I see a lot of trends around this board and I thought I might type up some words of advice. This actually may seem a little scary, especially if your weight is currently at a point where it is impairing movement or breathing, but I think I should put it out there anyway.
In order to stop bingeing, I truly believe you need to let go of trying to actively lose weight for now. The restriction, the planning, the constant focus on food and the scale is not helping your brain to recover. Whether or not you have good intentions when it comes to your weight loss, the fact of the matter is, most likely by cutting calories, no matter how healthy you think it is, your body thinks you are in a state of semi-starvation. Don't believe me? Look up the Minnesota Starvation Study. Those men were semi-starved on 1500 calories - the same amount a lot of people think is a healthy amount to lose weight on!
They too ended up with extreme urges to binge and became obsessed with food. Eventually, after being re-fed, most of the men within 9 months returned to normal eating patterns and went back to their pre-starvation weights.
My point is, I think trying to lose weight while trying to kick the binge habit is counterproductive because you are sending your body a message that it needs to binge to keep you alive. The body does not know the difference between a diet and a famine. I don't care if you are 300lbs or 100lbs, your body thinks you are STARVING and that food must be scarce, and you can't beat biology. It will always win in the end. Some the ways it used to fight back include: slowing metabolism (can be up to 40% of reduction!!), increasing hunger, increased thoughts of food, sluggishness, feeling cold, urges to binge, etc.
If you ARE eating an adequate amount and not actively trying to lose weight and still have urges to binge, well then most likely you have a left over habit formation from the days when binged because your body was trying to protect itself. I highly suggest "Brain over Binge" for how to deal with those types of urges. Check out the thread about the book a few threads down!
I believe that even if you have a lot of weight to lose, if you stop the restriction, stop trying to lose, eat to nourish your body (not go hungry, but not stuff yourself either), the urges to binge will decrease and as a natural consequence you will lose some weight without trying.
I hope some of you will also check out some Health at Every Size blogs; they are really motivating and enlightening and supportive.
I wish you all the best
