Hi,
I am starting to realize I have a full blown eating disorder. I used to brush it off because how normalized eating for every occasion is “ ex: breakups, stressed, celebration”
Reference I am a 5’9 F. SW227 this Jan. Got down to 195 by beginning of May. Ended up gaining a lot back this summer. Currently sitting at 212.
My problem is I eat for any reason and because of my stupid choices I have so many health problems now that are very scary. Sadly my world currently revolves around food. Bored, happy, sad, stressed. Sometimes I’ll be planing my next meals when I’m already eating. I don’t know what to do anymore. If you have tips on how to approach this it would mean the world…
You may want to look into therapy, I’m not sure if this sub would be helpful for you right now. That being said, I was in a similar situation and I found fasting to be helpful. Note: This may not be true for everyone. for me, intermittent fasting helped me build a better relationship with food. Because when I did eat, I didn’t want to “waste” it on empty non-filling junk. Also going so long without made me realize how addicted to snacking I was and helped me see that I am safe going without food for a while. It taught me what real hunger feels like vs. just the habit of eating at the same time every day. It taught me to listen to my body.
I never had a formal ED (unsurprisingly the formal diagnostic criteria are worlds apart from the ones relied upon in casual talk) but did nonetheless acknowledge that over many years I had been overrelying on food for anything but its objective qualities (calories, nutrients).
My fix was a little unorthodox (plain old moderation just doesn’t work for me) but overall not that far off from textbook addiction management, I’d like to believe. It was a mix of ways seeking to weaken the reinforcement cycle – temporarily establishing physical distance from the stimuli and limiting affective exposure, either defensively by not making or recalling positive associations or offensively by dissociating.
The end result was that I had stripped away pretty much all pleasure from food / eating. When there’s no pleasure potential, there’s no room for abuse. Plus, objectively decent food choices are restored as the norm almost automatically. I eat to live and not vice versa.
This should not imply that I’ve lost my primitive sensations. That slice of chocolate cake that I had yesterday still tasted yummy for an instant. Once it was down my throat, however, the story ended. It didn’t brighten my day (nor worsened it by any means for that matter), isn’t worthy of mental revisiting nor worthy of anticipation. It was just food of objectively bad quality (too many calories per unit of mass and volume; poor satiety promotion potential; poor nutritional profile).
Hello, I dare say many of us had been there. I have for sure. This is why starting IF has helped me, as another user stated, I have X amount of hours to eat, 9 in my case, so I don’t waste the potential of those hours, I choose food that will keep me satisfied, tastes good, and is nutritious. I gave up snacking as well, which I haven’t realized but was a HUGE part of my life, especially when stressed out…
So, for me IF has helped me tremendously to fix and improve my relationship with food, I don’t know if it could work for you.
I’ve always been an overwater/binge eater. I started eating plant-based 3 month ago. Inflammation gone, blood pressure great, bloating and heartburn gone. I can eat what I like without counting calories since it’s all veggies, fruits, beans, grains.. i limit oils and go minimal on nuts. Lost 22lbs while not trying to (I’m breastfeeding so I eat a lot).
Binge eating is strongly linked to insulin resistance. Work on lowering that with LC, IF and possibly supplements that target IR or metformin. To deal with addiction, see Carb Addiction Doc on YT, book and podcast Food Junkies and the book Dopamine Nation. Google ways to get endorphins that are not your mouth and start incorporating them and working on emotion mgt skills. Good luck!