Quote:
Originally Posted by saef
In my experience, dealing with this problem requires both self-searching and changing your behaviors.
The self-searching means not just asking yourself why you're bingeing -- you already know that, and you've said it's due to stress. It also means asking yourself, at the moment you feel like bingeing, why it's happening at that very moment, and not at another. You may have to sit with yourself & try to identify what exactly you are feeling, other than a generalized "bad." And then ask yourself if eating something really will help, other than just for a few minutes, and whether that is worth the remorse & being hard on yourself afterward.
And then there is the behavioral side. Which may mean making rules. Like no driving out on excursions for food except for formal trips to the grocery store. Or no eating in your car. Or setting a timer & making yourself wait a half hour before eating. Or posting here. Or calling up someone. Just like MotivatedChickie describes, sometimes you just have to white-knuckle it through, even though the sirens keep singing & singing to you. Have you ever seen a movie in which someone is sweating out a withdrawal from morphine or heroin? Sometimes it's almost like that. I mean, not to minimize what people go through in physical withdrawal, because those addictions are serious, but it may put you through unpleasant territory, in terrible mental discomfort, and you may feel like a tantruming child. But that's what it takes sometimes to get through it. You won't die from not getting your junk food. Really, you won't. Nobody ever died yet from not getting a junk food fix -- that I know of.
[Imagining a headstone: Here Lies Saef, For Lack of a Pecan Praline] Not likely.
Listen to Saef, as she is very wise....
Just adding my .02...
Man, I was such a bad binger!!! I could binge on literally almost anything. Cake decorating sprinkles....? Been there done that. I've EATEN sugar cubes and powdered sugar straight from the bag. The worst I ever remember is when I was doing Jenny Craig after the birth of my first child, and after ten days on Jenny Craig, I craved my baby's rice cereal so badly that I went off Jenny Craig by eating an entire box of Gerber's rice cereal mixed with sugar and half and half. WTF???? I mean, really!!! That stuff takes like ground up cardboard-- but at the time, it was manna from heaven to bingeing me.
I felt like an addict because of the intensity of my cravings. I acted like an addict by the way I lied and sneaked around.
But here's the thing I finally learned. And I freaking wish it hadn't taken me almost 30 straight years of bingeing to figure it out: with bingeing, we are not really addicted to a substance, like a drug addict, we are addicted to a behavior. For me, it was A LOT more similar to OCD than to being a drug addict....
FOR ME (and this is not true for everyone) the "why" really did not matter at all. What I needed was to break the cycle of the behavior-- the compulsion. Because really, there were a million reasons, but at the same time, there was NO reason.
It is extremely difficult to move past a compulsive behavior-- especially one that is really entrenched. However, the really and truly strange thing for me was to discover how little hold those food actually had over me once I was finally able to break through the compulsive behavior.
Now, I can keep stuff I shouldn't eat IN MY HOUSE and not even think about it.
But, here's the thing. I've ALWAYS been able to keep food I shouldn't eat in my house and not touch it-- like if I baked cupcakes for my kids' school, I could leave them sitting on the counter and not eat them, because they "weren't mine..." or if somebody gave my hubby a box of chocolates that he was eating one by one, or if I bought something to give to someone else... I always DID have the power to restrain myself if I thought the foods were not mine. The trick was just to realize that I could apply that same control to all binge foods.
We are all different, and many people do seem to find that reflecting on the "why" is helpful, but in my own experience, focusing on the behavior itself was the only thing that really gave me lasting results.
