I am a recovering anorexic/bulimic. I will never say that i used to be one because it is something that is never cured.
That being said a binge is different for everyone, and still classified as a binge. I was in treatment with one guy who a binge for him was eating a slice of pizza. It was his binge, it was treated as a binge. There was a girl who didn't consider anything a binge until she was over 10,000 calories a day.
What a binge is, is different to every person, and its extremely personal. That guy who ate a piece of pizza felt just as bad and as the girl who ate 12,000 calories of cake. Binges are not about an amount of food, but the reason behind the food more than anything.
I haven't binged in my mind in about 4 years, what I would consider a binge, I can remember my last one, and that was eating an entire cake and a half gallon of ice cream. That was a major binge, and well after my initial treatment.
EDIT: I once had a counselor tell me something that I think will help here. A binge is a binge, but its different for everyone. Judging another persons binge does nothing good for them, and nothing for you.
I also often feel like the term binge gets overused here a lot as just overeating or going off plan. For me, I usually binged on pizza. Not that it was a trigger food but that I was already planning to binge when I ordered it. I'd eat a whole pizza (medium, sometimes large), often breadsticks too, some form of dessert (I have eaten an entire cake more than once), and I'll polish off any/all boxes of snack foods in the house. Or sometimes I'll eat fast food and then go out to dinner with a friend and order a large meal there as well (this is rare, I usually eat alone. I threw up in the bathroom at the restuarant and blamed it on the alcohol [one whole drink] both times).
To me, the thing that really separates binge-eating from over-eating is the way I feel durring and afterwards. I feel a lot of guilt and anger with myself when I binge. I really really hate myself the entire time. And I'm so paranoid that other people know. The pizza man, the fast food employee, the people walking past my car at the drive through, my neighbors. What if they know? I feel like anyone I see when I'm about to binge is juging me, thinking about how disgusting and out of controll I am. (oh, and when the pizza guy comes I totally pretend to talk to someone off in the room where he can't see. I don't want him to know I'm eating that all by myself)
Also, in over-eating, I'm just uncomfortable afterwards, maybe some slight pain. Undo the top button type of feeling. But when I binge I'm in a lot of pain afterwards, sometimes I have to throw up because my body is physically incapable of holding all that food.
I agree with Shannon, (hi in the ATL by the way) and ICU, Binging regardless of your definition of what it is, is about lack of control, I know for me I eat to stuff feelings of not loving myself enough.. Thats how I get to this place, the need to learn to take better care of me, and that I deserve to live a long healthy life. Or atleast my head knows that, now i just have to make my heart understand it..
or maybe I don't want to feel a crap everytime I read about someone else's binge and then finding out their binge is not even 1/10 of what I'm used to do?
I consider "binge" in the context of: what a person's normal, everyday diet is like, why they're binging, what they're binging on, their diet, and how they physically and emotionally feel afterwards.
For example, when I binge it's usually a 3-day spree of sugar, salt, and carbs (not unusual for anyone, though my normal diet includes relatively low carbs and very little sugar or salt). I'm not in a specific mood when I'm binging--I can be happy, sad, neutral, upbeat, worried, etc. And when I binge I just...shovel food into my mouth, robot-like. Even when my tongue is aching from the sugar and my stomach feels painfully full I keep going. The next day...my eyes ache, my tongue has sores, etc...
I maybe consumed 3500-4000 calories each of those 3 days. That might not be a lot compared with some peoples' binges, but my normal diet is low-cal (and, I might add, very satisfying).
I'm always interested to have a thread pop up just when that topic or issue is on my mind. I'm coming close to my maintenance phase (i.e., "the rest of my life") and am having mixed feelings. I'm going over everything to be sure it's all planned right.
In the past month, I've binged three times. For me, it was a giant bag of Doritos after already having a perfectly healthy and calorie counted meal. I also added a sub sandwich and a carton of rocky road icecream (never had that flavor before) and other stuff too.
