Dealing With Binge Eating

Feed Me I’m Cranky discusses how she still has issues with binging even after she’s lost a lot of weight: 

I need to spend that amount of energy and determination on figuring out why I amstill after all of these years – at 280 pounds and even still at 135 – binging. And, I need to do something about it! Sure, eight years ago I’d binge on chicken fingers and hot cheetos and now I binge on tortillas and hummus. But it’s the same issue because food is really not that important to a binger. Sure, certain delicious foods can spark a binge, but when it comes to what is actually consumed – the food is more trivial than the act and quantity of what can be consumed.

The whole post is thoughtful and worth reading.

I’m not a psychologist, but in my own experience I’d say the best antidote to binging is forgiveness. There are a lot of reasons why it happens, and it’s best to accept that it’ll occur from time to time, take your lumps, and move on. And perhaps more importantly,  assume you’ll do some binging in the future and incorporate it into your food planning. 

I’ve always been conscientious of what I eat, but I’ve been subject to the occasional binge as long as I can remember, and my binges have a familiarity to them in their frequency and intensity. I used to chastise myself and try and “double” down when I binged, but thankfully I’ve come around to how dumb that approach is. Now I just assume my self-discipline is cyclical, and when my eating habits start to wane I’ll either do some other productive activity to offset it (exercising, writing, etc), and channel my binges into less sinful food. 

I still binge about the way I did before, but the collateral damage is much less and the chances of it spiraling out of control are much smaller.