I'm afriad this is going to be an "I feel sorry for myself and need to vent post".

I've been binge free for the last 6 months. Not to say that I didn't overeat at times but it wasn't accompanied by the feelings of powerlessness, guilt, lonelyness and hopelessness that I get when I have my "episodes".
I really thought I had managed to somehow conquer that little brat inside me that screamed for treats when things went wrong. But it came back this week.

I really don't get it! It came right off the back of an amazing week. I had managed to drop a jean size, officially got into the "overweight" catagory (HUGE!!) and was feeling the most fantastic I ever have in my entire life.
Why then did I suddenly have a complete turn around? I feel so tired and scared I just want to hide away...and yes, eat an entire tub of Ben and Jerrys even though I still feel sick after eating half a kilo of cheese with crackers.
It's now been a week of this behaviour and it's gradually getting worse. The more I seem to try and stop it the more aggressive it seems to get. The confidence that my weightloss brought me has just evaporated completely. I feel like I've taken 1 step forward then toppled 5 steps back and I'm at a loss to think what the trigger is. Things are changing in my life (new job, new home, new country) but it's been on the cards for months. nothing in my routine has changed

Tomorrow is a new day (and a new week) and i'm hoping I can get my positive mindset back. Any advice would be gratefully recieved.

Thank you for reading.

Hey Ali,

You're pretty close to your goal. A week of binging won't cause a 90-pound regain, but months of binging will.

I think a LOT of people react badly to achieving weight loss milestones. There are so many accounts of people on 3FC who have come close to goal and then suddenly fallen inexplicably into self-sabotaging behaviors - binging, quitting exercising, etc. Maybe deep down in your subconscious you're afraid of what the new low weight/size means? There is a lot going on in the mind with weight loss.

It is totally possible to curb the behavior. When I was having problems I spent a lot of time at these two sites and tried to focus on not binging rather than re-losing whatever weight I gained:

http://www.healthygirl.org
http://www.healthforthewholeself.com

Whenever I feel myself slipping, or have made a slip, I return to square one.

I don't mean I eat myself up back to my starting weight, I mean I look back at the very first step I took towards trying to be healthier. And I focused on that. One day at a time, trying to add back up towards my new normal.

You aren't the first person this has happened to. You can work past this!

Thanks Krampus, I'll take a look at those sites. I have heard of people sabotaging themselves for fear of getting to their goal and having to accept that they can't blame everything on their weight anymore. I really don't know if I can apply that to myself though.
Lovely - thanks for the advice, it's a scary thing going back to the beginning. I had forgotten how I always used to feel like crap - I had hoped it was a closed chapter.

Inexplicable is the exact term! There is no rhyme or reason as to why we self sabatoge. Maybe for you it is simply the stress in your life that is triggering your binges and the fact that you are recognizing this behavior means you are NOT a lost cause to bring it back under control. Your history of not binging for a great length of time and the amount of weight you have lost because you were in control means that you have it in you. And you WILL find that strength again. Find that TODAY!

I am not binging but I am definitely rewarding myself in bad ways with food. I recently met a weight loss goal ahead of schedule so in my mind I'm thinking, "I am going to eat that huge bowl of pasta smothered in cheese and bacon and it'll be OK if I gain a pound because I didn't think I'd be this weight by now anyway". Really, what is the sense in that??? Technically I should be banking this extra loss if and when the times comes that I stall.