Binging Archives - A Weight Loss Adventure

As I am sure most of you are aware, I am a binge eater. For the most part I have had in under control for a while and only had minor issues here and there. However, the changes to my day during the quarantine due to the covid-19 pandemic, this change has thrown me for a loop. I started reading some of my favorite bloggers and one of them touched upon this time being a trigger. Shout out to Andie Mitchell! How could I not have realized that my lack of a routine has triggered my binge eating?

What is binge eating?

Binge eating is an eating disorder where you have an uncontrollable urge to eat unusual amounts of food. Back in the day, I could easily eat a bucket of ice-cream, a whole pie and add in some chocolate on top. I would finish it off with take out food. I would be so full I would need to go and throw up to simply feel comfortable. If you think you might have a binge eating disorder, I do urge you to reach out to your doctor but you can also read a bit about it at the Mayoclinic or at National Eating Disorders.

Dealing with binge eating

I have had days, where I felt myself slip into my old habit. I would simply say, I could just grab a few nuts to tide me over. But I would return 5 minutes later to grab another handful and an ounce of cheese. And that is how my day would continue. So I have been gaining a little weight.

I am not alarmed… yet! However, I do need to build a new routine for myself so I can stop myself from binge eating. Anyone with an eating disorder thrives with routine. With the changes of working from home, my hubby is now losing weight and us having struggled as a couple, it has been rough finding my way.

Building a routine

This week is the week I am figuring out how I can build a new healthy routine. It is all about making my day manageable but busy enough that I don’t think about food more than I need to.

In a day, I have daily routines that we all need to take care of:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Plan meals for the day
Work
Workout

Those are the ones I need to focus on. I need to leave the rest behind to ensure that my essentials are taken care of. Once I have those down, I need to have a to-do-list that I can lean on so I can keep myself busy and out of the kitchen.

Structuring my day

Normally, I would meal prep on Sundays to ensure I am set for the week and I spend less time in the kitchen. However, the changes to my routine, had me thinking that I did not need to meal prep. Clearly, that is still needed. But until Sunday comes around my day starts the day before. I need to plan for my day. What will I be eating? What will Mike be eating? When will we be eating and how much time do I have to prep. When will I be working out. Are there other chores I need to add to my list?

Once I have my meals planned out and I know what to do when in the kitchen, I can move on to the when I will be doing my workouts. Workouts are very important to me. It keeps me focused, makes me feel better and with lack of movement for sitting on my butt all day, it is key in staying healthy.

My plan for tomorrow

7AM: Wake up
7:20AM: Get dressed, brush teeth, personal grooming
7:40AM: Make breakfast (Yogurt, hulled hemp seeds and banana for me and grape nuts, milk with a bit of brown sugar for hubby) and coffee! We can’t forget the coffee!
8AM: Eat breakfast
8:30AM: Spend time with Mike
9AM: Start work
2PM: Make lunch (Heat up Red Thai Curry for both Mike and myself)
2:20PM Eat lunch and spend time with Mike
3PM: Start last 3 hours of work
6PM: Wash dishes from breakfast and lunch
6:20PM: Make dinner (Turkey meatballs with onion, mushroom and red pepper mix (and sweet potato for Mike)) during cooking, I will plan my next day.
7PM: At home workout
7:35PM: Eat dinner
8:15PM: wash dishes
8:30PM: Shower
8:50PM: Spend time with Mike
11PM: Bedtime!

My weekend To Do List

This is a typical day for me. The challenge always comes when the weekend rolls around as there will be no work to keep me busy. That is why a to-do-list gets handy. This is my to-do-list for the weekend:

Create weekly meal plan
Meal prep as much as possible
Vacuum
Clean bathroom
Take pictures of clothes and other items to be sold online
Study for 4 hours
Create a weekly social media plan
Take images/videos of workouts

This should keep me pretty busy.

Will this cure my binging?

This prep time is no guarantee that I won’t binge or struggle with the urges of binging. However, it will put me in a place that gives me greater chance of success. If I know what I am eating and when, this eliminates my time in the kitchen and the need to find something to put in my mouth. It, also, creates a structure where there is a sense of security as I know what I will be doing next. These are both really strong support mechanisms that I can implement myself.

If I should get the urges to go and eat more, my last resort is always to talk to my husband about my need for eating. That usually helps as most binge eaters are extremely embarrassed by their lack of self control.

Should you be like me and struggling with your eating, always know you can reach out. I know what it is like. The mind can convince us of many things and they can be hard to control. You are definitely not alone. I know, I’m not.

