Wow, wannabe! Cool to dump your food and not follow through with the binge. Yes, there is a fine line between overeating and bingeing, I must say...

That has happened to me too. I was eating my favourite binge foods, but it was "WTF are you doing? It's boring! Not interesting! It makes no sense!" And I gave up on bingeing. (Which is another proof, I think, that my own BED had more to do with habit than 'real psychological need' or whatever.)

No bingeing yesterday either. I may have turned a corner. At one point I had even gone several hours without eating from 9am to 2pm which in the past is enough to make me hangry (angry+hungry lol) enough to eat everything in sight. AND we went to Pizza Uno which is usually my cue to eat new england clam chowder, and a big pizza all to myself. Nope, was craving some grilled chicken with roasted veggies and a bit of faro salad. I stole a couple of french fries from my son's plate but that's as far as it went lol. And I was totally sated.

There are recurring feelings of not being stressed out when I look in the mirror. Somehow I just know I'm looking at who I was rather than who I'm headed to be so I'm really not bothered with my flab at the moment.

Ha! Yeah, being hangry would usually do it for me too. That is SO great you were able to follow your craving AND have some fries w/o that flipping the switch. I don't know if you guys feel like this, but it's almost surreal for me to be behaving like a normal person with my eating. I'm by no means eating super healthy and great, but my serving sizes are reasonable, I don't feel like I *have* to finish everything all at once, and I'm neither in diet or binge mode at all times. (shrug) I don't know . . . it seems so simple, but part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am *slooooowly* trying to be more mindful of my calories and nutrition to ease back into it since I do need to lose weight still, but *bingeing* is what caused all of my weight gain. When I'm not in binge mode, I've realized I consume about exactly what I should for my height/weight . . . even if I'm not "dieting".

This book is so great. I am feeling like I could have written parts of it- and it seems so obvious that we don't "have" to binge- OBVIOUSLY I am very in control of myself and can make my own decisions, but the way she explains and describes all the feelings that we all seem to feel before/during/after a binge, and how we are not our animal brain.. it seems to have really struck a chord with me..

It seems so silly even now when I think about bingeing... Its only been 5 days since my last binge and only 2 since I got my hands on the book... but in just two days I have felt more able to "separate" myself from bingeing...

I feel like I finally can do this-- like her, I can see now that I have no real "reason" for bingeing... yes I'm stressed sometimes, but is that really why I binge? no-- its just an excuse I use to justify it. If the only reason I binge is to get rid of the urges... and I can have faith that with some time and patience the urges will subside.. I feel like I can get a handle on this craziness.

everything in the book just seems so simple now that I have read it-- I'm almost frustrated that I never had this realization by myself.. but I'm way to excited about this discovery to really be too upset with myself.

wow sorry that was a lot but I'm just so excited! I'm hoping it lasts- I really feel like I am in control. I decide what I put in my mouth. I decide whats good for me and I can decipher what I really want. yay.

So glad you are liking the book, danzingurl!!

Well, I've gotta admit, guys, I feel like a big fat FRAUD!
After reading the book, starting this thread, and feeling so confident and touting my success, I've just had the worst binge break in probably years.
I turned off my higher brain completely, I feel like. It felt like too much was going on in there, I guess! With final exams, an upcoming huge trip abroad, and admittedly obsessing a little bit about eating strategies and weightloss mindsets (even good ones!), I just kinda checked out and didn't care and binged binged slept awfully woke up binged binged and then tried to binge but literally cannot even summon up the least appetite for anything anymore.

Just felt like I wanted to be honest about it somehow!
I'm very disappointed in myself right now..

Please try to cut yourself a break, if you can? I promise you, *we* don't think you are a fraud!!! You are just human and frankly, like I said in an earlier post today, I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop for me too. That said, I don't think what happened with your binge undoes everything . . .not in the least. Your assessment of what went wrong with quieting the lower brain seems spot on and so if you can, just try to shrug it off, don't give it any more of your emotional attention and think of all the days in the past few weeks that you did GREAT with the strategy! Were the thoughts about eating strategies/weightloss mindsets something that you were giving more attention to just recently? I"m asking because the only thing I'm really afraid of with this is that *any* attention, even if it's slight, towards dieting/weight/etc. can give the lower brain too much ammunition. I don't know that for certain though, just my own experience lately.

In any case, I'm sorry that happened. It's frustrating as he** when we think we have solid footing and then slip . . .but that's all it is -- a slip. Don't give it any more power than it's already taken. I hope tomorrow is better for you.

So glad that it resonated so much with you too!!! It IS exciting to think that it's something so relatively simple and that we've had the power within us to *stop this* all along. Suddenly I'm reminded of Dorothy from the Wizard Of Oz when she realizes she had the power to go home all along but just didn't know it. LOL! Seriously though, there's good reason to be excited. I think anyways. What a GREAT day it will be when we don't even have those darn urges anymore and I really believe that will come. I know mine seem to be getting less frequent and not as loud.

