Hello reddit!
I hope you guys are all doing well!
My whole life I'm suffering from a Binge Eating Disorder. Most of the time my way to fight it was completely restrict me from any trigger foods. My trigger foods are sweets. My level of BED is pretty intense. To give you an idea of what I'm going through I throw in some pictures.
This is like almost 20k calories in sweets right there. That is maybe enough for two days.
This is from just one day. And it doesn't even show the fast food I had on top.
Hopefully this is not too disturbing. Despite all these bad days last year and before that I made really good progress overall. Unfortunately towards the end of 2020 I gained close to 50lbs in just under two weeks. To anyone saying it's impossible. Well I'm sure the pics above will help you make this statement more reasonable haha. The weight I have gained is all gone in 2021 and some more 💪. So that's nice I guess.
Anyway, I did achieve that by restricting myself from all kinds of sweets again. Funnily enough I'm studying nutritional science and home economics (B.Sc. Dietetics) and I've learned a lot of helpful things already in just a few months. I mean it is nice to completely cut out any sweets. Your body loves it as the sweets don't do anything for you really. Nontheless this way of dealing with my nutrition is just not sustainable longterm. Originally I had planned to do the no sweets thing during all of 2021. I'm sure that I can do it because I can be very determined but is it really good for me in every aspect!?
Close to valentines day last month I felt a little down for some reason and ended up buying sweets as you can see here.
I didn't even plan on eating them really. I mean the thought of eating all of it at once was on my mind for sure but my willpower was way too strong. Anyway, I know that I have to learn how to deal with those trigger foods in order to beat my disorder. I mean studies show for a good reason that less than 10% of people who lose big amounts of weight will regain. Numbers are actually way worse. But why is that? Many people are saying losing weight isn't the hardest part. It is maintaining a certain weight that is the real challenge. I don't say this to offend anyone who's struggling with weight loss! Losing weight is damn hard already, we all know that!
So but why do people think that maintaining is even harder? I think when you actively decide to lose weight you set rules regarding food and activity to reach a certain weight goal. People are good at understanding that they need to leave out bad foods and create a deficit to lose weight. That's the theory. So let's assume the goal weight was achieved. What comes after that? Most people throw away their weight loss rules as there is no more weight to lose. They stop restricting themselves to certain foods and bad habits are reestablished. Imo this just happens because we don't learn a sustainable way to deal with food.
Coming back to my case. So I had all those sweets sitting next to me literally and I had no idea what to do with it. It's not like I was sitting there straving for some or even all of it. It was just there. After week 7 of 2021 was finished I told my alright, over the course of the next week you will eat both boxes of cereal. I have never until that day eaten just a part of a box of cereal. Even at 12 years of age I would grab the MEGA box of kelloggs and eat all in one go. I told myself you will have 100g of cereal every day and that's gonna be it. This is exactly what I have done! I have not overeaten during that week. Everything went fine. I even lost weight although there were thoughts of me cheating on my diet on my mind. But nope all good!
The day after that I had half a bag of the Haribo sweets. Writing that down still creates disbelief on my mind lol. Yea I had just had half the bag and the rest for the next day. For last week I did some different testing. In the past even when I was doing well having a cheat day and not just a cheat meal would result in me bingeing for a few days. I think a cheat day creates this thought of being a failure and for me it's really hard to recover from it. So most of the time I would think ah damn it doesn't matter anyway and I keep on bingeing for a few more days.
So last week I intentionally set myself up for a cheat day. Not a cheat day of bingeing on foods but just a day where I could have whatever I wanted. Obviously I would make sure to have certain foods that I eat like every day to cover mirconutrients. So I knew on either saturday or sunday I would have like 5-10k calories very likely. Working towards that day I cut down on ~400 calories every day. To be fair my maintenance calories are somewhere between 3-3,5k a day (I'm pretty active guy) so 400 isn't all that much actually. Anyway it created a nice little buffer going into the cheat day.
The cheat day came on sunday and I ended up having almost exactly 7k calories that day. I did weigh myself the next day and I was up like 4lbs or so. For the week I was probably still up a bit so I decided to go with 2k calories on monday and 2,5k calories on tuesday. I stuck to those numbers. My weight is back to normal and actually a little lower than what I weighed on last friday. Even though I had 3,4k calories yesterday.
This cheat day thing was me testing the water basically. See how I would deal with the situation right now. How it would affect me. I mean it could have thrown me off completely and I would destroy all my hard work again. I think though having planned cheat days is really bad especially while dealing with an eating disorder. So I'll not recommend anyone to do what I did. Adding cheat meals though is completely fine. Just try to stay within your calorie limit. Allowing yourself to have bad foods is completely fine. I learned that while having the cereal every day for a week. My stomach was definately not amused by the sudden intake of sugar every day but it fine in the end.
Something else I want to mention is that implenting an anchoring technique can help a ton with your ED! I Couple weeks ago I had a NLP course and learned some really interesting things. I was basically using that tecnique already. I do a home workout like 6/7 days a week. Obviously motivation can be a problem at times especially when working on certain areas (for me it's back. It's annoying to work your back without being able to use gym machines). So back days are really annoying and my motivation is not the best. Nontheless I kind of implemented some sort of anchor to still make me fo for it almost every day.
Everyday after my workout I'll hav a huge bowl of yoghurt with fruits. Any by huge I mean like 1,5-2,5kg (4-5lbs). Looks like this. This was actually 2,6kg as I had a really busy day and didn't have time for breakfast. I used 1kg of low fat quark, 600g of frozen fruits + 400g of water, 5 bananas (400g), 1 apple (200g), ~20g of walnuts. It tastes amazing. I know after every workout I'll have this super amazing bowl! I personally think rewarding yourself with food is good but obviously the whole thing is super healthy and exactly what my body needs. Another example of what I have after a workout. This time less yoghurt/quark but 1kg of veggies. I eat like 1kg of fruits and 500g-1kg of veggies every day if someone is curious.
This actually got a little longer than I like it to be but maybe there's helpful information for anyone. What helped me realising that I do it wrong by restricting myself was a bodybuilder who does youtube content. He is very transparent with what he eats and I was like damn he's having cereal every day and if macros allow it like snickers ice cream in the evening. He really inspired me that you can live in a healthy way even though you allow yourself to have treats here and there. This is exactly what I want. A sustainable, overall healthy way of dealing with food without restrictions regarding certain foods. Having the background of the eating disorder makes this hard of course but not impossible! I'll work hard to get better every day.
As a little conclusion. Our relationship to food should be sustainable to reach longterm success. Treats/bad foods are allowed in certain quantities. Even holidays/birthdays where you might eat more than you usual do can easily be implemented without worries about your progress. I wish everyone here all the best and that all of you reach their goals whatever it is! Nothing is impossible!
NSW-progress-pic: 2010 vs. 2021
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