Compulsive eating

[twainiac]

Hi everyone,
Wondered if anyone had any tips to combat this?
Whenever I am on my own I just want to stuff my face - with anything. I know I should have willpower and just not eat but it truly is compulsive. I even long to be on my own so I can eat. I'm not depressed, stressed, lonely or anything.......
Any one any ideas?
Thanks x

I go through phases where I'm like this.

What I find helps is filling up at meal times with protein, veggies. Forget calorie counting for now and just eat good nutritious foods. Make half your plate green if you can.

Don't leave big gaps/skip meals.

Cut out sugary foods and things like white bread. Sugar leads to insulin leads to hunger. I feel the difference when I eat these foods - it triggers insatiable hunger for 24 hours.

I make sure I don't skip meals too - great advice. Skipping meals is a false economy because once you start eating, you can't stop - well I couldn't.
I've just finished a really difficult essay, and that kept me busy. Being busy can help keep your mind off food.
One of the other really good habits I've now picked up - esp when working all day at the laptop - is to DRINK lots of water.
Dehydration can be trigger eating. I don't go overboard, but now I always have a glass of water next to my desk and it reminds me to drink it.
A balanced diet will help give your body all the nutrients it needs/wants, and that may help too.

OP have you thought more about why you eat compulsively. Dieting in any form will not help you as you have disordered eating. Sometimes having counselling to get to the root of your compulsive/binge eating can be helpful and teach you what your triggers are and how to deal with them each time it happens. Often food is not your problem at all but something emotional that has happened in the past. Being made to diet can cause it as you have the all or nothing mentality. One of the best ways to start learning how to free yourself from emotional overeating and bingeing is to start having all the foods you love and desire in your kitchen and eat when you are truly hungry, stop when your satisfied. There are many good books out there too . One of the ones I used was "Overcoming Overeating" by Jane Hirschman and there is not diets in there at all.

I thoroughly recommend book Eating Less by Gillian Riley. You can pick up a second hand copy from Amazon/Play for a couple of quid and it really is worth the read. Good luck.