I was depressed a lot in college and I turned to food to make me feel better. If it was a Saturday night and I was alone in my apartment and I was starting to worry about the future, then a trip to McDonald's was my saving grace. By the time I was a senior, food became the highlight of each day for me and I basically lived for food. I would eat an entire tub of ice cream for breakfast and two pizzas from Little Caesar's for dinner, and it didn't bother me in the slightest to do so.
By the time January 2019 rolled around, I decided that I had let myself go too much and that at a minimum, I would rock climb once a week. On February 6, 2019, I took a belay class at my university's rock climbing wall and tried bouldering for the first time. By the end of the month, I was rock climbing for 2-3 hours 3-4 times a week, lifting weights 3 times a week, and eating 700-1000 calories below TDEE. I loved everything about the sport and I wanted to improve faster than all of my friends and become one of the stronger guys at the gym.
From February 2019 to June 2019, I went from 25% body fat (168 lbs) to 13% body fat (144 lbs) and got a six-pack and all that. Then I switched to maintenance. The first two weeks of maintenance went okay, but I was super unsatisfied with the amount I was eating, so I started eating more and more, and then I let a binge or two slip in, and then I had one really bad binge where I tried to make myself throw up, and after that I basically alternated between binging and restricting. In the first month of binging, I gained 16 lbs. Since then, I have managed to maintain my weight, because I muster enough 1500-2000 calorie days to counteract the 5000-7000 calorie days.
The signs of developing binge eating disorder were all there. During my weight loss journey I made posts on here about how I missed eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and how I could not imagine living the rest of my life eating 2200-2500 calories a day (my TDEE at the time). Like, if I won't ever be able to eat an entire pizza, an entire family size bag of chips, and an entire container of ice cream in one sitting again, then what's the point? The addiction to food I had developed in college became my downfall in the form of FOMO.
These are all the things I've tried to defeat binge eating in the past eight months:
- Keto, letting myself eat as much as I want, but I have to eat <20g net carbs. My theory with this is that my binges are partially caused by sugar addiction, since my binges basically consist of ice cream + candy + donuts + cookies + pizza. I got to 10ish days a couple of times, but always binged after that.
- 2000 calories per day. I got to 1-2 weeks a few times, but then always binged.
- Two meals per day, no calorie counting. I got to like day 14 and then binged.
Nothing has worked so far.
I'm currently 14 days binge free, as I'm doing a challenge where I eat <=2000 calories for 21 days. I'll get to day 21 because there is a financial incentive at play, but I'm planning on binging on day 22 and it doesn't even bother me that I'm going to do so. While the strong binge urges have left me in these past 14 days, I'm faced with the endless grey that is my life before me, and I don't know how I can live without the spikes of joy and excitement that a bunch of ice cream or donuts can bring. I want to feel something on day 22, and not just continue to go through the motions.
I'm trying to find a therapist right now, but I don't really know what to do beyond that. I want to find a way to enjoy food and maintain my weight at the same time, but I just can't think of any combination of foods that would satisfy me that would also be <= 2600 calories (my current TDEE). I can't moderate my favorite foods like pizza and ice cream. 8 slices of pizza > 0 slices of pizza > 2-3 slices of pizza.
These are the only food combinations that I think would satisfy me and allow me to maintain my weight:
8 pints of halo top = ~2600 calories
two 1.5 quart containers of Edy's slow churned ice cream = ~2700 calories
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