[Melody2006]

Before I started WW I was known to be a binge eater. I ate fast food every day and when I would binge eat I could down a whole box of little debbie brownies, or eat a whole frozen pizza myself. I used to get myself a two scoop waffle cone every day at Culvers. When I drive by one now I always look to see the flavor of the day. But now I feel better with 10 pounds off so I stick to the plan. Your story?

[Tammy32]

I'm not going to speak like I was a binge eater in the past, because I see it as an addiction that could control and harm and resurface at anytime. Just like any other addiction...Hehe..I need a 12 step program for this. I've binged before(alot)..I've binged and purged for a good amount of time. I've done alot of detrimental things to my body. None good. But I think most of us can relate on one level or another to binge eating. Feels so good til the guilt sets in directly after the episode. What's amazing is our way of thinking. We guilt after binging, yet we get great joy from losing weight and having self-control. It just seems that the happiness would win out. My problem is I am an emotional eater. When I am extremely depressed or stressed I don't eat at all, but when I am kind of in between I have to eat and eat and eat and then eat some more. And never once have I done that and told myself that was a nice thing you just did for yourself. What a complex people we are.

Melody, rock on!!

[HarpoChicoGroucho]

Yes, WAS a binge eater, and still AM. I haven't been able to shake it. They just slip in there sometimes. Ironic, it happened today: I ate at the Pizza Hut buffet for lunch (8 pieces, pasta, and 2 slices of desert pizza), a combo of Taco Bell and Mcdonald's for dinner, and now I just went to Taco Bell AGAIN after finishing a bag of Sun Chips. And my snacks: a honey bun, two oatmeal cookies, 3 chocolate chip cookies, a package of sandwich cookies, a root beer, and half a bag of chocolate mini donuts. And that's what I remember. I am not kidding at all. . I even went to the store and bought fried rice and egg rolls with every intention of eating them tonight too, but I'm really tired and think I'll go to bed instead. The good thing is that these days only happen a couple of times a month, not a couple of times a week like before I went on my diet. I'm not even going to try to figure out the calories and fat I had today. It's probably at least at week's worth. It's hard to stop once I start. I think I'll need professional counseling some day if I ever want to beat this. Is anyone a successful binge abstainer?

[Tammy32]

I like that, "binge abstainer", made me smile. Try not to beat yourself up to bad. I slip, you slip, we all slip, and some of us more than others *pointing finger at myself* I'm pretty sure I need some counseling for this. I know why I binge eat and I thought that would be like this huge thing I figured out. Oprah sure made it sound good. Everyone(ok, not everyone) is always saying once you figure out why you over-eat then you can just go, go, go with your weight loss. Like it is some cure for my fat gene. So, I know why I binge, I still don't know how to stop it or control it. I'm hungry now.

[boiaby]

I like "binge abstainer" too, very fitting. I, too, was/am a binge eater, big time!! Not so much now, as I am mostly able to keep it under control, but I do still have my moments...

Back in the day I could really pack it away like those little hotdog scarfing food-eating champions you see on TV! Whole pizzas, entire pans of brownies, all of the raw cookie dough (ugh, don’t try this one at home!), and the list goes on and on. When I was on a roll, it was astounding just how much I could actually stuff down my throat, not pretty! Luckily, I seem to have a handle on it for the most part now, and my definition of a "binge" is completely different now. A more typical binge for me today would consist of an entire head of cauliflower rather than eating all of the leftover Halloween candy. But I guess a binge is still a binge, regardless of the quality of foods you do it with. And while the occurrence of my binges has been markedly reduced, the urge to do so has and always will be there, it's just a part of who I am. I don't believe that we can ever be "cured" of our food addictions/issues, but I wholeheartedly believe that we can learn to manage them, just like any addict with a few years of sobriety under their belts, it's an every day process and one we will likely have to learn to live with for the rest of our lives.

Beverly

[glynne]

Was/am still. I struggle with it. What has always amazed me is how much stuff I can stuff in ~ when it is stuff that is not good for me, but when it is healthy stuff, it doesn't take much of it to fill me up. When I am having a binge though ~ it is not the healthy stuff that I am stuffing in ~ LOL.

