Has anyone overcome bingeing, please tell me how you managed it

[Springsnake]

I managed to stop the throwing up part ,but on a bad day the urges overtake me ,and I binge ..thinking I will starve tomorrow. ,tomorrow never comes ,because I wake up feeling stressed there will be no food today ,and struggle not to binge again..I can go months and I’m fine ,then something goes wrong and it’s got me again.

I think you need more help than we're qualified to provide, have you seen anyone?
That said if you're struggling with deprivation, can you not deprive yourself quite as much? I'm struggling to get back into food logging, so I've decided that 1500-1800 a day is fine. Even 2,000 as a one off, as long as I have genuinely logged everything. So you don't need to deprive yourself, but you do need to start making healthier choices.

Doctor just says Prozac ...which I don’t want to take ,zones me out

You have a serious eating disorder. I'd seriously go back,,ask to see another gp. Share your concerns about prozac.

It’s a lot better than it was ,I’ve stopped the throwing up ,but not the overeating,I’ve been lots of times to doctor about it ,but I’ve never been underweight ...so.....no help

If you have the funds OP, contact the London Centre, they are excellent. You don’t need to be in London as they do video calls (all of their sessions are video calls atm anyway).

Stealth I've never had any luck from the doctor for binge eating. There often isn't to be honest...

I've tried some sellf help books on binge eating which work for a bit....

Bugs and bees ,can
you recommend any books for me ?

Thanks hanar,will have a look at the cost

Brain Over Binge I found quite good. It’s a long slow process OP especially if it’s been a part of your life for a long time. I lost my job last year and cut my sessions down with the centre to half as many but I’ve got so much work left to do, the cost of it is worth it for me by far and the options offered by the NHS are pitiful.

Proper advice is seek medical help, but its not always that easy as you have found. I find calorie tracking, planning my food for the day, upping protein hugely, cutting carbs in the form of bread and pasta (but not veg and sweet potatoes and stuff) and literally going for volume over anything else so instead of a small amount of cauliflower cheese for example, I'll eat tons of plain broccoli because of bang for the volume buck, as it were. It does seem to curb my binging but I still lose control occasionally (majorly) but I also log all of that too, one item at a time if you can, as horrible as it makes me feel. I feel more able to start the next day fresh without the horrible guilt that makes me more likely to do it again now on this regime. Don't fast, or deprive. This is where food tracking is good because the accountability on paper or app does help stop me from 'ruining my day'. Breakfast I make a shake of half banana, frozen fruit, low fat greek yoghurt, x2 egg whites and a scoop of protein powder with a splash of water or milk. It makes a massive moussey thick shake and fills me up so much it turns me off food for at least half a day if not more. If I feel an evening binge I have one after dinner too. This is probably terrible advice but it's what works for me. I now binge once a fortnight-ish or even once a month as opposed to several times per week (sometimes throwing up, sometimes not) or even daily for several days at a time. Huge sympathies. Its so fucking difficult to live with and feels impossible to stop. It's like a fever for me, where I have this zombie lizard brain that just keeps grabbing and eating. I'm very slim too so no one (of the very few people I've told) takes it seriously.

I had a binge eating condition but I never threw up. I would deal with stressful situations and emotional upsets by buying lots and lots of crap food and sit in the car eating it. I no longer do this and haven’t for a good few years now.

What helped me was 1) I had my children and partner and wanted to feel the best I could for them. I knew I was operating sub par when I was eating this way and it made me feel worse

2. I started to eat low carb and just felt more satiated. The cravings for processed food went away when I knew I could eat a big portion of protein and fat, just not sugar and fat.

3. noticing a huge improvement in a chronic health condition I have and not wanting to go backwards. If I’m honest this one has probably been the most effective in keeping me away from junk food.

Likewise, NHS "support" has been woeful for me over the past 40+ years of binge eating. GPs, diabetic nurses, dieticians - none have a clue how to deal with it and just revert to basic diet advice which is completely useless as bingeing is completely different to a health diet when not bingeing, which I do! It's not my main meals that are a problem, it's the binge eating of six packs of crisps, 4 packs of KitKats, pack of 4 pork pies or sausage rolls that's THE problem - I know it's not healthy food, but tell my mind that! It's an addiction and needs treating like an addiction.

The way I control mine is simply to avoid the opportunities. I.e. I used to drive a lot with my work, so I'd just stop off at a garage and buy a load of crisps, snacks etc to binge on when driving. I deliberately changed jobs to one much closer to home so that there wasn't the same opportunity to stop off on the way - that was a big win for me!

Same with shopping - I force myself not to buy the stuff I binge on, such as multipacks -if I don't have a 6 pack of Walkers in the house, I can't eat them all can I? I go to shops/supermarkets where you can buy single items instead. Likewise, I never buy BOGOF offers or 3 for price of 2 etc on things I'm likely to binge on.

