Updates and learning to recover from binge-eating

So I took a break from stressing and recording all my food intake. It felt nice for a couple of days but then I just ended up binging on sweets and that didn't feel good at all. I really love sweets; cupcakes, cake, cookies. But the honest truth is that I don't know how to control my portions. And if I eat one piece of cake one day, I want another plus two cookies the next. I am a binge eater. Yes, I've admitted it before, but lately I am understanding that binging and dessert-addiction is something I need to get under control now before I end up with a full fledged problem...or is it a problem now? Anything that causes distress and takes away peace and happiness IS a problem, for sure. Anyhow, while I still don't have the answers, I am taking steps to figuring out what to do. I know the most success I've had with my eating was when I abstained from dessert and snacking. Of course, once I got around my friends, the binging began again; and that's one red-flag I've discovered recently (aside from the obvious and common stress/anxiety-induced and emotional-related binging I, and many others, fall prey to regularly): I tend to binge when I'm excited. When I'm having fun. When I'm hanging out with friends or in a group. Isn't that wierd? And it really makes sense when I connect it to my prior problem with alcohol binging. I never drank alone. And only rarely did I drink out of depression. I always drank at a party or with my friends and boyfriend. I would start drinking just one drink, having a great time, hanging out, loosening up, laughing. Then I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. I admit, I often started drinking because I felt awkward in social situations and large crowds, but more often I would drink because I was excited and having fun and really could not make myself stop. Not for many years. And the only thing that got me to stop drinking for good was a very BAD drinking experience. If that event hadn't happened, I'd probably still be drinking and loosing dozens of memories of drunken nights, not to mention the brain cells.

Overeating and binging is more difficult because it's not hurting anyone. Others don't really notice. I don't look fat and I'm not overweight. So people just laugh and say, "I can't believe you can keep eating!" or "I don't know how you can even eat that much!" My boyfriend probably sees the worst of it and compares my behavior to that of a heroin addict, but even he hasn't stepped in to make me seriously control my binging. And again, I remember back to my alcohol problem; no one else thought it was serious because I wasn't drinking alone and most of my friends thought I was funny when I was drunk so they didn't want me to stop. Why isn't a problem serious until you have hit rock bottom? I didn't want to wait to quit drinking until I found myself face down in an alley! And I don't want to wait until I am obese to quit binge eating! I hope I can get the support I need. I have a hard enough time taking myself seriously; it IS funny that I can eat more than my boyfriend and still think I'm hungry; it IS funny that I can eat 4 giant cupcakes in one sitting without a care in the world. But it isn't healthy. I don't feel good about it.

I've tried so many things: I went vegan; this helped me restrict myself from a lot of foods and I was able to maintain a steady weight but I still ate A LOT and still binged on an unnecessary amount of sweets; in fact I think my binging got worse after going vegan because I started baking more and eating everything I made and discovered the bounty of vegan treats available and gorged myself on them. I tried eating a high-raw diet; this helped me lose weight but I wasn't eating balanced because I would binge on a huge dinner followed by all the dessert I could consume until I was nauseated. I tried my Addiction Free Diet Experiment; this was wonderful for a couple weeks, but as soon as I started bringing sweets back into my diet and letting myself have "fun days" and then rewarding my weight loss with a binge fest, it all went down hill and my amazing experiment was destroyed (obviously, the diet works: I just didn't keep myself to it!)

So yes, I can see the problem is not what I'm eating or what diet I'm following, but my relationship with food and binging. I don't quite understand what to do about it, but I'm hoping to figure it out. As a good first step, I bought a book called "Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop" by Cynthia M. Bulik. I'm about 3/4 through. It's very interesting to read a book from a pshycological perspective specifically about binge-eating and not from a specific lifestyle-diet's perspective. While I love being vegan and eating lots of raw foods, I've already got that down; another vegan/raw cookbook isn't going to make everything better. Veganism and the benefits of eating more raw foods are already ingrained into my lifestyle. Now I need to learn what to do with those foods and how to relate to them differently. One thing that I learned from the book is to eat a substantial breakfast, every morning, hungry or not. Ideally, this will make you spread your calories throughout the day and keep binge-eaters from going off the deep end at dinner. I'm willing to try this because it makes sense; I've been following Natalia Rose's method of eating "light to heavy" throughout the day, and while I do agree that this method will help you digest and pass your food the easiest, it might not be best for me, since I DO tend to binge on a LARGE dinner, followed by a dessert or snacks. So I'm going to change my eating schedule around, and see if that helps me binge less and eat better throughout the day.

What a journey.