[rysmommy]

Were a binge eater?! Try AM a binge eater im fairly new here so im still trying to break this habit all I know is for my own sanity i can not have anything in my house that would get me binging not even baking ingredients like chocolate chips i binged on those the other day! IT's going to be very very hard for me to break this habit but i know it will be my sucess story! lol

[Melody2006]

Oh, don't even mention the Pizza Hut buffet to me. I loved that so much. I live with my SO and my MIL. She kept on and on in December about us doing weight watchers. It was mentioned on a daily basis. I told her I would be ready Jan. 1st and I would do it. Her and some of her friends joined curves and I passed on that. Well, it's the end of January and she's been to 1 weight watchers meeting in January where she didn't weigh in. That was January 9th. Never a meeting sence and she bought the $140 season pass that day. They never go to curves. What a waste of money. Every week she asks me about my weigh in. I've seen a jar of peanut butter a week missing in this house due to her binge eating when we aren't home. I really thought she'd be doing good and we could give each other support. I'm doing this for myself. Watching her fall off and waste all that money has kept my binge eating controlled. And the fact that I go to a weekly meeting where I have to weigh in. If I just did it at home, it would be easy to slide. I like going once a week and talking with others and feeling like part of some group.

[ScarlettDrawl]

Was/am here too... In the past I had days from time to time where I ate very much like HarpoChicoGroucho described above. Those days where I felt like I could sweat grease, lol. I had a huge tendency to pig out with certain people (like my mom or one of my girlfriends who I don't see often). Does anyone else tend to let loose more with certain people? I always knew it too, okay, going to moms, gonna eat a lot so I gotta be good until then. Now, it's more like I'll have a stressful day and will get my hands on something like a pack of Reduced Fat Oreos (somehow makes it better *rolls eyes at self*) and eat them ALL. That happens less frequently than other days where I'll have something like a pack of cheddar cheese rice cakes (the mini ones, love those) and eat the whole bag in one sitting. Still I have gotten much better about all of my binges (whether multiple food or one food binges). I have had one instance this month with the oreos and one this month with the rice cakes. Before I began trying to get healthy (which was really back in october, I just had to start all over after the holidays), I had all out fast food, buffett, convenience store delights binges on a pretty regular basis. I still get the urge but am happy to say that I have resisted the all out binge since the holidays. We can only take it one day at a time. Every day I have to make decisions on what and why I'm eating.

[Nori71]

Yes, I'm a binger (in recovery!!) = I eat because of emotions and not hunger. And then it was followed by a purge = restricting food intake or doing a insane amount of exercise (I've never forced vomiting). It calms me for those brief few moments or hours and then the guilt hits. I haven't done it for probably a good 2 months now, but I've felt the old, ugly urges trying to get me going. I have NEVER done it in public. NEVER in front of DH. I have on occasion in front of my kids (2y & 9m) and it FEELS horrible. Of course they don't understand the shame of it at all.

Anyways, I bought a FANTASTIC book. It is called Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole. GO GET IT!!!! You can read some of the reviews on Amazon to get an idea of what it's about. Customer Reviews. It is helping me to understand that I've had it ALL WRONG when I've had lists of "bad foods" vs. "good foods" and when I've embarked on yet another restrictive diet. (Of course there are good choices and bad choices...) For me it's when something is forbidden that I want it even more. So I'm throwing out my mental lists of bad and good foods -- they are all just calories in. And I've started to make peace with foods, including chocolate and chips and while I'm being very accountable about (writing down and logging) what I eat, I'm not DIETING. My very, very, very, very favorite food in the whole wide world is tortilla chips and salsa. In the past whenever I am "dieting" there have been no chips under any circumstance in the house--or I will binge and eat all 14 oz. Now that I am making peace with food, it's almost a high to see the chips in the cupboard and know that they are there and that I can measure out a portion if I want to. And you know what? More often than not I'm deciding that I don't "need" them all that bad and can just walk away. It's going to be very liberating to continue in this thought process with all my trigger foods. I feel in control for the first time. I am willing to lose this weight in a healthy way and time frame and not get stuck in that rut of deprivation and restriction that always triggers binges for me. Sorry this got so long. Just putting it down confirms and solidifies for me that this is the right way for me to get out of the cycle of emotional eating that has controlled me for so many years now.