For me, it's all been about not facilitating the bingeing which has been to cut off the supply. So that when I'm in "bingeing" mode, there's nothing to binge on.

Low carb.Its totally changed my eating habits.I used to binge on bread,pastry etc but since I'm "not allowed" these items any more I genuinely don't have cravings for the first time in my adult life (I'm 40). I haven't had bread,pastry,rice,potatoes or pasta for 2 weeks and I feel really good.

I stopped a pattern of severely disordered eating without medication, and while I was in therapy at the time I didn't find it especially useful. I was anorexia b/p subtype, so might not correlate exactly with your experience. I can’t say exactly what worked to bring me out of it three years ago that hadn’t worked before, but part of it was that I was just ready to stop, in a way I hadn’t been before.

I was driven hugely by anxiety and focussing more on my mindset took some of the pressure off food. One thing that I really engaged with was instead of trying to fight anxiety or distract myself from it was to accept the feelings of anxiety and try to intensify them. I'm sure that wouldn't work for everyone but for me being in control of the negative feelings helped me feel more in control and less scared of them.

I found when I was in cycles of restricting food and binge/purging that food logging was the worst thing I could do, and it's still one of my biggest food anxiety triggers, but everything is so personal as to what helped them. One of the biggest mindset changes I've had was accepting that it wouldn't fully go away for me, but I can get to point where I'm not controlled by it and walk alongside it. Now, I can have a lapse but not get completely consumed by it and spiral down into months and years of disordered eating. for you OP.

Hey OP. I have always until the last 18 months binged but not purged. I was also very obese. It's hard. In my case what really helped me was long term talking therapy (psychodynamic therapy, eg psychoanalysis, or you could try person-centred or there are therapists who have an integrated approach which is what mine does) to get to the root of the anxiety that I have also always had. I actually went for the anxiety not the bingeing and it didn't come up for a few months. Having the therapy got me to a point where I was able to cut out my trigger foods (traditional sugary fatty carby junk) and after seven months I was able to start controlling my food to lose weight. I'm not suggesting you need to do those things but my point is I have never been able to live healthily for any period of time before and this feels normal in a way that no other attempts have.

Therapy can be very expensive but it is worth shopping around as there are charities and organisations that do discounted therapy or operate a "pay what you can" scheme.

Good luck, OP, and be kind to yourself. This is how you've learned to cope so far. You can learn different ways and you really deserve to.

4 months of weekly therapy. Ongoing monthly therapy for at least another 12 months. Opened up to my closest family and friends on my disordered eating, created some safe spaces of people I can go to if I'm struggling.

I second low carb. Helps with the carb crash and hunger.

Moderation - I simply don't have in. In food or life or work. No packets of biscuits in the house or large blocks of chocolate or bread. If I have a craving it's ok to eat but only out - for instance I'll have breakfast out once a week and I always have poached eggs with sourdough toast.

Hi OP. I’m 33 now but as a teen I would starve myself then binge and purge. As I moved into my 20s I stopped starving and purging and carried on with the binging. The purging reappears at times of severe high stress and the starving has disappeared completely, but the binging is something I think I’ll have to cope with for the rest of my life.

I’m getting better now at controlling myself but I’ve dipped in and out of talking therapy for the last five years, and am currently starting again.

My binges are usually sweet food, and I’m so fat now I disgust myself. What has helped over the last three weeks is ‘giving up’ shop bought sugar products and allowing myself to be happy eating home baking, which only I do, so I have to make the effort. Friday evenings I allow myself a treat if DS and DP are having one, and I allow myself to have a chocolate milkshake on the way home from work one day a week. This way I don’t panic because I’m trying to deny myself and if I know I can have these things I don’t crave them.

I’ve also come to accept that I’ll always have a disordered relationship with food, so I remind myself daily that it’s ok to eat, and really ask myself what foods make me feel good about myself, what feel like they help my body. Invariably it means that I focus on the salad that I want for lunch and the big breakfast of tomatoes, spring onions, mushrooms, poached eggs. I try and be mindful and remind myself that actually I eat the sweet stuff as a form of self harm, as I don’t actually enjoy it in binge quantities and it makes me hate myself. I eat it as a punishment while also using it as comfort. I try and accept that it’s fucked up and not beat myself up about it.

Hope you manage to find help

I just wanted to say Thankyou to everyone who took the time to reply .
I think I am going to have to learn to live with it ..
I will try the book recommendation

Good luck op, I'm sorry for recommending the gp when you've tried it, and sorry to learn from others that nhs care is lacking here. Xx

No worries polar bear ,you weren’t to know xx

Allen Carr quitting emotional eating is good. It is so bloody hard

Josie Spinardi did a good one, Thinside out. Or Paul McKenna I can make you think. Brain over binge.