I used to post here a lot, I've become much busier but have also found that my own inability to maintain weight loss discouraged any interest in posting. My binge behaviour is medication induced, but it was so frequent and long enough in duration that it wound up becoming a learned behaviour even after the medication changed and the original side effect leading up to binging went away. I've been able to lose weight here and there, getting to 133lb, but I was also mentally unstable despite medication (I have bipolar disorder and at this time cycled back into a hypomanic episode which made eating low intake easier, while binging maybe once a week. I still averaged about 1.5lb deficit intake). I've since regained and the last few months for some reason have been especially bad and I've even avoided weighing myself. I would conservatively guess I'm minium 165lb but could be in 170s. I look healthy for my weight as I'm also a powerlifter, but I definitely am not the healthiest in regards to body fat and personally would like to achieve a leaner aesthetic to allow me the opportunity to subsequently gain weight to increase muscle mass.
Usually my cycle looks a bit like this: 1. Set calories to 1-1.5lb lost per week, with exercise calories always consumed (used to do tdee method but do neat method now instead). 2. Successfully eat within my goal multiple days, then over eat a bit, back to normal. 3. End up binging once and happens maybe a few more times. 4. After a little while of repeating those steps above, I take a break for a week and then go right back to my deficit, usually a bit higher than it was before. 5. Have success with this and get cocky, lower the goal and cycle starts again.
I've had success with breaks leading to weight loss but I always start those behaviours again.
This time I've decided that I'm going to stop being so impatient, and I'm looking to do a "reverse" reverse diet. For those unfamiliar, reverse diet means slowly increasing caloric intake until you eventually reach your maintenance needs. Since I normally have been jumping right back to my deficit, I thought why not take it slower?
I've set my goal a few hundred below estimated (neat) maintenance, eating back exercise calories of course. I figure that I don't need to go right to maintenance but I will if I decide that would help. After a few weeks, I'll decrease by 100-150 calories, and repeat the process until I'm about 1lb/week deficit goal. This should be maybe two-three months from now roughly.
My hope is that the smaller deficit and slower reduction will help me become accustomed to eating less food and better able to control compulsive behaviours. So far the lady few days have worked out well so fingers crossed. I am not doing this because I struggle with hunger (my deficit intake is still quite high due to my higher tdee by virtue of muscle mass and regular powerlifting) but again, because of the behavioural pattern that developed. Perhaps this is painfully obvious to everyone as a solution, but I know that the more common proposed solutions don't really fit with my causes of the behaviour and I've been so desperately wanting to lose the weight that I've just stopped being patient with myself and ironically by being impatient in making it take longer to improve.
Even if you've never tried this approach to reducing eating behaviors I would love to hear success from others as knowledge that it can be done.
tl;dr psych meds made me develop binge eating which had become an ingrained behaviour. After trying many times unsuccessfully to kick the behavior, I'm applying the breaks and slowing down my weight loss attempt by "reverse" reverse dieting and slowly reducing calories every few weeks until u reach a healthy deficit goal, to hopefully extinguish the learned behaviour. Trying to force average speed weight loss and my overall impatience has just made this process take longer to achieve so I need to take baby steps all the way until proper recovery
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