Binge eating recovery daily check in thread (Part 1)

Day 451 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 18 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Soo…my scales broke. I stood on the screen part, not thinking that there wouldn’t be able to take my weight, even though the rest is designed to withstand much weight. So, do I buy a new one? Or try to move away from focusing on numbers?

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Day 452 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 19 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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You could try without and see how you feel about it. I have weighed most days on the very same actual scale since I was about 20. Back then they said once a week was fine and anything more was not beneficial and even a “problem”.
I disagree. I think the latest “news” is that weighing more than less is beneficial. For me it gives me an idea of trends even knowing that a several pound or more variation in a day or in a week can be normal. If I see it continually going up I need to decide whether that is acceptable or not. Same if it was going down.

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I don’t use scale at all for years and years and I don’t miss it at all. When I had it, I was always obsessed, not even mentioning, that the weight means nothing.
You can have two people next to each other who have the same weight and still they’ll look totally different.
Maybe you should try and see whether it’s beneficial to you not to have it :slightly_smiling_face:

I did now the same with calories. I was checking my watch often during the day to see how many calories I burn and the number had influence on my mood. If it was high enough, then I was obviously happy, but if it wasn’t high enough, then it sucked.
And when I am saying “high enough” I mean really high. So it was a very unhealthy habit.

I deleted it from my watch on Tuesday and I didn’t check it since. I was tempted for couple of first days, now I forgot about it and life goes on. It’s much better without checking my energy burn, I feel more freedom.

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Hi all.
Today, I am proudly getting to a week without binging. I can’t believe that I can finally see a progress after all this time of unsuccessful trying over and over! The therapy I started few weeks ago, has been a great decision!

As I may already mentioned, as first step, me and my therapist started working on my eating habits. We found out that I was restricting myself from eating during the day in order to avoid big calories intake. I was skipping my breakfast and mostly even a dinner, because I knew that I am unable to resist night binging. I believed that eating not many calories during the day is going to make less “harming” when binging on sweets before bed.
Paradoxically, the luck of enough food and nutritions during the day caused the night binging. Over time, I learnt how not to react to hunger clues, which lead my smart body to replace the hunger feeling for cravings for sweets, which I couldn’t ignore.
I never truly understood how it’s possible that my brain just switches off and how I so easily end up eating in the night despite my determination not to do so.
I didn’t get it, how I can loose control over consuming food. I felt like I am getting crazy.

Now I do understand that the brain has this ability to temporarily block some centres and signals in the brain, which caused me to follow primitive instincts without thinking about my action, or about consequences. I was craving the sweets and once I started I couldn’t stop until I was super full. And mostly I didn’t even know what I just ate and how it tasted. But the primary need of getting in enough calories to survive was satisfied. Plus I ate some extra calories for the next starving period which was always expected to come, based on the past experience I created by not eating enough food and nutritions during the day. Apparently it takes only 30 days to create a habit and I worked on this one for long enough.

Now I know that I need to eat through the day and I need to learn HOW.
I can’t believe that the solution for my problem was that I actually CAN and MUST eat. I was restricting myself all days long, meantime I didn’t have to!!! :astonished: :astonished: :joy:

I must admit, it hasn’t been easy to make a change.
First of all, I genuinely believed that eating is not good for me, especially some sort of food (e.g. fast food, sweets, etc.). So when I was suddenly suppose to eat whatever I want - it was against all my beliefs.
There is no other way, but to go and do it. To make the decision to do it despite any worries and prejudices about food you have. You got to believe in the process and you got to be patient to see the results. Because like everything what is worth doing, this also takes time, before you can eat the fruit :sweat_smile:

My start was having a breakfast. And I wasn’t hungry at all, I had to force myself to eat. Then I had some snack, then nutritional lunch, another breakfast and a proper dinner. I ate more than I would like to, but for the first time after very long time I didn’t have as much cravings in the evening. But because binging was the only form of “relaxation” I was used to, I still binged that night. And I binged again and again for few weeks, until I learnt to replace it with something else. It was now easier to replace binging with walk, reading book, having bath, etc. when my cravings weren’t strong anymore.
As time passed by, I started to be hungry in the morning and not hungry after a dinner. All came naturally, as my body was recognising, that it’s not going to be starving during the day anymore.

At the beginning I was scared to gain weight. To my surprise, I didn’t gain any (or at least I can’t see it if so) :woman_shrugging: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
I also started to want a different type of food than only sweets. I eat sweet stuff less and not every day, which sounds like a miracle for someone like me, who ate tons of chocolate before sleep almost every night.

When I stopped drinking, I saw new benefits of life without booze every day. Longer I stay sober, more benefits reveals and it always seems unbelievable what I was missing on for all the time when I was willingly poisoning myself. I used to live my life in the only way I knew for many years, thinking that it’s working, until I reached my “rock bottom”, which helped me to open my mind and to admit to myself, that there might be another way of living. It took time and patience not to give up, just because nothing big was happening within few first days. I had to trust to the process and keep going until I saw first results. They came slowly, small successes, which made my life brighter and happier. Since then, every day is better. It is now few years without drinking and I look at my life then and now and I can see the whole picture. The huge difference before then and now which I slowly built up day by day.

And I feel like if it’s the same with my ED. I had a certain habit of eating and thinking about food, a certain way how I judge and categorise food. And I never thought that this way might be wrong. I was blind because of my fear of getting fat.

I am now looking forward to getting to the part of my therapy, where we’ll hopefully find out why I have this fear, why weight matters to me so much, etc. It seems that I now know how to sort out the physical aspect of over eating, but I need to also look at the cause of it at first place.

Good luck to me :upside_down_face: :four_leaf_clover:

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Day 453 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 20 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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So happy for your progress!

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Good luck to you @Jana1988 ! You’re on the amazing journey, discovering so much like when you quit drinking.

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Day 454 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 21 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I wish you the best of luck on your recovery journey, I know you can do it! Congrats on your sobriety too! :blush:

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Day 455 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 22 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Day 456 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 23 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Not sure I want to tempt fate, and haven’t been counting the days, but eating very normally, three meals, and fruit or cocoa as a snack. Sometimes I have eaten sweet things, or had a larger meal, but always in public, and it hasn’t escalate into a binge. I think pms time will be soon, so hoping to keep it up.

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That’s wonderful. And you’re inspiring me. I’ve been off my track for awhile now and I’m trying for 1 day. You may have just encouraged me to do it.

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Day 457 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 24 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I would say you’re making progress! That’s fantastic! Keep it up! :slightly_smiling_face:

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You got this Lara! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Day 458 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 25 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Day 459 : No binge today. :slightly_smiling_face:
Day 26 : No coffee today. :slightly_smiling_face:

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