In an effort to do this I’ve identified the following trigger foods that I used to enjoy when binging or simply over eating:

• ice cream
• caramel cashew clusters
• apple fritters/donuts
• chocolate (dove or Hershey’s + toffee)
• Tres Leches
• Carrot Cake
• coconut chocolate chip cookies
• pretzels + almonds

The goal with this exercise is to build momentum and control by practicing eating a single serving  of these foods without binging.

This method involves the following steps:

• list your favorite foods from worst to best - we’re going to work our way up to the more difficult choices.
• you must eat the item at the kitchen table, and preferable while someone else is there initially.
• eat a single serving, portioned out (i.e. no “estimates” of what a single serving is while your hand is plunged down the 24oz bag of potato chips)
• eat slowly and mindfully, and think about how the food makes you feel
• binge eaters frequently misidentify thirst for hunger, so drink a glass of water (yes WATER) before and after.
• start with the easiest food, and practice once a day three times a week until you feel that you are in control with this food. Take as much time as you like, and you can practice less frequently than every other day if you want to.

The key with this exercise is to build confidence and capability, and therefore developing a positive track record is highly desirable. This exercise is difficult and may cause you to slip and stumble a few times, but the goal is to start out in a very controlled environment and then branch out.

Variations can include:

• eating in other locations
• eating at different times of the day
• eating when you’re a little more stressed or had a bad day
• eating by yourself

• it can’t be misrepresented as something else
• even a child can understand what it means
• it exists for everyone (to the best of my knowledge)
• the average human can go without food for days (or in my case many many days) without suffering major medical problems. Therefore there is little physical risk in waiting to be hungry enough for your stomach to growl (unless you have a medical condition that makes this untrue).

This method of hunger detection is a great one in my opinion, but if you don’t want to always reach this point then you’ll need to recognize your other hunger signs. These might include:

• irritability
• feeling weak
• feeling tired

Some people recommend eating based on the time of day rather than based off of hunger. This can work well initially for binge eaters, because in some cases this may keep you from getting excessively hungry (which can start a binge).

My problem, however, was that I “felt” like eating all the time, and my binges weren’t triggered by true hunger. I don’t think I even let myself get to the point of true hunger most of the time. Thus eating based on a clock didn’t make much sense for me, but for some people it may work o.k. intially.

One often overlooked benefit, however, is that you will also save money if you begin eating better. Some health foods like fresh fruits can cost more than pre-packaged foods. Let’s be honest though. You are eating a lot more on your binges than you should be, and although these foods are somewhat inexpensive the quantities make up for this fact and then some.

It’s also worth noting that the more processing and packaging that a product requires, typically the more expensive it is. The food companies know that extra cardboard and plastic wrap cost money, and they pass that expense on to you.

Fresh produce, however, comes in its own natural packaging, and it will give you more vitamins and minerals that your body knows what to do with if you haven’t been feeding it properly.

I know some people binge more and some binge less than I used to, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to spend $30 to $100 on binge foods to consume at home, and this of course was in addition to the regular meals I was also eating (plus dining out)!

My wife and I together now spend about $125/week on food. I still find this expensive, but we do buy high quality (but not organic) produce and whole wheat pastas and breads. It’s not hard to spend that much for just one person if you go to a restaurant a few times a week.

What’s the point? Doing what is best for you in one area of your life is likely to benefit other areas of your life as well. Eat healthy = save money. Get a job you like = better relationships when you’re at home. Love and respect your spouse = less distractions and better performance at work.

Most of us binge eaters have a hard time knowing when we’re truly hungry. We “feel” like eating all the time, but we don’t really ever feel full and we don’t usually wait long enough to feel hungry.

Interestingly enough, this is all learned behavior. My wife and I have new twin girls, and I can promise you they know exactly when they’re hungry and when they’re full. The signs are clear.

As we grow up we somehow lost these signals or were trained to misinterpret the signals we do receive. What worked for me though was realizing that “my stomach is growling” is a pretty good indicator that I need to eat.

Some people feel weak when they’re hunger. I feel more tired and irritable when I’m hungry, but unfortunately “tired” and “irritable” are also caused by other things. Maybe I didn’t sleep well (or enough). Maybe my workout was difficult. Maybe my boss yelled at me. It’s important to recognize and monitor how you feel when you are hungry, but it’s also good to develop a clear signal.

Given the uncertainty of my other feelings, my signal is now “my stomach is growling”. You could enhance this further to “growled twice”, but the point is that nothing besides true physical hunger causes your stomach to growl. It’s a true sign that it’s time to eat.

