u/Hot-Pin-2703

Strategies to Try

I’m about 3 weeks into actually trying to take binge eating seriously instead of just doing the usual “tomorrow I’ll be better” cycle, and honestly I’m surprised.

I’ve only binged a few times, but the biggest change is I’m catching the urge way earlier. Before, once the thought hit, it felt like I was already halfway there. Like I’d start mentally planning it, telling myself it was the last time, then somehow end up eating way past the point of even enjoying it.

What’s helped me most is having something to use in the moment instead of just reading advice when I’m already calm. I’ve been using an app/tool that makes me pause, log the urge, and kind of break down what’s actually happening before I spiral. It sounds small, but having that tiny interruption has helped more than I expected.

I’ve tried calorie counting, cutting out foods, “just be disciplined,” all that stuff. For me, that usually made things worse because I’d either obsess more or binge harder later.

I’m not saying I’m cured or anything, but 2.5 weeks with way fewer binges feels insane to me. Even just realizing “this is an urge, not an emergency” has been huge.

Hope this helps someone who feels like they’ve tried everything and still keeps ending up in the same loop.

For years I thought my binge eating was all about food.

Recently, I started using a recovery app that has tools for tracking urges and writing down what I'm thinking before a binge. I wasn't expecting much from it, but after a few weeks I started noticing a pattern.

I deal with depression, and honestly a lot of things feel numb. Video games, YouTube, TV, even hobbies I genuinely enjoy. But when I start thinking about a binge, suddenly I feel excited. Like I finally have something to look forward to.

The biggest realization was that sometimes the binge isn't even what I'm craving most. It's the anticipation.

Planning it. Thinking about what I'll eat. Counting down until I can have it. That feeling gives me a temporary boost when everything else feels flat.

Writing my thoughts down made me realize that I wasn't always chasing food. A lot of the time I was chasing excitement, comfort, or just the feeling that something good was about to happen.

I'm still working through it, but understanding that difference has helped me catch a few urges before they turned into full binges.

Curious if anyone else has experienced this. Have you ever realized that the anticipation of a binge felt more rewarding than the binge itself?

ok it's 11:43pm and i'm writing this on my phone in bed because i can't stop thinking about it.

two days ago i posted about being on day 9 after almost 4 years of binging. i wrote it on my bathroom floor basically. i didn't think anyone would read it. i thought maybe 3 people would say something nice and i'd feel less alone for an hour and that would be it.

i woke up the next morning to 10+ comments.

i've been crying on and off for two days reading them. i'm not exaggerating. i sat in my car at lunch yesterday and read dms until i had to go back inside and put on sunglasses so my coworkers wouldn't see my face. one woman wrote me an entire essay (dm) about hiding granola bar wrappers in her sock drawer for 11 years. eleven years. she has never told a single human being. she told me. a stranger on the internet at 3am.

another person told me they read my post out loud to their partner and cried and their partner finally understood what they've been trying to explain for 6 years.

someone else messaged me at 2am from a bathroom floor saying they read my post mid-binge and stopped. mid-binge. they stopped and just sat there. they messaged me hours later when the sun was coming up. if you're reading this please answer my dm i'm worried about you and i need to know you're okay.

i wanted to say something to all of you that i didn't say in the last post because i didn't know how to say it without crying. i'm going to try now.

every single one of you who wrote to me. you are not crazy. you are not broken. you are not "doing this to yourself." you are not weak. you do not have a discipline problem. you have a brain that has been hijacked by a substance that the entire food industry spends billions of dollars engineering to hijack your brain. when oreos were designed in a lab to be hyperpalatable, they were not designed to be moderated. they were designed to be binged. so were doritos. so was ice cream. so was every fast food menu item that you have eaten in your car at midnight wondering what is wrong with you. nothing is wrong with you. you are reacting exactly the way you were designed to react to something that was designed to make you react that way. that is not a character flaw. that is just chemistry.

and the way out is not "more willpower." it is not "intuitive eating." it is not "make peace with food." it is not "everything in moderation." some of us cannot moderate certain things and pretending we can has kept us sick for years. the way out is to treat it like the addiction it actually is. that's it. that's the whole secret. and the entire industry built to "help" us has been actively hiding this from us because addiction recovery doesn't sell wellness products.

i'm 11 days in tonight. i had a craving so bad at 9pm i thought i was going to break. i didn't. i sat on my kitchen floor and set a timer and cried through 20 minutes and then i made tea and got in bed and now i'm writing this. that is the entire story. it is not glamorous. it is just one woman on her kitchen floor refusing to do the thing one more time.

if i can do that on a random tuesday after 4 years of doing the opposite, you can too.

i'm going to keep posting here because so many of you asked me to. i'm not a therapist. i'm not a coach. i'm not selling anything. i'm just a girl who is 11 days into not destroying her own life every night and is finally finding out she was never the only one. if me being honest about this on a website helps even one of you survive a tuesday night, i'll keep doing it as long as i'm here.

