What are you binging on? I suspect its not broccoli? Go to the fridge and cupboard collect all the binge foods, tear the packets open and bin them. That way you wont lose your resolve and fish the packets out later. If you cant bring yourself to do this youre probably not ready to start your journey yet.

There is no easy way of doing this. It will take about a month of will power before the cravings start to diminish. You just have to hang tough. Not having those foods in the house will make the challenge a little easier. Our family decided to get rid of fruit juice, biscuits and cakes. The outcry from the kids lasted about a week, now no one misses that rubbish anymore.

Good luck.

Hi Maggie621

I had a binge eating disorder for decades. It isn’t a behaviour pattern that changes quickly. However it does improve over time if you make helpful changes and persevere with them.

I agree with much of the advice already given, such as getting problem foods out of the house, eating slowly and finding activities that distract you from food. It takes time to try different tools that may help to change this behaviour and see which help you.

When starting 5:2 I found the FDs mostly easy, but my tendency to binge actually increased on the the NFDs. It’s taken many months and I’ve tried a lot of approaches to dealing with this. The things I’ve found most valuable are:

– I kept a food diary that looks at what I what I ate, when, how and why. You learn so much when you do this process thoroughly and thoughtfully.
This told me that the worse the food choice the faster I ate it. I barely even tasted it most of the time – which of course meant I wanted more. I also learned that late night snacking when I couldn’t eat was a real problem. Afternoon snacking was also an issue. But in the morning I had little appetite and instead of breakfast easily satisfying me until lunch time, I found it stimulated my appetite and encouraged me to want to eat more. I also found that certain types of food seemed to encourage me to eat more, where others didn’t.

– I learned that some foods just needed to be banned from the house and others were things that should be in my diet but I seemed to have no stopping point with them (especially nuts and cheese). I had to learn to eat them in moderation and that took some time. For example, for a long time I had to buy only raw nuts and roast them in small quantities as needed and cheese I sliced or grated and kept it in the freezer. I now no longer need to do either of these things but it’s taken many months to learn restraint with these foods.

– An eating window that restricts food to a few hours a day really helped me. Giving up food in the morning was easy, If I don’t eat in the morning I’m not hungry, it seems to be the act of eating that kick starts my appetite for the day. It’s no hardship to start eating at noon, give or take an hour. The difficult part was drawing a line under food consumption with dinner. Once dinner is over I’ve made a commitment to myself that that’s it for the day. I tried initially to set this as a goal rather than a hard and fast rule but that didn’t work, it did have to be an absolute commitment to work for me. Essentially this means that all my food is eaten roughly from noon-8pm, although sometimes these times vary by about an hour. Although there is still a lot of potential for overeating it does limit the risk and the time of day where I have to be mentally strong is limited to an 8 hour period. Oddly enough, once I reach my eating “curfew” after diner I feel a sense of relief knowing I don’t have to deal with food until tomorrow.
On FDs I start eating as late in the day as possible and generally have a small snack mid afternoon (eg berries or an apple) and then a low calorie meal for dinner that is usually packed with a large volume of veg. Some people find limiting themselves to meals and no snacks achieves a similar result, but this doesn’t suit me.

– With the help of a dietitian I started using “mindful eating” as an approach to eating slower to appreciating every mouthful. I think this works because it allows me to focus on the joy and pleasure of each mouthful. I find I need smaller serves to be satisfied.

– I stated making slow but steady changes to my diet generally to remove as much processed food as possible, increase the variety of foods, include lots of whole foods, increase the fibre content and remove a lot of the sugar from my diet. I found this helped me eat more sensible portions most of the time. This approach means cooking most things from scratch from fresh ingredients, using plenty of pulses/legumes, meeting my need for sweet snacks with fresh fruit, making sure veggies are the bulk of most meals and carefully selecting the whole grains that remain in my diet. For me foods that are high in either salt of sugar usually drive me to eat more, so I avoid these most of the time.
I need to point out that this is my approach to everyday eating, it doesn’t mean I ever have foods that don’t fit these eating guidelines, but they are occasional they are not regular and they mostly occur at social events and rarely at home.

– How I thought about the days made a difference. It was important not to think of the NFDs as feast days, or free days to eat what I liked. If I did that, they cancelled out the FDs and I lost no weight. I had to think of the 5 “normal” days as days for sensible eating. Because my previous “normal” was not something I could continue, I didn’t just have to change on FDs, I had to relearn what a normal eating day should look like for me. Part of that also involved working out my TDEE, which is a great deal lower than the 2000cal example quoted often on this website. Mine is 1400cals and learning how to eat this little and think of it as normal took time.

– I experimented with the frequency of FDs. Initially when I overate on NFDs I thought I needed to add more FDs – this just led to more bingeing. I found that I needed a minimum of 2 NFDs between FDs to minimise the risk of bingeing on the NFDs. You will need to find your own pattern that helps.

– I accepted that a history with binge eating is never completely gone. You don’t eliminate it you learn to manage it.

I hope you find some tools that help.

Maggie, if there is a time of day that is more difficult, try setting the timer for 2 hours during that period. Then find something engaging to do during that time and the urge to eat will pass.
Thirst, boredom, and worry all feel like hunger. Find ways to eliminate them.
Good luck.