5 Steps to Stop Yourself From Binge Eating
When you have a negative feeling, the thought of comforting and drowning yourself in food sounds like a wonderful idea. Your mind will be taken off of dealing with your emotions and food will heal all. This is the truth for about the first five minutes while you binge eat. After that, you will continue to binge eat, but not because you are hungry. You will start to notice that your original feelings of sadness or other reasons will come back, along with new feelings of guilt because you just consumed so much food. Is there a way out of this crazy cycle? Of course there is!
Here are five steps that you can start implementing into your daily life so that you do not binge eat. The first step is to feel deserving of yourself. You need to feel that you are worthy enough to change your binge eating habits. Only after you do this and improve your self-esteem can you win the war over Binge Eating Disorder.
The second step is to throw out all foods in your house that you like to binge on. Remember, if the food is not readily available to you, it will be harder to binge eat. This also applies to going grocery shopping - When you don’t purchase items that you might binge eat, it will be easier to conquer a binge while you are at home. You want to make it as hard as you can.
The third step is to buy a journal. In your journal, you are going to record all binges and what feelings were present during the binge. Record all details including the time, day, what you ate, how much you ate, and how you felt before and after the binge. Journaling is a great tool because this will provide insight to you as to why you turn to food like you do. This will help to narrow down your binges so that you will be able to see any similarities that happen when you binge eat.
The fourth step is to find a way to relax yourself. This is most important to do when you feel a binge coming on. Relaxation is very important in clearing your mind and turning away from the binge. Listen to nice, classical music, take a warm bubble bath, pamper yourself, go for a walk on a nice day, mediate, or picture yourself somewhere else where binge eating isn’t a part of your life. Another thing that you can do for relaxation is to go for a nice drive. Perhaps you live by the ocean or a lake. Maybe you have some great scenic roads. Just remember not to take any money with you and try not to drive by anywhere that has food. You want to make the binge go away and you don’t want to be tempted to give in.
The fifth and final step to stopping yourself from binge eating is to talk about it. Talk to a friend or anyone else that you can trust about how you are feeling. If you are upset, vent your frustrations out to them. Just having someone listen will be very helpful to you. You will feel that a weight has been lifted from you after you get everything off of your chest.
Hi, I believe i am suffering from binge eating disorder, although i do feel quite ashamed at admitting this. I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. I am only 23 but when I was 17, i weighed in at 19 stone…i couldnt even begin to explain anything that happened that could have led to this, I always loved my food and ate far too much of it i guess. Anyway, upon seeing this in relaity I managed to lose 8.5 stone over the next 5 years with yo yo dieting and gym workouts. In the last year, i became almost addicted to the gym as I see it as my justification for eating al my favourite foods. My eating patterns became very erratic, some days I would eat maybe 3000 or 4000 calories, sometimes more, next day I would workout for up to and sometimes over 2 hours and only eat the amount of calories i managed to burn in my workout to try to make up for my previous over eating and relieve my guilt. I became extremely anxious and my menstrual cycle stopped after many months of this. Most days i would workout for long periods in the hope of losing weight, which didnt really happen as i then binge ate everything i had worked off and much more. I have since moved abroad and broken my gym routine, however i still am facing the same problems..only i have no gym to try to keep the weight at a steady level. Instead i am gaining weight and becoming very depressed in the process. I am currently 12.5 stone and aspire to be around 10 stone for my 5′5 height yet this disorder is making my life miserable! Any help and advice on what to eat and how to fend off binges would be greatly appreciated at this stage. Also what is best to do in the aftermath of a binge attack? What would be best to eat and drink?
I embarked on this vicious cycle of binging just last year when I was very stressed over my Major academic pre-uni exam (VCE) as well as an extremely unstable relationship. I think it is safe to attribute my binging disorder to the high level of stress I was going through. Earlier this year, when I was in love, I realised my focus was on my boy and not on food. As a result, I unknowingly stopped binging and actually lost about 3 kg in 3 months. However when my relationship failed later, my urge to snack at night returned. Gradually, I started paying more attention to my weight, getting up the scales almost everyday. But contrary to my weight consciousness, I ate more than usual and put back the 3 kg. I am aware of the fact that dieting doesn’t really help unless there’s a lot of determination invovled. Please help. Thks