HELP my binge eating is spiralling out of control

[yumyummymummy]

I have always had a 'bad relationship' with food and over the years have gone through periods of binging. I put on 3 stone with 2 pregnancies just a year apart and then lost it all plus another 1/2 stone took up excercise and got my body to the best shape its probably ever been. Now 2 years on i am about 10lbs maybe more (!) heavier and i am out of control eating on mainly sugary stuff. I am disgusted with myself i just stuff myself till i feel physically ill, all i do is think about food, i have no will power and i feel bloody awful. can anyone relate to to this? I know realistically i am not fat yet but if i carry on like this i will be and my knickers have got tight on me now and most of my wardrobe just looks or feels terrible. What can i do to break this cycle? Can anyone else eat as much as me - i've never met anyone who admitted to it?

yym - the good thing is, you are recognising the problem quite early on.

I have "been there and got the t shirt" as the saying goes (put on 8 stone in 4 years ), but have lost over 7 stone of now .

My advice:

Do a brutally honest food diary. Write down everything you are eating on a day to day basis for say 5 days. Don't attempt to change your eating habits while you are doing this.

Hopefully, a pattern will emerge with regard to your eating. Mine was fairly classic in that I felt too miserable to eat for a lot of the day and then would gorge on crisps, chocolate and wine to forget my troubles in the evening.

When you see what is going wrong, you can begin to address it.

I am extremely overweight. I dont eat a lot I just eat crap. I have put on a large amount of weight in the past 6yrs which I know is probably going to end up killing me. Not positive but just trying to be supportive...maybe we could look at tackling it together?

yym- I am going to be one to admit it.I can relate 100% to it.
In my opinion it is a very big mental thing.I really had to get in my brain to get out of eating so much,and it was never a meal.Cadburys mini rolls were my fave( packs of 12) all in one go.Then an entire loaf of bread toasted.

Really try and look at what you are doing and why.
My prob was my distant relationship with my Mother,so instead i had it with food.

You can break the cycle

wow! that is brilliant that you've lost 7 stone you must feel fantastic. How have you done it - i lost mine with slimming world which i loved as you can eat so much volume but then thats not necessarily a good habit to maintain!
Ooh thats an interesting piece of homework and i know i always start off with good intentions at breakfast time but it goes downhill later on or if any temptation comes my way. Also when i know its all very emotionally linked and i think i feel out of control in my life (marriage on very fragile ground) so i go off on a food bender. I do wonder though if i have a sugar addiction or intolerance i simply find it virtually impossible to eat chocolate, biscuits or that sort of thing in moderation yet if i'm really focused i just don;t have any and dont even miss it after a while.

Ladies,would recomment 'The Hungry Years' by William Leith.
He has some really insightful things to say about binge eating.
Great read,very light (if you'll excuse the pun) too.

It's hard isn't it? I love my food too. I think the only way it works for me is to make sure that I don't have all the "bad" stuff or as much of it in the house. If it's not there you can't have it.

nemo1977 thank you - i don;t know how much weight you have put on but that sounds really drastic if you think its going to kill you. Thank you for your support and it would be good to share on this one - are you ready to tackle it now?
notasheep - i really appreciate that and you are totally right about the mental thing. We have so much in common - cadbury's mini rolls and victoria sandwich cake rank very high on my favourites and i have an emotionally distant mother too - something i'd never considered that could be linked in to my binging!
Have you broken the cyle - once i get my head focused i do break it - it just p**ses me off that after a long period of sensible eating i go back to that old familiar piggery!

YYM - I am in the same boat. I lost 3.5 stones with WW last year, and became a leader. I then lost the ability to concentrate on myself and gradually gained 28 lbs back . I stopped being a leader a couple of weeks ago (for lots of other reasons too), and went back to a meeting as a returning Gold member. Ironically, my new leader is an ex-member of mine, who I got to gold!

Anyway, I have had a bit of a bad week, because I came on today, and have been ravenously hungry for a few days, coupled with lack of energy (low blood-sugar feeling). Today, I lost it completely. Tomorrow I have a meal out, and Sunday I have a lunch to go to...not good, but at least I might limit some of the damage because I know I'm supposed to be being 'good'.

I have the same love-hate relationship with food that you describe. I'm either on a diet or stuffing my face. I can never eat 'normally' like all my friends. When I go out, my first thought is getting myself a 'treat', whereas my friends are happy with a coffee etc.

I know where you are coming from. I've walked the walk, talked the talk, and bought the t-shirts along the way (in various sizes!!!) I can't really advise you, but I'm happy to listen. x

Well you're not alone!

First time I've ever mentioned my worries about this to anyone - but I reckon I've put on about 3-3.5 stone in 18 months through overeating and nothing else. I was very sick with my second baby and lost three stone whilst pg - I've put that back on and then some, and she's not two yet. I also eat and think about food all the time - four or five meals a day plus copious snacks, just eat for the sake of it, when I'm bored, unhappy, nervous, anxious, any excuse really. I never let myself get hungry. I would love to be able to stop it before I get really unhealthy. I can hide it well, which doesn't help and I'm "only" a size 14/16, but I am very small boned and only 5ft 2 and a half. I'm starting not to want to be in photos and feeling guilty about the message I'm sending to my children. Happy to do a mutual support thing as I've been thinking about this all week. Good timing!

yym, I lost it doing the GI Diet, but I would say that as long as it's healthy (ie real food) and nutritionally balanced any diet that suits you is fine.

