My 2 cents. Free from binge eating since 2019-12-28

I'm new on the forum. I have joined because I wanted to share my story and - hopefully - help someone else to defeat this horrible monster.

As far as I remember, everything started back in Italy when I used to stay at my grandma's house as a kid (she tended to me and my brothers while my parents were at work). As a kid, I was highly sensitive and got sad or cried a lot.

My grandma didn't know better so she used to give me candies, ice-cream and chocolate to help me to "cope" with these emotions. After these "sugar" fixes I used to feel good so I instantly got hooked on that type of food. I was also very fond of bread: it was common for me to go through an entire bag of bread (1 kg), if my mother wasn't fast enough to hide it.

At the age of 12, I found myself obese and my parents didn't know what to do about my "hunger": they wanted me to start playing a sport so I joined a basketball team, but as soon as I came back from the training sessions I devoured anything sweet or doughy I used to find in the kitchen.

That year I also became addicted to video games and the two monsters became allies: I started faking headaches or stomachaches in order to not go to school and stay home, spending my day eating junk food and playing video games. I failed my classes and eventually dropped out of high school, to my parents' disappointment.

Soon I started working and I left my parents' house to live on my own (well, sharing a flat). Here I first realized that I had a problem: I couldn't help going through my flatmates' food and devouring anything sweet I found. This happened many times throughout the years but somehow none of them ever confronted me about the issue, saving me from the shame.

I dabbled with many diets: paleo, keto, atkins etc, but as soon as I lost a bit of weight, I gained it back and got even heavier. A day in the life consisted in restricting myself for most of the day, stopping at the supermarket on the way back from work and eventually buying sweets, candies, chips and bread in big quantities, going back home and devouring that food so fast I could barely breathe. Then I used to feel guilty and terrified upon realizing that I was out of control and didn't know how to stop.

The most discouraging aspect of this problem is that it is so elusive: you rationalize stuffing food into your throat by saying: "I have to feed myself" or "Eating is one of the pleasures of life", but actually there is a deceitful mechanism at play.

I have been 3 years in therapy but my eating habits didn't change a bit: yes, I understood how, when and why these coping mechanisms were formed, but this didn't help me to solve the issue and I have ended up spending my 20s and most of my 30s overweight and hopeless.

Fast forward to the end of 2019. By then I was already sure that I was an addict, so I asked myself: "what's the last time I quit an addiction and how did I do it?" I remembered that I quit smoking cigarettes 3 years before upon reading a book that explains you how to do it. I looked for more books from the same author and found out that he wrote another one about binge eating!

I went through the book and followed the instructions, especially the one where you are supposed to not change your eating habits until you finish reading the book. While reading the book, something "clicked" in my mind as I realized the following:

1) Sugary foods, starchy carbs and excessively salty foods are highly addictive and trigger a feedback loop similar to the one present in drug addiction. As such, eating these foods doesn't provide a real pleasure but relieves us from the withdrawal symptoms caused by the last binge.
2) Animals use their senses to recognize real food from poison: they sniff it, prod it and lick it before committing to eating it. We should do the same and eat what smells and tastes like real food. I need to stop and focus on the act of eating, chewing slowly and feeling the taste of the food in my mouth. How does it look? How does it smell? How does it feel?
3) The advertising industry invested millions in making junk food look appealing to us and we fell into the trap. We have been sweet-talked into ignoring our instincts and making an "intellectual" choice about what to eat.
4) Something that makes me feel miserable, hurts me and makes me spiral out of control cannot be considered as "one of the pleasures of life". There are other pleasures that make me feel healthy, fit and full of energy and shoving junk food into my mouth is not one of those.
5) Willpower doesn't have anything to do with binge eating: unless you realize that you are not missing anything by not eating junk food, you will always feel miserable and prone to relapse.

I won't bore you with more information, but please do yourself a favor and get the book, follow the instructions and see for yourself.

How does my life look like now? It's been just 2 months, but I can say that I now eat when I am hungry and whenever I want to go "crazy" with food, I opt for a succulent apple or a steak, and after that I feel full for a while. There are no cravings, no feeling miserable and you cannot imagine how much time and energy freed up in my life. I have joined a gym, started new projects and I am planning a career change. I have less mood swings and I am an overall more confident person.

Life is too short to be hooked on false needs created by advertisers. Get free before it's too late!

Hello FreshStart: Thanks for sharing your success. I see this is your first post here on PC. Welcome to Psych Central. I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

Glad you are in recovery. The only thing I will say is that advertisers, while certainly guilty of everything you say, don't force you to buy their products. In the end, it is entirely your decision what you choose or choose not to eat. My problem with food is that it's not something one can completely give up, like cigarettes or alcohol. We need it to stay alive. I'm happy for you that you have found ways to recover, that's just my two cents. Gotta take some responsibility for your decisions.

Hi FreshStart2020. I am new to the forum and your story is familiar to me. It's frustrating as I feel I've overcome addiction and binge eating before, but the binge eating has crept back into my life. It's insidious.
I'd be interested which books you found helpful?

@FreshStart2020 and all:

That's really interesting, what you wrote about eating salt just servicing a salt tolerance, providing relief from the withdrawal since the last use and not really being an addiction. It's like i'm habituated to salt and using it relieves my excessive reliance on it, but doesn't actually provide any pleasure. I guess the solution is to cure myself of my salt tolerance by depriving myself of my excessive use of it which will be temporarily uncomfortable and then the need for excessive salt will disappear and i will be free of the Salt Monster. Thanks for the tip and congratulations on solving your eating disorder!

Ta!

Jane.