For over-eating, I recommend adding to your life, not taking away. We often eat too much because we lack other things in life. It's compensation. So don't restrict your diet. Add one thing for a few days then add another and keep the first going.
- First add water - eat what you like but also drink 2L a day.
- Then add 8 a day: 5 veg, 3 fruit. Eat what you like so long as you have at least 1-2 portions of fruit or veg at breakfast, 2-3 at lunch and dinner, each.
- Then add journalling
- Then add non-food treats and rewards
- Then add very easy exercise. Try Jessamyne Stanley free online - she's an obese yoga teacher.
The only restriction I find helpful is to ease off refined sugar and flour. They trigger absolutely uncontrollable cravings in some of us. If you find this is true for you, don't buy them, don't keep them in the house, then you may be less likely to binge.
For journalling: Get a nice notebook or set up a private blog or a file on your laptop. Tell yourself for the next week, you are allowed to eat what you want, guilt free, and that you will also journal.
In the journal, really focus on your feelings. How you feel right now. How you feel while eating something, how you feel afterwards. Most important of all - how would you like to feel (emotionally, not physically). Find out what that lack is, that food momentarily fills. Are you bored? Lonely? Sad? Shattered? All of these? Take each issue and write about as many ways as you can think to solve these issues properly, instead of blocking them through food. It is massively helpful to think of very easy ways - ways that are as easy as comfort eating. Things you have instant access to, or are free.
Overeating often gives a quick high - an immediate but very short lived pleasure. If you need more pleasure in your life, ask yourself in your journal, what it could come from? Make lists of very easy small ways to give you pleasure or energy boosts or to soothe you when stressed, which aren't food related. E.g. Play a song you find uplifting at top volume. Watch some funny clips from your favourite comedy shows. Or bloopers. Or cute kittens. Do a 5 minute meditation - free on you tube. Sit somewhere you can enjoy nature. Even in bad weather you can watch the rain, the sky, the trees.
In your journal keep track of three things each day that are self-comforting, self-soothing, self-rewarding that you have done e.g. bubble bath, star gazing/watching sunrise or sunset/early night with a real page-turning book.
Once you are in the habit of doing these things consciously, do them before you overeat. You can still have more food. But meditate first, journal first, walk first, drink water first, have a bath first.
Gradually, through journalling grow your awareness of what is lacking in your life that food fills, or what being so big is protecting you from and explore more healthy, self-loving ways to get what you really want instead of that quick fix.