to the person who messaged me at 2am. please answer me.

to everyone else. you are not alone. i love you. i am rooting for you. get on your kitchen floor. set the timer. ride the wave. tomorrow you'll wake up at day 1 and that day 1 is worth more than every "i'll start monday" you've ever told yourself.

ok i'm going to try to sleep now.

day 11. still here. so are you.

i'm going to try to write this without crying.

last tuesday i had the worst binge i've had in over a year. like genuinely the worst. i ate until i couldn't move and then i laid on my bathroom floor and i thought to myself maybe i'm just supposed to be like this forever. maybe this is just who i am. maybe i should stop trying because every time i try i just end up back here and the trying is what's killing me.

i've been binging for almost 4 years. i've had stretches of getting better. weeks. a couple months once. and every time i build a little momentum i find a way to blow it up. for years i thought the problem was that i wasn't trying hard enough. turns out the problem was i was trying in completely the wrong way.

i'm 9 days in now. that's not a lot. i know it's not a lot. but it's the first 9 days in a long time that have felt different and i want to write down what's helping in case anyone is where i was last tuesday on the bathroom floor.

stopped calling it emotional eating. started calling it addiction.

this is the one that changed everything. i was treating this like a discipline problem for 4 years. eat less. try harder. have more willpower. it never worked because that's not what this is. my brain is wired to chase dopamine through food the same way some people's brains are wired to chase it through alcohol or nicotine. once i started treating it like recovery instead of a diet, i stopped negotiating with the urge. you can't negotiate with addiction. you just have a plan.

learned that the urge actually passes.

nobody ever told me this. for 4 years i thought if i didn't give in to the craving it would just keep getting worse forever until i exploded. turns out cravings peak around 15-20 minutes and then they fade. i set a timer on my phone now. when the urge hits i set 20 minutes and i do anything else. walk around my apartment. cold water on my face. text my sister. lay on the floor. by the time the timer goes off the craving is either gone or so much weaker that i can keep going. this one thing alone has saved me probably 30 binges in 9 days.

identified my danger window and stopped pretending i could white knuckle through it.

mine is 9pm to midnight. it has always been 9pm to midnight. and for 4 years i kept thinking "tonight will be different, tonight i'll just have self control." reader. tonight was never different. so i stopped relying on willpower at 10pm and started engineering the window. phone in the other room. specific tea i make every night. a show i only watch then. in bed by 11. i made the window boring on purpose. it's the most important hours of my day now and i protect them like my life depends on it because it kind of does.

cut the trigger foods completely. not "in moderation." gone.

every therapist and every intuitive eating book told me i needed to make peace with all foods. keep them in the house. learn to have one. i tried that for years and got worse every time. for me, certain foods are not food. they're a substance. ice cream. anything from taco bell. chips. ben and jerrys. these aren't snacks for me, they're drugs. so they're not in my house. they're not on my route home. i don't engage. maybe one day i can reintroduce them. right now i can't. and that's allowed.

counting days. yes really.

i felt stupid doing this at first. it felt cheesy. like AA stuff that wasn't meant for me. but there's a reason every addiction recovery framework counts days. on day 3 i had something to protect. on day 7 i wasn't going to throw it away. it gives you an external scaffolding when your internal one is in pieces. it works. just do it.

told one person.

i told my sister. just her. not my boyfriend, not my mom, not my friends. just one person who i knew wouldn't try to fix me or give me advice. she just knows now. and the second one human in my real life knew the truth, the shame lost so much of its power. shame is the fuel of the binge cycle. one honest conversation drains a lot of it.

stopped trying to be perfect at eating.

i used to eat almost nothing all day because i was "being good" and then by 9pm i was starving and exhausted and depleted and of course i binged. of course i did. you can't run a car on empty. i eat three real meals now. protein at every meal. i don't skip. i don't earn my food. i just eat. boring, regular, enough.

i'm not "cured."

i want to say that. because every time i read these posts where someone is like "i'm healed forever" i feel insane. i had a craving today. i had one yesterday. i'll probably have one tomorrow. the difference is i have tools now and i have a plan and i have 9 days behind me that i don't want to throw away.

last tuesday i thought it was over. i thought i was going to be like this forever. i'm not going to pretend nine days makes me an expert. but i'm not on the bathroom floor anymore and that's the most hope i've had in a long time.

if you're where i was last week — i'm so sorry. it's not your fault. you're not broken. you're not weak. your brain is doing what addicted brains do and the way out isn't more willpower it's a different framework entirely.

you can do this. i'm trying to do it too. we can do it together.

EDIT: THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR THE SUPPORT, For those wondering what i used to help me i used a app, the app helped me control my binges and stay in control appreciate you guys :)