As said above, it's the why that I need to get a handle on. I've been thinking that maybe I will just experience occassional binges (preventing myself from controling the stop button), not berate myself horribly afterwards, generally keep a balance plan in mind (after a binge, try to go back to my 1250 calorie days for a while and exercise a bit more), and try to accept that I have a binger inside me that comes out occassionally.
I would say that people who have never been overweight ("normal") are very different than a person who's lost weight. I do want to work on developing a more natural and flexible approach to food but for now I've got to figure out how to be in control and be comfortable with that. Can I just eat a single serving of Doritos? I'm thinking that might be my test...a single serving of Doristos as my daily treat option (250 calories). I don't want to be afraid of food. So, can I eat the "frightening" foods in a single serving...and walk away? Now I'd pay for that horror movie.
Last edited by iaradajnos; 08-04-2009 at 11:05 AM.
I agree with what some of the other ladies have said...a binge is different for every person and they really cannot be compared. It seems to me though, that everyone has a lot of the same feelings behind a binge -- guilt, shame, self-loathing, etc. I know that's how it is for me.
When I binge, it's always in secret and it's usually on junk lying around the house that I've eaten a million times..cookies, cakes, chips, bread, ice cream, frozen foods, etc. It's nothing new. I'm always in search of the "perfect food" that will satisfy my cravings. I have yet to find it. I'll eat til I feel sick and my stomach hurts, wait 10-20 minutes for that feeling to pass, and then eat some more. Wash, rinse, repeat. Often my jaw hurts from chewing so much. It usually only happens for one day at a time though. Going to sleep at night hits the "reset" button for me and I can wake up the next morning and be on plan for x-amount of time until something triggers my next binge. I haven't figured out my triggers yet, sadly.
I've come to realize though that I can never say "I'll never binge again." I know I will, it's learning how to control them and learn from them that I need to focus on. My last binge was about a week and a half ago. I burned my dinner, and turned to junky snack foods instead of trying to salvage my healthy dinner. What have I learned? Have something in place while I'm cooking my dinner. I drink a Diet Coke now...maybe not the best of choices, but it keeps my mouth busy and the carbonation makes me feel full long enough until my dinner is ready to eat. So, I'm learning from my binges, and I'm taking it one day at a time.
I thought the point of being here was to support each other? Just because someone else has not eaten an entire pizza in one sitting how can I minimise what someone else feels if one ice cream cone is enough to make them feel like rubbish? My hope is to be of support/understanding to people and to find the same.
First of all... yes, this is a support forum, that's why I came here. That's why I write here. I'm really, really sorry if someone understood that I wanted to classify "not real" a binge just for fun or to put shame on someone. I actually don't think I wrote the first post in that way: if so, I'm sorry.
Anyway, thanks for all the different answers. I made a question (and it seems it wasn't just in MY mind) and I got different points of view.
So, it seems that a binge is relative, and not so much related to the amount of food, but to the feeling "out of control" ecc...
I do not have BED, but I have binged; and I totally understand why you want to classify other people's binges as real or not real, but I don't think it's up to you to say.
so, why do you think I want to classify the binge?
I'm asking "sincerly", not in a polemic way.
maybe it helps!
maybe, labeling others' binges as "not real"... I can complain myself and feeling one of the fews and feeling special? or maybe I don't want to feel a crap everytime I read about someone else's binge and then finding out their binge is not even 1/10 of what I'm used to do?
Just basing it on what you said. Even if you're not sure, that's all you've provided for me to go on. My point was that others may feel as crappy/guilty/shameful after their binges, however different from yours, as you do after yours. I agree with others that the word "binge" may be thrown around too haphazardly, but telling someone that they don't know what it feels like is harsh because maybe they do...
