How You Can Beat Your Next Binge

Dear Friends,

When you suffer from Binge Eating Disorder, you are in constant need of different ideas to help you curb a binge. Times get tough and sometimes doing the same thing over and over doesn’t work like it used to. I know this from experience. I struggled with Binge Eating Disorder for over eight years. Eight years of my life that was spent thinking about my next binge.

Eight years of my life that took away from the person that I really was. Eight years of isolating myself from the people that loved me the most. Eight years that stole my personality away from me. Eight years of being absolutely miserable and hating myself. Eight years way too long to deal with Binge Eating Disorder.

Throughout my battle with Binge Eating Disorder, I discovered some tricks that really helped me stay on track. The next time that you are looking to curb a binge, try some of these suggestions. I truly believe that practicing these tricks will help you little by little to curb an upcoming binge and bring you that much closer to living your life binge-free! Say goodbye to Binge Eating Disorder!

First of all, as hard as it may be, do not focus on any sort of dieting. I believe that the cycle of dieting, which includes depriving yourself of certain foods will only cause you to binge on those foods, thus perpetuating the binge cycle over and over. Focus on healing yourself and forming a healthy relationship with food. Do not focus on calories, fat, carbohydrates, or any of that right now.

When you have established a healthy relationship with food again, then you can begin to think about losing any weight that you gained. If you want to read labels so that you can make healthier choices and be more informed, that is one thing. If you are going to obsess about the labels, I would suggest you not doing this yet.

While I had Binge Eating Disorder, I tried to think about how certain foods would nourish me. I knew that healthier foods would benefit me more than eating junk (binge food). I started to implement thinking about the balance of eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and protein in every meal. When I focused on getting these items into my daily food intake, there was no room to eat the foods that I used to binge on.

When I go out to dinner or if I eat at home, I make sure to eat a dinner salad before my meal. I would much rather get full on spinach lettuce and vegetables, if it meant that it would help curb any hunger that could lead me to binge. While eating out, if I order a regular entrée, I either split it with someone, or only eat half of it. Otherwise, I will order an appetizer since it is a smaller portion.

When I suffered from Binge Eating Disorder, I hardly exercised. Eventually I started to put into practice small things that would provide some kind of exercise for me like parking far away from where I was going instead of trying to find an upfront spot. At least a further walk in a parking lot will count for something! If I was going to a particular store in the mall, I would park at the opposite end of where the store was located. This meant that I had to walk through the whole mall to get to the store of my choice. Again, every little bit helps.

I learned this next trick from a forum that I regularly visit online. One of the things that I binged on very regularly was chips. I learned to visualize the ingredients that make up the food that you want. So whenever I wanted chips, I would think about the ingredients that went in to making chips. When I started to think in terms of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, a ton of salt, and potatoes that were probably covered in dirt the appeal was not there for me anymore.

Who wants to eat a dirty potato, a bottle of oil, and many handfuls of salt?  Not me!

Whenever I ate at a restaurant and was full but still had food on my plate in front of me, I would put my napkin over my food so that I didn’t have to be reminded that there was still food for me to consume. If this didn’t work (because really how hard is it to remove the napkin and eat), I would pour salt, pepper, and anything else that I could find on top of it so that I was guaranteed to be finished eating.

Whenever I ate at home and was full, I would douse my food with Windex or some kind of cleaner so that I was sure not to eat anymore of it. Of course, you could throw the food in your trashcan, but it still might be tempting for you to fetch it from inside the trash.

I learned to make a list to take to the grocery store and did my best to stick to that list. Another important thing that I learned is to go to the grocery store after eating a meal. If I went on an empty stomach, I would end up buying a ton of junk because everything looked good to me.

I never kept the foods that I binged on in the house. Never. It’s impossible for me to eat a binge food when I don’t have it.

When Binge Eating Disorder was part of my life, I did not eat breakfast on a regular basis. Sometimes I would have breakfast and sometimes I wouldn’t. When I started eating breakfast every single day, no matter what the day’s activities were, it helped jumpstart my day and helped curb my binges because I wasn’t ravenous by lunchtime.

I always kept healthy snacks in my purse when I wasn’t at home. This helped me to continue my regular snacking without having to find food while I was out. The times that I forgot to bring my snacks were the times when I would have a fast food binge or eat foods that did not give me the nourishment I needed.

I would get fuller faster when I drank a full glass of water before each meal. This tended to fill me up a lot so that I didn’t eat as much.

If I had a craving for an unhealthy binge type of food, I would make a healthier version of it at home. For example, if I wanted a bean burrito, instead of going to Taco Bell, I would make black beans and guacamole at home and put it on a whole wheat tortilla with some salsa. At least I was not ignoring my craving only to binge on that food later. Making a healthier version of my craving at home never made me feel deprived and I didn’t give myself the option of ordering a bean burrito plus a lot more food from Taco Bell.

I learned to never buy a binge food in a big quantity. If I wanted chips, I would buy a small package of single serving chips instead of a whole bag. If you like chocolate, buy the smallest serving that you can find so that it is gone once you eat it and there is no room for going back for more.

Finally, something that really helped me curb binges was to create a routine of eating that I could stick to for the majority of the time. This meant that I ate breakfast, sometimes a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner, and sometimes a snack after that. When I ate every few hours instead of just when I felt hungry, my body felt full and I didn’t binge as much. The times that I did wait until I felt hungry proved to be disastrous for me. I would end up eating at least double the amount that I would have if I stuck with my regular routine or I would binge.

I hope that some of these tricks really prove to be helpful to you and to ending Binge Eating Disorder.

I believe in you!