo Babauta's The Power of Less (a minimalist approach to habit formation), Meg Selig's Changepower (a more detailed approach that might work better if you're facing serious issues with food addiction) and Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating (on neglected reasons for over-eating and the cumulative power of small changes).
Given the overwhelming and urgent importance of addressing the obesity explosion I find it surprising that there isn't a simple, practical, validated approach to improving eating habits. Precision Nutrition comes closest, I think, and seems to have a good success rate. So I'm going to base my second (and hopefully final!) approach on their advice, supplemented by insights from the other sources I've quoted. "
I've already started checking some of this ladies recommendations...... see what you make of them if youve time, and let me know what you think if you'd like to .... đ
Hei Trier, thank you for sharing this review with me. This person has a good point, several good points.
I have goggled Precision Nutrition, but I can't find any information on their approach, you have to pay to find what exactly they are offering. Or maybe I was just unable to find it.
I have found a summary of Mindless Eating online and there was nothing I wouldn't know in there. It is simply listing the reasons why people eat more than they think they do. I think it's an interesting read, but not very helpful for me.
After giving it a lot of thought, I think I'll go about the weight loss differently this time. You inspired me to work on self-love. And as I've said before, it's better to care for your body because you love it and not hate it. So maybe if I loved myself, I would be able to make the right decisions and stay motivated to get healthy. I'm checking self-love books and workbooks right now. This would be a great New Year Resolution - to love myself by the end of 2017
That sounds so lovely and positive..... "And as I've said before, it's better to care for your body because you love it and not hate it." I really really like that đđģ I'm going to add that in my online diary, you've summed up being kind to yourself perfectly ..... by the way, I only went on PN blog bit.... I'm not looking to pay for training or anything ......
LouGr........ I'm so so so very pleased for you my love ! My own battle is still ongoing and having a rough time at the moment........... seeing your post has made me feel full up.... I so want to be where you are ...... well done to you, I know you must have fought the bastard to get where you are!
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I really hope it was a success and you won't need to worry 
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