It might be a good idea to rejoin SW, but once you've got the 10lbs off, keep going on a maintenance basis.

yym-YES!!!!!!!!! I have broken the cycle.It was very hard mentally and gradual too.
Havent had a binge for approx 10 years!!!!!
My relationship with my Mother is still distant but that is something i have now EXCEPTED.

As i said before,really look in at your emotions rather than on the food.

If I had to give some WW inspired advice, it would be the following:

Eat until you are comfortably full, and then stop

Eat at least 5-a-day veg/fruit

Make your food as interesting as possible

Plan ahead so you are not left with an empty cupboard, and only chips to eat

Write down what you are eating, and try not to go over 1750 calories a day

Exercise, even if it is only a 15 minute walk a day

Keep your diet low in saturated fats.

That's it...now I just have to do it myself!

Ohh notasheep I'm really interested in what you say about your mum.......I think i have some similar things going on. Glad you have cracked it.

Dior-do weight watchers look at distant relationships with mothers?!

Well they bloody should.........

Nooo! I've had two lots of counselling for my mother-daughter relationship! I'm not completely sure that my mum is the root of my eating problems...my depression seems to trigger it every so often.

Dior
I can so relate to all your words and it so helps to know i am not alone on this one. I just long to be a 'normal' person that could have a couple of squares from a cadburys dairy milk, feel satisfied and put it back in the cupboard only to forget it was there for a couple of weeks. The reality is that i buy it from the petrol station, feeling guilty and embarassed, and its consumed with the petrol pumps still in view of my rear mirror! i then fancy another one so stop at the next place but only buy 1 at a time so they don;t think i'm a pig.
i have that same ravenous hunger and low energy both pre period and also when i get into binge mode - i am so disgusted at the amount i have eaten today and i know if there was anything left here i would be eating it now it's just ive cleared the house out of anything enticing - i actually feel physically worn out by it all.
i even chose sw over ww as sw you can eat loads and loads!
ps dior i think that's really brave going back to ww as its much easier to give up like i did with sw - you sound like a strong and determined character who will get what she wishes for in the end

I had hypnosis today to try and change my eating habits,started a thread but it died a death .

I want to think about food like a thin person does .My dh is really disciplined with food ,eats three meals a day never eats between meals,and has sensible portions.

Who knows if it will work but ,dd made some popcorn tonight and I didn't even fancy any

Food is all in the mind isn't it.

Unfortunately, ggirl, mine is all in my belly - oh and on my thighs and my hips

Helsy - you just made me think - i can't remember the last time i was truly hungry - my consumption bears no relationship to hunger - funny that. It's amazing there are so many responses to this - thank you to everyone.

My Mother loves me and feeds me full stop.
So then all i do is feed myself.

I wanted a Mother to support me and my decisions,to hug me,to communicate with me,to go for a coffee with blah blah blah blah............

She still loves me and feeds me.Its the only way she knows,its not my fault.

I will NOT feed that emotion.I will feed my stomach.

Hope this makes sense

I'd like to hear about the hypnosis ggirl, as it is something I have considered. Didn't see your other thread, sorry. Can you do a link?

YYM - I do the same thing at petrol stations. I even used to buy chocolate, still wearing my WW badge! You know it is a problem when you are hiding the amount that you eat. The thing is, I need a club in order to get the motivation to slim. Otherwise, I end up over-eating. My metabolism is really different to dh's. He can eat a small snack mid-morning which would stop him being hungry for the rest of the day . I have to eat little and often, because I get shaky very easily.

The trouble with food is that you can never be away from it. Other addictions can be dealt with by avoiding the substance completely. We, unfotuntately, have to eat still

Thanks DIOR - made me laugh about the WW badge! You're so right about the addiction thing - i've given up smoking and that pales into insignificance to weight loss. i have that all or nothing type of addictive behaviour pattern - neither of which is a healthy eating plan
tonight i feel like the past week has been so intense i now want to lose weight and stop feeling like this more than i want to binge. HOWEVER we are going out for lunch tomorrow and i am going to do an aerobics class tomorrow morning (or that;s the plan) and i am going to feel really disgusted with myself when i see all that flab jiggling up and down.
Still on the positive side i think i'm more excited about the new messages i might see on this thread tomorrow morning than what i can have for breakfast!
goodnight girls - hope to speak to many of you again xxx

I decided i needed help with the mental side if things .I know how to eat properly but lack the motivation and willpower to do it.

It was really expensive £130 fro two sessions,I have my second one next week,so I hope it workss

Sorry crap at links.

she went through my eating habits then I sat in the comfy chair and she did all the relaxing bit ,then it was all visualisation etc.It lasted for an hour in total.Apparently I get a cd to use at home next time.

ps notasheep i really really relate to the bit about what you wanted your mother to be and as i understand it the difference between that and what she was able to be
gosh i hope i don't repeat this with my DSs.