Julietta,
I have BED and completely understand where you are coming from. I, too, would look at someone who just ate an ice cream cone (and only an ice cream cone) and think they were a block off their knocker for calling it a binge. Of course, it's a matter of point of view. I certainly would not want to minimize anyone's feelings because to the person who eats the ice cream cone may still have the same feelings afterward that you and I experience after the mounds and mounds of food we are capable of consuming. But, I still understand where you are coming from and why you feel it necessary to define the binge. I also want to know that there are others out there who eat as much as I do (did) during a binge. There is solice in the fact that we are not alone.
I am pleased to say that it's been probably a year and a half since having the kind of binge that used to be a daily or every other day occurance for me. Binges now are much, much smaller and more controlled but still definitely more than one person would "normally" eat in one sitting. In my hayday, here is what a binge might look like for me:
3-4 LARGE chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies from a bakery case at the store
2 pieces of cake (also from the bakery area - large slices)
2 different take-out dishes of Chinese food with rice
1 egg roll
an entire order of crab rangoon
ice cream
half of a bag of chocolate chips (I would just keep grabbing by the handful each trip to the kitchen)
often some type of side dish from the grocery deli area like macaroni salad, mac & cheese, coleslaw, or something like that
And, yes, that would be all in one evening - one item right after the other until I was hating myself so much that I would just finally go to bed or pass out from food coma.
After much therapy (actually, work with a life coach) I am now at a point where a binge looks more like this (this is exactly what I had two nights ago when I had a binge) -
bowl of air popped popcorn with butter (large bowl)
4 S'mores (but I was so mindless that I didn't toast or melt the marshmallows, just plopped them on the graham cracker with chocolate and ate)
one Weight Watchers ice cream bar
And this was the largest binge I've had in months. They are usually smaller than that now and also last for less time. Knowing that my binges are smaller now but I still get the emotions of a large binge I can see how someone who only at the ice cream cone can still get these binge feelings. It's all a matter of perspective. It's a long journey to manage BED but it can be done. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work and I was never willing to allow myself the time before. Now I know that it takes time (years) and I'm allowing myself to be ok with that because I see the growth. I am light years ahead of where I was a year or two ago and it feels great!
I've been thinking about the binge question all day. This past weekend I chose to eat a carton of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I don't consider that a binge at all, as I willingly pursued the product, brought it into the house, then made the choice to pick up my spoon and eat it. By comparison, one night a few weeks ago I couldn't stop snacking - every time I walked into the kitchen I was grabbing nuts, fruit, chips, small snacky type items. The straw that broke me down was when I caught myself sneaking food out of the cabinet quietly so as to not wake my husband up where he was dozing on the couch that I could then hide in my bedside table drawer for later snacking with less risk of exposure. That definitely made me feel out of control, so I called that entire night a binge in my head. It still had less calorie damage than this past weekend's ice cream, but made me feel so much worse...
Interesting thread, Julietta.
Last edited by Shannon in ATL; 08-04-2009 at 05:10 PM.
It is all about perspective. To me, an ice cream cone, while small and not really a huge calorie shock, is a binge because of the sugar content. I gave up sugar 6 months ago because it was my trigger. I used to hide candy everywhere and wouldn't let my kids have it. Christmas was always bad because I didn't eat the "food", oh no, I just ate the frosting off the cookies and anything dipped in chocolate. I would drive to Walgreens for the sole purpose of buying those darned Queen Annes Chocolate covered cherries and proceed to eat all 10 of them in the 5 minute drive home. Then the next day I would do the same thing. Then I would throw away the evidence before I went into the house so no one has a clue of what I just did. Many years ago I lost alot of weight and got down to about 110 lbs.....then I went on a sugar spree daily, it was Spearmint leaves (sugar coated gummy type candy) that did me in then, I gained 40 lbs that year.
So the ice cream cone for me is a binge or atleast the start of something that I must control before it gets out of hand.
P.S. Don't ever let me near your wedding cake......the fingers in the frosting were mine
My point was that others may feel as crappy/guilty/shameful after their binges, however different from yours, as you do after yours. I agree with others that the word "binge" may be thrown around too haphazardly, but telling someone that they don't know what it feels like is harsh because maybe they do...
