At the beginning of my weight-loss journey, but I've beaten my binge eating 🙌🎉😊

Hi Reddit, I’m Laura, 24F from the UK who started lurking here at the start of the year 😊

HW: 288lb, CW: 268lb

So, here I am, two weeks in.

I’ve been here before, as many of us have been.

I was in high school when I hit 250lb and – after an upsetting doctor’s appointment – started to make changes for the better. I installed MFP, started eating at a calorie deficit and saw the lbs starting to drop. At least, I saw the number dropping when I was stood on the scales. The mirror told a different, more brutal story; I saw that same 250lb girl staring back at me every time, and eventually became demoralised by what I couldn’t see.

For a few years, my weight yo-yoed back and forth. I gained weight, panicked when I plucked up the nerve to stand on the scales and then lost it by avoiding food completely for a number of days, treating it like the enemy.

Over the last five years, I ballooned up to my all-time high of 288lb, a culmination of years of secret binge eating when my depression and anxiety peaked and work became a source of stress for me. No one could ever understand how I got to that weight when I didn’t eat that much, or that bad – not as far as they could see. Behind closed doors, I was ordering takeaways almost daily, hiding masses of food in my room and gorging on it, not for the pleasure of how it tasted, but for the sheer amount.

Binge eating is a behaviour that started for me in high school. It was a secret comfort, something that distracted me from negative thoughts and anxiety. It wasn’t just junk food and sweet treats, it was anything I could find in large quantities – I would binge on entire boxes of cornflakes, on foods that I didn’t even like, and when I did, I would almost feel disconnected from myself, as if acting in a trance.

Towards the end of last year, I decided my mental health was something I needed to focus on improving. I finally stopped the cycle of binge-eating. I deleted the food delivery apps from my phone and made a promise to myself to at least be upfront and mindful about what I was eating, to be aware of the reasons for it, even if I continued to overeat.

By the start of this year, my weight had fallen to 277lb just from having gained control of my destructive habit. I was able to be open about it, to confide in people, and now I feel able to confront my weight loss and make those changes permanently.

Two weeks into the year, I’ve dropped 9lb so far and I feel happy and confident that I’ll be able to shift the rest over the next year or so.

More importantly, I’m learning how to be kinder to myself, how to look after my body and my mind.

The purpose of this post:

a) Hi, hello, I’m here and I’m hoping to keep checking in with this community as I progress

b) To highlight the difference between overeating and binge-eating. I feel like these are two behaviours that – for me, at least – needed to be addressed separately.

Right-o, long post is long but – in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger – I’ll be back

Laura 😉

submitted by /u/laurakeren
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