I will warn you that this is probably going to be an uncomfortable experience for you for a while. Most binge eaters I know, including myself, are overly sensitive to hunger. We hate even the thought of being hunger. We eat preemptively, meaning we’ll eat a meal before we leave the house just in case we’re out shopping and get hungry. Heaven forbid we actually get hungry and have to find food on the spur of the moment? Oh the horror!

If you practice experiencing true physical hunger and then meeting your body’s needs you will slowly but surely develop healthy eating strategies that will serve you well. The next step in the process then will be to determine when you are done eating (not full, but satisfied).

It seems like I was either completely “on” or completely “off” a diet at any point in time, and therefore I have always struggled with the equilibrium position.

I think it’s great when you finally reach that breaking point. Once there you need to make a decision. Do you continue binge and overeating, or is this the turning point where you get your life under control once and for all? And this is your life we’re talking about. No matter how “together” we appear and how successful and happy we are with some parts of our life, we all recognize that binge eating represents a huge problem area in our lives. Most times we feel completely out of control and unable to do anything positive when it comes it eating better.

Well, if you’ve reached your breaking point for the first time or the 100th my advice is the same:

• write down how you feel at this exact moment
• write down how you could like to feel if you could truly change your situation
• write down what you’re going to do about it today

The last point is very important, and it doesn’t have to be an enormous first step. Something as simple as “eat a healthy dinner” or “drink a glass of water before each meal” will help your cause and will help you to start down a path of healthier behaviors.

Do yourself a favor. Put in real effort to solve your real problems yourself. It may take you longer, but you’ll develop and grow and benefit to a much larger extent than if a solution is just handed to you easily.

It took me a long time to realize that my binge eating was actually a different problem than simply overeating. Once I was able to identify the problem and realize that I wasn’t alone I could starting working to attack the problem.

The other thing I found disconcerting was that, as a man, very little help and guidance was available to me specifically. Looking back on it I don’t think that the solutions to the problem aren’t necessarily different for men versus women, but from my limited perspective I felt even more “odd” because I was a man with an eating disorder.

I do think the media fill our brains of what the ideal woman should look like much more than what the ideal man should look like. This must contribute to the large number of women with eating disorders. Nonetheless some experts estimate the there are as many men with BED as women, but women are much more likely to see professional help. Therefore a lot of statistics show that more women have BED than men, which may not be the case.

• Periodically does not exercise control over consumption of food.
• Eats an unusually large amount of food at one time — more than a normal person would eat in the same amount of time.
• Eats much more quickly during binge episodes than during normal eating episodes.
• Eats until physically uncomfortable and physically feels like they’re on the verge of throwing up due to the outrageous amount of food just consumed.
• Eats when depressed, sad, or bored.
• Eats large amounts of food even when not really hungry.
• Usually eats alone during binge eating episodes, in order to avoid discovery of the disorder.
• Often eats alone during periods of normal eating, owing to feelings of embarrassment about food.
• Feels disgusted, depressed, or guilty after binge eating.

Do any or all of these symptoms describe you? If not, the ideas and techniques I plan to share will still be of value to you if you’re trying to change your habits, lose weight, improve your health, and/or learn to cope with difficult situations.

As for me all of the above bullets used to be accurate. And it is not fun, trust me.

I find this startling. I need to research it a bit further but my understanding is that it’s taken quite some time for Binge Eating Disorder to be identified and recognized as a condition separate from anorexia and bulimia. Perhaps this is because in many cases the BED criteria are much more general. For example, purging is pretty easy to identify, but “Periodically does not exercise control over consumption of food” is much more vague.

I’ll try to find some better stats on BED versus the other eating disorder shortly and will post an update as soon as I find them.

binge -> depression -> weight gain -> low self esteem -> binge

I searched high and low for solutions. I sought out professionals, read every book I could get my hands on, and tried and failed dozens and dozens of times. I’m not completely done yet, but I have found things that work and I am on the road to recovery. Do you want to walk with me while I want to share what I’ve learned with you and others who are suffering.

I’ll warn you that there is no quick-fix. I’m not peddling some kind of diet pill or any other product. What I do know it’s nearly impossible to win under this kind of problem on your own. But I’m doing it, and I wouldn’t want to do it on my own again!

Everyone needs help at some point, and if you can learn just one or two things from all of the mistakes I made then this blog will be worth the effort.