to ask how to stop bingeing

On and off with various ED most of my life
I either restrict too much, SH or binge. My mum took me to a slimming club age 12 and it’s been downhill since then!

I’ve NC so I can join in
adding loads of fibre really seems to help me
my meals today - cottage cheese/chilli oil toast, strawberries, yoghurt and milled seeds, and a savoury yoghurt bowl
I did have some chocolate and 1 biscuit but no stupid amounts of it

Binge Eating Disorder is classified as a serious mental illness.

Try Intermittent fasting, it has changed my life. Worth reading Fast Like A Girl and the Obesity Code. I almost always stop eating at 7pm. After 2-3 months IF, try to cut added sugar down drastically. Then 2-3 months later, try to cut out most processed foods. Do it gradually. Your body will guide you and your appetite will mostly decrease.

I lost 1.5 stone and thrilled with that but have plateaued a bit as I went on holiday! I will get back on it though as my perimenopause symptoms almost totally disappeared. Also, 3 members of my family are diabetic/prediabetic and Intermittant Fasting is proven to help lower blood sugar levels and reverse prediabetis.

HRTFT but protein protein protein. You’ll be so full you’ll not manage to binge anything. And this is coming from a binger!

You are doing fantastically , be so super proud of yourself

I listen to Chris Evans breakfast show at work in the mornings , his programme as well as being mad as Chris is, is also very inspirational . All about self love , not in a preachy way, cos its Chris , but in a way where you just pick up wee things that really take hold

His guests , other then those who are promoting films , are usually about well being - mental health, physical health and a lot are about food and our relationships with it

Ive learned a lot just listening along. It doesnt feel like Im on a self help journey , it's just a breakfast show after all, but I really do pick up on things that resonate with me

Use the fear of getting cancer from the high intake of sugar to help yourself quit. Treat it as an addiction, try OE anonymous for a support group.
Best of luck. x

I've struggled with restrictive EDs, always with "binge tendancies" tacked onto the end of my diagnosis, and my immediate reaction when I learned about GLP-1s was to sit down and try to work out how many days a human could live on nothing but a cup of bone broth a day before they die. This is why we are not allowed them. It is to protect us from our brains that tell us to do stupid things like that.

I know it feels unfair, but your psychiatrist is correct, and you've already proved you can do it yourself the last few days. You're doing amazing.

Well done for starting to make positive changes. I also suffer from Binge eating disorder. I've managed to overcome it for the first time ever last year and lost 4.5 stone, but in the last couple of months it's come back and I've put half a stone back on. It's like part of my brain is shouting 'what the hell are you doing?!' to the other part while I shovel food into my mouth!

However, I am now back being healthy again. A few things that have helped me:

Realising that our brains are still much as they were when we were cavemen, and if we found a sweet, high calorie food (e.g. a honeycomb) the best thing we could do would be to eat it all. Our bodies would store the food and it would help us get through leaner times. But now, sweet high calorie foods are all around us, and cheap to buy, but our brains still think ' we need to eat all this now, so when there's no food we'll be ok'. Understanding this took some of the shame out of it.

A mantra I say to myself is 'i can have cake any time I like, I'm just choosing not to have any today '. Also 'the shops will always sell xxx, so it's ok not to buy any today'

I find if I completely cut out sugar it's inevitable I will relapse, so I build planned treats into my plans. I can enjoy the food guilt free, because it's not a binge, it's planned, and I don't find that I want more afterwards.

Btw I lost the 4.5 stone without WLIs. Nothing against them, but it is possible to do it without.

Wow, wow, wow!

I can’t believe how well you are doing, you should be very proud.

Please keep posting updates if it helps you. We are all rooting for you!

I know you have said you would not consider WLI s but I thought my experience might be useful to know. After 40 years of struggling and I really mean struggling to the point I was afraid to eat at times as I could not control the bingeing. I wasn't just morbidly obese, but had also developed severe acid reflux...and was still unable to stop bingeing. I turned to Mounjaro out of desperation. It was a revelation to me. The urge to binge disappeared right away to the point where I'd walk out of the supermarket with no junk food at all... I'd literally lost the urge for it.

I lost 4 stones in 9 months but more importantly, the break from the urge to binge allowed me to build up healthy eating habits.

I stopped taking Mounjaro five months ago and yes, the "food noise", the urge to binge has come back, but I've totally lost my taste for junk food, it makes me feel ill compared to my healthier food choices, so find it easier to take a step back from the urge to binge and look at the emotions triggering the urges.
I am now at a healthy BMI for the first time in 45 years!

I strongly believe binge eating can't be controlled by willpower or habit building. It's soul destroying trying and failing over and over...I endured it for over 40 years. It's a disease not a choice and these new weight loss drugs are the treatment. I'd go back on Mounjaro again if I found myself going back to binge eating, the way I'd go back to taking blood pressure pills if my blood pressure were to get out of control again. Funnily enough, I don't need blood pressure pills any more now my diet and weight are healthy.