When I was in my early 20's and realized I was a binge eater and was gaining too much weight, I got desperate and got diet pills from my doctor. I took them for a week and was elated that I had no desire to eat when taking them, but I actually stopped taking them just so I could binge. The binging was not about the food...it was about using food to self-medicate.
I came to this forum for support, but also knowledge about binging and how to cope with it. The second part may be here and I just haven't found it yet. So I started doing some googling and came across a site that pretty much nails what I was looking for. And this is something that I really already knew, but it's easier to eat than it is to face my problems, so I needed to be reminded of this.
I cannot link to the site, because it's against forum policy, so I'll cover most of the points that hit home in my own words, and will quote one part at the end. I don't want to promote the site because they are trying to sell a product. I am not encouraging anyone to buy their product. I just found so much good free information on their site that I'd like to share. So here is a synopsis (with some of my own thoughts added):
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Compulsive eating is not done because you are hungry. It is done because you are not dealing with some emotion or stress in your life. It could be depression (in which case you may need medication and therapy), or sub-clinical depression (in which case therapy may help, or finding the right self-help books or programs to teach you how to find better tools to use than food.
You may be a perfectionist, or not know how to deal with relationship problems, or stresses on the job, or in school. You may have grown up with lack of self-worth for various reasons. You may have been emotionally or sexually abused as a child, or been obese as a child and despise your self-image.
The biggest mistake that people who binge make is saying to themselves, "I'll never binge again!" Even though almost everyone that binges says that to themselves, it sets you up for self-hatred, guilt and failure. YOu will binge again because it makes you feel better emotionally, and it's OK...as long as your goal is to learn what is causing you to need the food to self-medicate and learn to make positive steps toward improving your self-image and changing the habit from binging to successful techniques, and emotional maturity. It's a habit that needs to be broken, just like any addiction is.
There are goals to look at to feel successful in your journey. Are you binging less often? Are your binges shorter duration? Can you forgive yourself for being human and making a mistake? Do you recognize why you are binging? Are you getting better at facing and dealing with the cause of binging? Are you learning to love yourself (positive self-talk)? Take one gentle step at a time. You are looking for progress, not perfection.
Emotional eating is the number one reason diets fail. Going on a diet is just punishing yourself for being bad. And eventually, you will tire of the punishment or feel bad about something else, and go off the deep end. Then, if you forgot why you were binging in the first place, you fall back into the old cycle of self-loathing, instead of continuing on the progress of learning how to deal with your emotions in more positive ways.
Just because emotional eating makes you feel satisified now, doesn't mean that's the only way to feel satisfied in the future. After you've learned to find that satisfaction without food, you will look back and wonder why you thought food was the only answer.
When you eliminate compulsive eating as a coping mechanism, you start to learn how to tackle the real problems. Giving up emotional eating is not a loss. It is actually preventing you from coping with life's challenges.
The stronger the habit of using food to cope, the harder it becomes to stop using it...so when you see yourself falling back into binging, don't beat yourself up over it. Just realize that you need to refocus yourself on what the real problems are again and dealing with them honestly (even though it may be painful). Just take it in small steps. Emotional eating allows us to suppress feelings that we need to address to fix. Suppressing them doesn't cure them. Only facing them will cure them. They will just keep coming back to urge you to binge again and again till you face them.
Here are some hints that your eating is emotional:
hunger comes on suddenly
cravings for specific comfort foods (usually not healthy choices)
hunger feels urgent
you find yourself eating unconsciously when you aren't even hungry
even after feelign full you still crave more food
you can't stop thinking of a certain kind of food
after eating you feel guilty
If you are addicted to food a lot of your day is spent thinking about what you are going to eat, when you're going to eat, and whether or not you will have exactly the right food in front to satisfy your food addiction. This is one of the reasons dieting is not really a good way to cure addictive eating. You are still spending all your time focusing on food.
This last part is quoted directly and I will be happy to supply the link to anyone who wants to read this site for themselves, in a PM.
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All addiction stems from a place of arrested psychological development. It represents a place where people didn't learn to soothe themselves and so they seek that comfort in a substance, whether it's food, drugs or alcohol. Each time you avoid dealing with reality by overeating, you lose confidence that you can in fact face reality. Overtime this lack of confidence has you reach for the comfort of food more and more often.
When you shut down your mind too many times with food, binging becomes a compulsion. That means your mind always believes it needs food to deal with stress. Once that happens, you can't control what you eat no matter how hard you try.
You binge to cope with your feelings.
You binge to create the illusion of feeling good.
You binge to feel "safe" or to shut out the world.
I'm not advocating anyone go into therapy (although that may work for you), but you might want to do some research...maybe from the internet or library. Or just self-reflection to figure out what is really driving your food addiction. Once you find the real problem and start to work on it, your compulsive eating will probably cure itself.
That is not to say you don't want to change your lifestyle now by choosing healthy eating and exercise. That too will help you improve your self-image. But I'm trying to offer suggestions about the question asked in this very thread. Why am I binging again and how do I stop it?
U!!