I have hope to one day be a "recovered binger" - how I feel right now is such a new feeling to me - to be able to take it or leave it. Unheard of a few months ago. I would have taken it all!

[NotTheCheat]

I also came to terms with my binge eating by reading and working with several intuitive eating books - mainly Overcoming Overeating by by Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter and several books by Geneen Roth. Before then, I couldn't be in the same room with certain foods and not be violently obsessed - mainly things with chocolate and ice cream. I thought I needed to control everything - I didn't trust myself around food. It scared the **** out of me, but I tried what the books said. I bought two of everything I craved and brought them home. I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted, when I wanted. At first I overate, but once I came to terms with the fact I could have what I want whenever I wanted it, I stopped actually wanting it most of the time. For me a large part of the addiction was the lure of the forbidden. Part of my eating was a rebellion (this stems from my childhood and a lot of food control issues with my parents). The other thing I learned was that I ate things because I wouldn’t be allowed to later. I was always starting a diet tomorrow or next week, so I would have to eat what I had now, or I might never be allowed to again. This also caused me to eat things I didn’t necessarily want at the moment from fear of not being allowed to in the future. Now when I start to feel that way, I remind myself that I can have that food any time I want to. Say at Thanksgiving with stuffing (which I LOVE). I used to absolutely stuff myself because I would only get it once a year. Now, I let myself have stuffing whenever I want, but I don’t end up wanting it often and I also don’t feel the need to gorge myself on Thanksgiving (if that makes any sense).

For me, this didn't result in weight loss, but it did stabilize my weight and it freed me from a level of food obsession that was like a prison. It has been a few years, and now I am finally ready to take off the weight. It is amazing the difference. Before, I could never fathom how people could keep ice cream in the house more than a few days. I have had ice cream in the freezer for weeks and only touched it once. We have chocolate sitting out on the kitchen counter. It is my boyfriend’s chocolate and that is where he likes keeping it. Before, I would have been obsessed with it and constantly aware of it in the room. Now, I hardly notice it.

However, I will end this by saying that this may not work for everyone. Different people are different and need to come to terms with their addictions in different ways. This totally worked for me because of the nature of my food obsessions.

[lucky]

It wasn't until I started losing weight that I realized that I had been a binge eater. For the most part those days are behind me. I don't see food the same way that I once did and I don't have the urge to binge very often. But, the urge does hit sometimes. When I find myself wanting to inhale food I force myself to slow down and THINK. As someone else mentioned, I tend to start feeling like I should really load up on everything around me because I know that I'm not going to allow myself to eat in such a way again. The problem is that if I let a binge to take place then I almost always DO allow myself to eat like that the next day, and the next, and the next. So I slow down, relax, and remind myself that the cookies aren't going anywhere and that, even if they did, they aren't the last cookies on Earth. It sounds too simple, I know, but it really has worked for me.

[Monkeybabies]

Yup, add me to the list too. There are two types of binging for me...hunger binge and an out of control binge. Lately, when I get super hungry...and haven't had a chance to snack...I feel like I can binge on any thing ...healthy or not. But the out of control binge...definitely stems back to my childhood. I would have to sneak some of my food so my parents would not say anything to me. And now, I feel like it some sort of warped control (that is totally out of control...KWIM???) Like, I can do this.....but I just don't stop! It has gotten better....but it will never go away.

[72butterfly]

Sometimes at night when alone I would eat an entire box of cereal, a box of wheat thins, a box of ice cream sandwiches and.....I am definitely an emotional eater and late at night is when I have difficulty. Posting on these forums and journaling on this website has really helped me. I truly believe it keeps me out of the kitchen. It is one of my coping mechanisms.

[DollyR]

Yes I am a binger. I wish I knew how to stop. I get to thinking about the favorite snack foods and I have to have them. Even something like hummus and crackers, I go beserk over. It's weird I think how I get obsessed over it and want more. I get into the euphoric stage while I eat and then sometimes but not all the time I will jump up and run to the garbage ad throw it all away before I can eat the whole thing. I guess I have this compulsive behavior from when I was little and I have never taken the real time to address it until now.