How To Stop Eating

[size=+2]60 days Binge Free[/size]

Hello to all the forum readers, I wanted to make a thread talking about my successful experience with fighting BED the last two months.

My goal here is to try and help someone with the little knowledge I’ve gathered.

It’s going to be a long post so read it when you have some time to spare.

If anyone is interested, feel free to comment or ask questions.

–

[size=+1]Background: [/size]

–

A description of my story, for a more detailed version check here.

- I’m male, 6ft, 17 yr old, ~185lbs

- Used to be very overweight since I was a child, then 2 years ago lost it

- After that I was looking emaciated but my bodyfat% was still high so I kept dieting

- I have a strong addictive/OCD personality, this is a big cause of my BED

- I started researching a LOT about nutrition/fitness and started lifting weights too

–

— Around this time I developed binge eating disorder, my body hasn’t changed dramatically from it but the last year and a half were hell mentally, I woke up afraid of bingeing and went to sleep feeling like a failure for having binged, EVERYday

- I never formally quit, I kept doing diets the whole time, hardcore or flexible, they all failed

- I was somewhat in denial, I always thought it was the diet’s fault. This created a great frustration on my mind, I remember feeling powerless and very depressed

- More recently I started doing copious amounts of cardio after bingeing and taking laxatives more frequently than I should, I think this could be considered a kind of bulimia

–

— A couple of months ago I decided I had to make treating my disorder a priorityin my life.

–

[size=+1]Recovery: [/size]

–

- I started researching, not only about BED but on anorexia, drug addictions, alcoholism(things I never had a problem with), addictions in general. I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of videos on Youtube of people who overcame EDs. That’s when I found this forum.

- I came here asking for help and started a log, I can’t stress how much it helped me.

- In my research I found out there was a psychological side to bingeing, and I knew that in my case it was the main reason. This is what I needed to address to beat BED

- I realised I had an ED, but I didn’t know why I did it, I really couldn’t think of anything.

–

— So I sat down, grabbed a piece of paper and started writing everything about my BED(I got the idea from youtube) what I felt during the binge and afterwards, what foods I binged on, when I was more likely to do it, what I was gaining from it, I tried my best to correlate the binge eating with other things in my life.

I did a self-analysis on my entire life, every aspect of it, social, spiritual, physical, etc. I analysed all my problems, everything that takes up space in my mind during my days, and I tried to come up with rational, realistic solutions for them.

In other words, I removed every possible reason I could have to binge.

I know all this ‘writing stuff down’ might sound unrelated to EDs but this was THE turning point for me.

–

[size=+1]Journey: [/size]

–

That self-analysis was so powerful and felt so liberating that I didn’t binged once after I did it. I think it changed my mindset so everything became a little easier afterwards.

But I still needed a plan so I came up with a few strategies to help me.

- There were quite a few, they’re written in the first page of my log but the main two are: self-analysis and stop dieting.

It’s ironic that I dieted for 2 years with zero results and one week after I stopped dieting altogether I started seeing physical changes.

This is intuitive eating, it has been working awesomely for me, and I had tried that in the past without success. But this time my mindset was different, I was willing to let go, to drop dieting for good.

I won’t talk too much about that because it’s covered in other places, but to sum it up you eat what you want, when you want, how much you want.

The (huge) difference between intuitive eating and binge eating is that compulsive feeling that you can’t control. With intuitive eating you‘re in charge.

The only thing you need to remind yourself is that you’re not bingeing, you’re simply eating what you want to at that time, and that you will keep doing this the next day, the next and so on. This will remove the need to eat compulsively before the day is over.

If you’re able to let go and truly eat whatever you want you’ll soon(took me less than a week) start eating more normally and feel normal around food again.

_____________

–

After a while I started to implement some other things that help me get through the days, these are more individual, more trial and error kind of things. What I think everyone can apply to their own journeys is what I wrote above, this here is more like fine-tuning.

- Having a pre-determined number of meals for most days

- Not eating in between them

- Having a daily staple of healthy foods(good protein sources, veggies, etc)

- Knowing and avoiding certain items that make me overeat and trigger unhealthy behaviours

- Having a good exercise routine

- Not making decisions when hungry

— If you’re trying to lose weight, weigh/measure yourself at most once a week. You can try to eat less, but I don’t reccomend counting calories in the initial stage of recovery.

–

[size=+1]Conclusion: [/size]

–

After the first week, it got easier. I started moving on with my life, thinking less about food during my day. My goal of losing fat is working great, way better than I expected.

With time, I started learning how to be more flexible with my eating habits, making conscious choices, not being so harsh on myself.

As I mentioned, a good deal of my journey was/is being about trial and error, sometimes I do things that don’t work, I do have rough days and I’m still learning and improving everyday.

–

Have in mind that this is for life. Start having a more forgiving attitude towards yourself, think more long-term.

Don’t get upset if you have an slip-up, just find out why it happened and keep going.

Hope this helps anyone…

Minalbo.