Hi Estelle,

For me food has been strongly linked to my emotions for as long as I can remember. Long history of EDs but healthy weight now. However, every day I have the potential to "fall off the wagon" and binge or be self-destructive with food. Facing this and accepting this is my first step. The last 8 months have been one long episode of comfort eating. This after having 2 years of sanity around food.

So, for me, I have to admit that it's ongoing journey; never can "be a normal eater" like others. I have had to be honest about what I do with the food and why. Also what foods for me are danger foods, i.e. I can't control quantities once I have them (for me these are sugar, wheat and bread - bread is a big comfort food for me).

I'm on day 8 of sane eating. This for me means I write out a foodplan for the day (not a diet!) which is sane, avoids my triggers and keeps me satisfied but not stuffed. I exercise moderately daily as this helps my mood/anxiety. I am trying to eat mindfully, ie not watching tv or doing anything else except focusing non-judgementally on what I'm eating. When my meal is finished, eating is finished until my next planned meal. I try to keep at least 4-5 hours between meals, so I am eating from true hunger.

Hope some of this helps. It's hard to get sane with the food when you are struggling with your current body image. I try to not focus on my size/weight as this triggers the insanity of the EDs.

Travel well... take care :) Kim.

In the beginning to end my binging eating I had to stop eating certain foods for while. Processed foods trigger me into big binge eating. I have different binges. I have completely out of control binges where I can eat a whole bag of chips or container of ice cream or bag of candy. Holiday candy is so tempting. That big binge is always junk food. This of course is on a daily basis.

Then I have binges where I eat way to much at a meal time, where I can eat seconds and thirds of certain foods. So I have controlled the amount of cooking in meals. I always thought more is better because I have leftovers for next day. Well the leftovers never stay in the refrigerator for the next day.

I also liked to eat all day if you know what I mean. I was eating every 2 hours. It might not be a complete meal but too much snacking. Snacks are usually not healthy so I eliminated my snacking.

I now eat 3 meals a day. I have one snack. This snack is in the evening. It is hard for me to have the 12 hours or more period of no eating between dinner and breakfast. So my snack is a planned one. Most of the time it is fruit or smoothie. I sometimes have a one serving size bag of chips. I do not keep single size bags in the house. I cannot do it. So this is when I have planned this snack on my way home I will go to convenient store and purchase. This snack is not weekly more like once or twice a month.

I agree with Kim. She gave great advice. I too know I could binge any day. I have to be on alert for emotional eating. When someone at work is being very rude and irate I take this internally. My negative thoughts about myself will get rolling. In the past for me to get comfort and get out of the negative thought pattern was to eat my comfort food in a binge. I am training myself not to do this. I am looking for other venues instead of food.

When anxiety comes I need to do other things then eat. I am learning to find these things. IT is hard, but I keep telling myself, that I am worth the change.

Yes we have to stop looking at our self image this will cause more problems with our ED. The scale is a big problem for me, it will cause me to eat whatever it tells me. So I try my best to stay off the scale as much as possible.

I also try to stay a way from diets, now that I have learned the hard way. I have gained a lot of weight doing diets besides what the eating disorder has done to me.

We can do this together. Let post and share with another our successes and our failures.

Our successes will be baby steps. Then we will move on to bigger steps.

In another topic I share how I am doing this slowly and by steps. My plan is taking me out to 3 years to be completely cleaned from process food. I cannot quit it all; all at once. I have tried too many times to keep falling on my face.

take care,
Hope

At the end of the beginning paragraph should have said.

This is NOT on a daily basis.

Thanks for your replies - I can certainly see myself in a lot of these comments. Before I joined this forum a few years back I felt I was alone with the issue that I have with food - its good to see I am not.

I have recently recognised that keeping emotionally stable is quite important for me to stay on track.

Eliminating sugary processed food is also a good one my weakness being ice cream!!!

I have also found not being on a diet helps but when I have tried this recently the anxiety of not being in control of what I am eating takes over - I worry that I am eating too much - so right now I am using MFP to eat 1600 calories per day. I am currently 30-40lbs overweight. I would like to get to a healthy weight and maintain that!!!

I just need to get my bingeing under control as I am just sabotaging myself!

Good Luck Everyone!!