One thing I did take note of today: I had an urge to binge and was able to dismiss it. BUT . . I started thinking I kind of MISS the anticipation feeling of the binge. NOT the binge itself and obviously NOT the aftermath, but the adrenaline rush of prepping for a binge.. thinking of what I'm going to eat, getting it ready, etc. etc... That worries me a bit, but then I just tried to quiet that thought too. Maybe that rush is just another "trick" to keep me wanting to continue ... ???

Mottainai, I went through something similar. I read the book, felt very enlightened, yet binged anyway. Looking back at what went wrong, I know that part of the reason why I binged was because I gave the thoughts coming from my animal brain significance. I argued with those thoughts, rather than recognizing them as junk and moving on. Because I gave urges to binge attention and significance, I easily found excuses to binge.

Hope that all makes sense and helps! Good luck!

I know what you mean by this. Bingeing is more than just about food. For me it was about eating secret meals between meals. I'd leave for work 20min early EVERYDAY so that I could go through a drive through, and come home a little later so that I could go through a drive through. Then I'd come home and eat the "normal" dinner. Of course this takes a great deal of strategy. I've basically been lying about what time my job starts/ends. I can't leave any evidence so I would drive to a parking lot or gas station where there was a bin to rid of the garbage and crumbs. Anytime I went anywhere by myself (shopping, doctor's appointment, meeting a friend for drinks, running errands etc) was a chance for me to do some eating before or afterwards. It became part of who I was. I even have a separate bank account devoted solely to bingeing (wow, that's the first time I ever even acknowledged that to myself.) It's hard to recognize myself now not doing that. And I gotta tell you, I find that I'm asking myself these questions daily:

- what will I eat if I don't go through a drive-thru?
- what is there to do before/after work if not eat?
- what time should I leave to go to work now?
- how can I go to the mall without eating?
- what would a normal person eat now?

Also when someone asks me for a ride to go somewhere it brings on sheer panic that I don't have the freedom to eat during that time. But I'm learning how to face these feelings, it's only normal that when you stop doing something you're used to doing there is a period of adjustment. I'm just trying to focus on ANYTHING but food now.

You're not a fraud, you're a human. Listen, none of us are kidding ourselves that this will be a miracle for us. I expect there to be slip ups, I expect that some days will be more difficult than others. Don't hold yourself up as an example to us all, I appreciate finding the book but this is a long hard journey for us all and nobody is going to punish you for not being perfect, only you and you must not do that.

If you slipped and fell while walking what do you do? Do you sit there and cry and say "I fell, I fell!!!!!" No, because that would call attention to something very inconsequential. It's just not worth crying over. You get up and keep moving and forget about it. This is something we must learn how to do. We cannot lament over what we ate yesterday, normal healthy people don't do that. They look forward and don't punish themselves.

Hmmm. I guess we're very much used to the "ritual" of our bingeing routine. Maybe the planning stage of a binge is not quite the same as a habit, but look at the medical definition of ritual: any act or practice regularly repeated in a set precise manner for relief of anxiety


My ritual of going to get food/knowing I was going to eat whatever I wanted/having NO limits WAS the *only* thing that very fleetingly relieved anxiety. That was really the only part of the binge where I felt relief -- during it I was almost numb/zombie, but *before* when I made the decision I was going to binge there was momentary relief. Now I understand the relief was from the urge being gone . . . not relief from all the of the emotions/stressors that I may have been experiencing at the time.

I'd like to thank all of you who have posted and to mottainai for starting this thread. I actually ordered the book yesterday and continued reading through the posts today. I'm 42 years old and have been bingeing since about the age of 19. Well, it has finally caught up with me. I'm pre-diabetic and am having some heart issues. My question to you guys is: would you be able to stop eating junk if you had a diagnosed medical condition? Since I got my results on Monday, I have changed my eating habits but I'm wondering if this diagnosis is enough to scare me straight, so to speak. I absolutely intend to never binge again but I've had that very intention more times than I can remember. I don't even know what I weigh right now because I've decided to just stay on plan and eat healthy for as long as I can before weighing in. Just in May I was at my ideal weight and then I fell off the wagon (all kinds of bad things happened in my life) and even though I recommitted a few times, I fell off track and am now an XL in clothing whereas before I was between XS (in the waist) to Medium sized.

I should mention that one of my biggest triggers to binge is the fact that I've had daily migraines for the last five years (of varying degree) but when I don't eat healthy, the pain is only worse. I still hope that this book will help me. I'm really searching for help.

Thanks for listening. I'm really glad I've found you guys on this thread.