Binge eating help

[Aprilshowers34]

Last year I was shocked when I weighed myself for the first time in years and found I was almost 11 stone. I'm 5'3 and this put me firmly in the overweight category. I was in denial and even posted here on MN, and everyone told me I was overweight and needed to look after my health.

I took action and went low cal and intermittent fasting, sometimes for 22-24 hours. I now weigh 7 stone 7 lb.

However, I'm finding when I break my fast I lose all control. I want to eat EVERYTHING even though I was feeling ok before breaking the fast. Today I ate 4 crumpets, a pasty, a salad and veggie sausages, a huge Cadbury Easter egg and 2 creme eggs. I feel disgusted with myself.

I'm terrified the weight is going to pile back on and don't know what to do. This bingeing has happened over the past week, Easter weekend seems to have caused me to lose all discipline.

Does anyone have any advice - I've tried to eat smaller meals and go to 16:8 but I'm starving as soon as I break my fast and want to scoff my face.

Hi April, I’ve composed quite a few answers here then deleted and tried again. I think I’m conflicted as your BMI is just above underweight, but I can understand your concern about the binge eating. How long had you been fasting before the binge? Are you still trying to lose weight or stabilise now or gain? The answer to that will affect your eating/fasting routine and potentially how ravenous you feel once breaking the fast? Maybe something like porridge followed by an activity which gets you away from the kitchen... read... short walk with audio book/podcast maybe?
Hope my reply bumps this for others to help you also, good luck OP, you’ve done so well loosing all the weight 😊

Bingeing is a natural body response to deprivation.

It sounds as though the fasting twinned with your very low weight is putting your body into binge mode when it has availability to food.

Try to start eating intuitively now rather than restrict yourself - eat what you want, when you want by really listening to your body.

Read the book by Josie Spinardi, I can’t remember the name. That really helped me understand your body’s needs in a really simple way. It stopped my binging entirely.

Would be better to say you can have 1500 kcal a day, or whatever you need to maintain your weight.

Then eat smart, small calorie meal portions throughout the day.

As the previous poster says, you’re only 1lb off the lowest healthy weight for your height. You don’t need to carry on fasting. You’re better moving to eating healthy, filling meals with a couple of snacks. That will mean you don’t feel starving enough to want to binge on everything.

Lots of people seem to struggle to get back to more normal eating after fasting. Still fasting for 22-24 hours a day when you’re verging on medically underweight is slipping into disordered eating territory and you don’t want to end up there. Over what period have you lost the weight?

How do you feel about going back to eating a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner?

You're binging because you're restricting. I've been there, so understand how hard this is.

Fasting for such long periods is putting your body under stress. I honestly think you need to eat 3 meals a day (plus snacks) and talk to your GP.