This is a question I get more often than one might think. And I think it is a good question. Weight does not just suddenly pop up and it is not like I do not want to be healthy and look good when I stare back at myself in the mirror. Believe it or not, I have thought about why I keep gaining weight for more than 25 years. I have roughly 100 hours of psychology hours behind me, several bad habits and eating disorders behind me, along with 10+ books about weight loss and about 10 different fad diets under my belt (anything from Weight Watcher to electricity run through my body).

My husband asked me this question a few days ago, as we were talking about when I was anorexic with a tendency to binge. This was the time, I was skinniest. I was 130 lb. So not insanely skinny but still lower than the average I should have been at (144 lb). More about this later.

This question got me thinking. I am probably not the only one who has had this question asked and I am sure a lot of you are asking yourselves this very question, but you might be to polite to ask (my husband is not). It is, also, an important question to ask one self when trying to lose weight as you need to dig in and learn about your habits more deeply than simply “I should not eat that”.

Everyone has their story and no story is better or worse than others, as we are all different and react differently to what we are exposed to in life that build our habits. Mine started in early childhood and simply kept getting reinforced through my childhood. Once those habits have been instilled in you they are insanely hard to break. Not until I was in my 30′ did I start really understanding my habits and you can’t change them if you are not aware of them. So lesson number 1. Learn about your habits, good and bad.

One of my first memories of childhood was when I was 3-4 years of age. My parents were fighting (which were not uncommon in those days) and to spare me from the stress of the yelling they would place me in front of the TV with a small bowl of candy and they were off to the kitchen. Of course I could hear them yell anyways, which would make any child feel unsafe so I emerged myself in the TV and my bowl of candy. The reason why this exact memory is so important is that it is my first memory of what happens when I binge. I am in front of the TV or computer and sugar just goes in, one after the other. After a stressful day or if I have been in a fight, my go to remedy to make myself feel better is the TV and my bag of goodies.

This habit got reinforced throughout my childhood. My surroundings where not getting any calmer. Matter of fact, they got worse. At age 5 my parents divorced and soon enough it was time for my sisters and mother to fight each other.

As I started growing into my teenage years, I was not the rebellious type. I internalized things more than my sisters. With the insecurity of trying to find out who you are as a teenager and the fear of being unpopular started my next habit. Binging! It started out with me wanting to lose that “baby fat”. I put it in quotation marks as that was what my mom called it, although others were not as nice about it. Ever since I was a kid, I was body shamed and food shamed by pretty much everyone in my family (a few exceptions, love you dad!).

Looking back, I was not overweight, I was just not skinny but that was considered overweight and that is something I still live under today. I have a hard time distancing myself from that image and just accept that my body is more voluptuous than those of my sisters and mother’s side of the family. My dad’s side of the family had a bigger tendency to carry more weight than average but unfortunately, we did not really engage with that side of the family and my father’s mother died when he was very young so I never got to meet her. Although, I am told, that I look like her. She must have been a very good looking woman 😉

To put the pressure into perspective. When I was skinniest at 130 lb, I was still called overweight and having “baby fat”. Yes, insane, I know, but my shape and voluptuous features simple gives me the look of being a bit choppy.

This constant pressure, although, I am sure it was not intentional, drove me into my dabble in anorexia. I say “dabble” as I had a friend at the time, whom saved my life and made me wake up from what I was doing to myself, fairly early into my days of not eating or binging with purging afterwards. If he is reading this, he knows who he is and I simply want to say: Thank you!

As the pressure was still there, the habit of using food as a comforter was readily available, I instead started binging and that is how I ended up with the other side of a eating disorder – over eating.

Over eating was something I hid as I felt it was shameful. I was not supposed to eat all of those treats and foods as I was supposed to lose weight and be skinny like my friends and sisters. But my feelings were overwhelming and I could not control my urges. This urge simply stayed and I tried over time to control it in different ways. I still have the urges today but with some really capable psychologists, I have gotten some great tools to recognize when the urge comes on, why it is there and that I have a choice. The choice is harder than you think, but I am slowly learning to accept my choices. Good or bad. And I think, I am finally growing up.

After over eating for roughly 20 years, you put on weight. I have had more excuses than I can count but at least now I see my excuses and I can choose to act on them or grow up and say no.

The bigger picture of my story is showing how important positive body image is for especially young people. I hope that my blog will help people to realize that they are beautiful no matter who they are and what they look like. It is truly, what is inside that determines your outer beauty.

XOXO

When Lack of Routine Triggers A Binge Eater