Hi Everyone,

Just thought I would ask about what makes you crave a binge. The reason I ask this is that I'm at my work. We just had a lunch meeting so lunch was provided. These week it was this really great salad place. My salad was pretty healthy but the portions are huge. I was so hungry by the time lunch came that I at the entire salad. Only a couple people in my office did this. The rest were too full to finish. Now I'm back at my desk and desperately craving sugar, candy, anything. Normally I would now just start stuffing my face. Possibly even going down to the 7 eleven on the corner and getting a bag of candy.

It just made me realize that not only are certain foods triggers for me, but perhaps this feeling of extreme fullness makes me want to keep going and putting more food in my mouth. sugary food in particular. It might just be my reflex that I've fallen off the wagon and want to keep going.

But for the first time in a long time, I realize I'm not actually hungry and I won't give in. I have a big glass of water and I will not allow myself to make that binge (regardless of what I ate, I ate too much) spiral me out of control.

Just writing this out helps a lot. I feel more relaxed already. Thank goodness for this site!

Bikini -
In my experience, what triggers my binges is a lot like what your experience was. For me, its primarily about quantity. If I eat a lot, even if its just a lot of salad, or miso soup...things that aren't calorie bombs, if I eat a ton, it triggers my binge monster. Also for me its about sweets. I've noticed that if I just have a bite of something sweet, or dessert-like, I want to binge because I feel like I've "blown it". The main thing that keeps me on track is portion sizes. I put everything on my plate and look at it and think logically before I start to eat..."is this something a "normal" eater would eat. Too much? Too little?" I wish I had a solution, but I don't really. I just wanted you to know you aren't the only person who's binge monster gets triggered just by eating a lot, even if its salad, or carrots

I never had anything that really set me off on a binge until I started eating oatmeal about 2 yrs ago. To make a long story short, I found a way to prepare the oatmeal so it's like granola. I won't even post how I do this as I don't want anyone else to try it and have the same problem I did. It became like crack to me. I have never had this happen to me with any food in my life. I was eating 10-13 packets of oatmeal per day. I can't even tell you how hard it was to quit eating it.

One day I came across this from Dr Lou Arrone, the best expert in the country on obesity.


"And this is the work of Dr. David Ludwig. He gave people either a high, medium, or low
glycemic index meal. It was instant oatmeal (high glycemic index meal), slowly cooked
steel cut oatmeal, the medium glycemic index meal. And the low glycemic index meal
was an egg white omelet with vegetables. And what he looked at was how much people
ate later in the day, in the five hours after this meal. And what he saw really was
astonishing. On the day that they had the instant oatmeal, they ate 81% more than on the
day they had the egg white omelet. And they ate 53% more when they had the instant
oatmeal than on the day they had the slowly cooked oatmeal. So, same number of
calories in each meal; but the glycemic index had an impact on how much they ate later
on."


"And this is perhaps even more interesting. These are hunger ratings later in the day.
These are the hunger ratings over those five hours. On this hunger rating scale, a higher
number represents greater hunger. You can see that with the meal time zero, the hunger
ratings dropped dramatically because hey had just eaten. And then over time they began
to eat. On the days they had the high and the medium glycemic index meals, the numbers
were about 7. On the day they had the low glycemic index meal, it was about 4. So just
think about it. Despite having eaten 80% more with the high glycemic food, they were
still almost twice as hungry."

At least this explained to me what was happening to me from the oatmeal. I was eating instant oatmeal, really uncooked - no wonder I was consuming so much food every day and never ever feeling full or satisfied. I'm sure there are other foods that do this as well, but the percentages of the study were shocking - to me.

This comes from a PDF document and I don't know how to post the charts that accompanied the document. If anyone is interested and wants to email me, PM me and I can send you the PDF document.

Over the last year really I've come to understand and know my triggers. I know I usually overeat on certain days of the week, after certain meals...

And I know what you mean abou the over full feeling. When I eat too much I want to keep eating too much. It's like I want to keep that uncomfortably full feeling as punishment or just keep myself that full so I never feel empty again. And I find that it is actually painful to go from being too full, to being just full enough. Now I'm just working on not entering that area of "too full".

Mine is never about feeling hungry. If I'm in the right 'emotional place' then you could set an entire chocolate cake down in front of me and I would quite happily read a book.

Triggers... a lot of stress at one time always does it. Especially if the source of stress surprises me. If I feel fat, I binge. If I feel thin, I binge.

Past triggers... phonecalls from my mother, seeing my boyfriend's ex (I once saw her and ran to the supermarket to buy two cheesecakes, a packet of biscuits and a loaf of bread, which I ate)... before we were together, if my boyfriend didn't call in a day then I'd binge.

I just use it to 'deal with' aspects of life that overwhelm me.