Why do I Binge?

I think I binge for two reasons: emotion, and hunger. The second one is a no-brainer. When I’m not binging I’m usually trying to diet in order to keep my weight at a reasonable level. This means that eventually the low caloric intake will have an impact on my body. It’ll make me ravenous, so everything looks delicious, and when I start to eat I won’t be able to stop. In my opinion, this is the easiest kind of binge to stop. The only thing you have to do is start eating more. Of course, that’s harder than it sounds, because the mindset is that if you eat more you’ll gain a whole bunch of weight. I felt this way because whenever I binged (ate whatever and however much I wanted) for a few days straight, I would immediately gain about five pounds. However, the trick is to eat until you’re full and then stop, even if you want to try other things. This will NOT make someone gain a lot of weight. In fact, it will probably make someone lose weight because his metabolism will start working properly again.

The other side of stopping this kind of binge is to stop counting calories. Counting calories will mean that you’ll stop eating because of your caloric intake and not because you’re full. This will just allow the cycle to continue.

Emotional binges are more difficult to stop. I’m not entirely sure how I’ve been handling them lately. Something to do might be to be around people when you want to binge, away from a food source. Also reminding myself that I’m not hungry and recognizing the fact that I want to binge because I feel stressed or anxious makes the desire easier to overcome.