Home→Forums→Health and Fitness→Stopped Dieting and Restricting, now I'm Bingeing
- This topic has 7 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 3 months ago by koko vega.
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March 20, 2017 at 6:32 am #140743sadpeachParticipant
I have been yoyo dieting for the past 10 months for the first time in my life and it has now led to a very unhealthy relationship with food and my body.
I recently stopped dieting when I realized I used to be able to eat whatever I want and was a twig — because I had everything in moderation. I’d forget to eat one day because I didn’t really care about food! I realized I clearly couldn’t “diet” and count calories for the rest of my life so I deleted MyFitnessPal and tried to trust my gut. The first week was fine, but the second week I went overboard and have been bingeing ever since. I really don’t want to restrict myself because I know it will cause more bingeing.
I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth and I always would sneak a few treats and eat too much growing up, but this is a step further. It’s not the worst in cases I’ve read about, but I know it’s disordered eating.
I don’t know what to do! Do you think this desire to binge will fade way once I just continually stop restricting? I hope this is just a phase after yo-yo dieting for so long.
I’m feeling so sad and hopeless because I never ever ever had an unhealthy relationship with food and now I do, and I do not want to feel this way for the rest of my life. I just want to go back to being how I used to be. I’m scared.
March 20, 2017 at 8:58 am #140769AnonymousGuestDear Tessa:
Restricting is an unreasonable practice of self discipline regarding eating, and so it often leads to overeating and bingeing (extreme overeating). Practicing reasonable self discipline regarding eating is necessary once you already experience disordered eating.
What is reasonable self discipline- you make the rules for what it means to you. You can start with certain rules and then adjust and change those rules through your experimenting and experience over time, so to come up with what works for you, individually.
The anxiety that fuels disordered eating has to be dealt with as well, at the same time that you figure those reasonable rules for your eating.
Got to say goodbye to the memories of the time when your focus was not on food, and welcome this new challenge. You can make it, Tessa. You can come out the winner in this challenge.
anita
March 31, 2017 at 2:00 pm #143119AceLsParticipantI’ve gone on crazy restrictive diets in the past and it seems like the extreme discipline always leads to a breaking point where I’ll binge. The more restrictive the diet the stronger & longer the binge. I think this is a natural cycle & you can only break it by getting in tune with your bodies natural needs & finding a homeostasis. I think stressing about it & beating yourself up will probably only make the problem worse …… I’d look at other stresses in you life like relationships, overexercise, lack of sleep etc & once you get those in order I bet the binges will chill out a bit. Hope this helps
April 13, 2017 at 8:10 pm #144983MerriegoldParticipantActually, we can eat what we want as long as with moderation. Foods are just there, you can eat them anytime! but make sure your limitations. You must have an amount of food your are eating and enjoy it.Well, tomorrow is another day! Good Luck
October 2, 2017 at 9:51 pm #171341luckyfoxParticipantHi Sadpeach,
Sorry to hear this has happened. I’m a fitness instructor and nutritionist so I’d like to offer some help.
Myfitnesspal is great at keep track of what we consume. It gives great insight into what we are eating and what it contains. With a lot of clients I’ve found that when they stop using it, it can turn to bingeing.
Using the app, you do restrict your intake so having some time can help reset the control v suprize element the brain loves.
Do you think it would help if you tried something like that 80/20 rule so you could have both controlled calorie intake & indulge in small amounts?
Whenever I see a pattern like this it’s always about the bigger picture. Sometimes eating can get out of control when we feel too under control in another situation.
Hope this helps.
October 3, 2017 at 7:51 am #171355PeterParticipantThe words we use have power. Most people associate the word diet with restriction and privation. If we do so the mind will likely fixate on what we are depriving ourselves and the desired goal of being healthy is over whelmed. Not only are we more likely to binge we insure that we feel quality and deserve to be punished…. Feeding negative self talk that we aren’t good enough and deceive to be unhappy and unhealthy. Defeated before you even got started
Instead of a diet as restrictions chose a diet of abundance the abundance of becoming.
My own experience awakening to my diet was that over 65% was grain based. Even though I lost weight by exercising and keeping the amount of food down to the needed calories after a few weeks I would just binge. I felt so hungry and craved more and more salt and sugar/grains. It seems today’s processed grains will provide short bursts of energy and feelings of fullness for an hour or two but act like sugar in the body, triggering the body to store (weight gain) resulting in inflammation and blood-sugar imbalances.
Talking to a naturopath and nationalist he noted that my diet (as in what I was eating not what I wasn’t eating as restricting) wasn’t balanced. That I needed more fats and protein and less dairy and grain. He suggested that I avoid grains and dairy. Not as a restriction but to avoid.
After two weeks of avoiding grains and adding butter back into my diet I found I wasn’t hungry between meals and lost 8 pounds. I used to crave, really crave, chips and pizza and when I binged that was my go to. I can say that after three months of avoiding grains and -30 pounds I don’t crave anymore. I sometimes think about buying chips and such again but it’s a muscle memory physiological thing more then a craving.
I was at a work function the other week and pretty much everything they served all the junk foods. I partook. After just a few moments I notice that my body wasn’t feeling so great and that I didn’t really enjoy those foods anymore. I didn’t feel deprived but instead grateful that my body new what it needed and didn’t need and that I could hear it.
May 6, 2018 at 2:06 pm #205853SarahParticipantI’ve been working on my weight since last may and have lost 58lbs. I did it different this time. Started my keeping a journal of my feelings when I wanted to eat and what happened when I ate certain foods. Food and emotion goes hand and hand with me. Eating less first felt like drug withdrawal, and I cried on and off by allowing the feelings to flow. Then I found my body feeling starved for days after I ate wheat or white sugar. For me I had to just quit eating certain things. I’m still on this journey. I’ve added going to the gym because it help control emotions that makes my mind uneasy and want to eat the feelings away.
July 5, 2018 at 8:14 pm #215615koko vegaParticipantMe personally, I use my fitness pal so that I can eat what I want but stay within a set amount of calories, so I can have a better relationship with food and not treat food as though it is the enemy, food should be enjoyed !!!
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