Things I learnt to control bingeing (March 2024)

Problem

Since Christmas, I have had trouble with bingeing when ever I tried to restrict my intake.  I would be OK for a few days, but then binge.  As a result, I was not losing weight gained over Christmas.

Research

I did a few online searches and spoke to people in similar situations to get advice.  I also read books in the library about how to stop bingeing.  Although the books were aimed at those with bulimia, I still found the content useful. 

Solution

The books on bulimia were clean in stating that a normal eating pattern of 3 meals a day and snacks was the way to go, but obviously this was too much for me.  Bearing in mind that I just want to get back to 50 kg by summer, I used an app called Pigly to calculate the daily calorie intake to achieve my goal.  This worked out to about 850 calories per day.  Using this information and the advice from the bulimia books, I decided to try 2 meals a day, breakfast, and dinner with no snacks.  I then make an accountability chart based on this information and information I had previously read about zigzagging, the process of eating different calories amounts in the week to shake things up a bit, see figure 1. 

Finished diet plan to take me up to Pentecost.

Figure 1, weight loss plan.

Please note that this plan only goes up until Pentecost.  The first day of summer is on the 20th of June.  This is just the first part of the plan; as for the rest, I will reevaluate after Pentecost.  

Result

So far, I have not binged and this plan of two meals a day at <800 cals is working well, but it has been hard to not snack; sometimes I did snake, but only on cabbage or carrot.  I also worked in two days of fun where I allowed for drinking alcohol.  These days are St George's Day and Pentecost.  

What I learned

• I can lose weight on 2mad
• Min cal restriction is working at preventing a binge
• Zigzagging makes dinner time more fun and stops weight loss from stooling. 

Resources 

• Pigly
• daysto

When faced with disaster, fight back!

By M Parker

Last night I found a bag of dates. I ate a lot of them, resulting in me gaining weight this morning. Fortunately, the weight gain was only 300 g; however, this has affected my daily intake I require to reach my ultimate goal weight (ugw) by summer. See figure 1.

New intake calculation from Pigly.

Figure 1, New calculation gives 720 calories a day.

My options

• I stick to the new calories count
• I reduce the calories even more in order to catch up
• I exercise a lot more to burn extra calories
• I do a combination of reducing calories and working out.

The last option sounds like the best.  If I reduce the calories too much, I run the risk of starting a binge cycle.  Doing a lot more exercise is likely to create excessive hunger, which I then have to deal with. With this in mind, a small reduction in calories and a little extra exercise sounds like the best way to go.

Risk Assessments

Risk of overeating.  The problem here is feeling hungry, so I can use:

• Vinegar trick, sipping a small amount of vinegar to take away hunger.
• Ground cinnamon trick, to take away hunger.
• Ground ginger trick, to take away the hunger.
• Distraction by doing housework, which will also burn calories.
  

For now, I think that sticking with 2mad is best, along with the revised plan of limiting calories to 700 a day and extra exercise to burn an extra 100 calories at least. 

 

Conclusion

I screwed up, but I can still rescue the plan. Burn 100 extra calories a day and reduce intake by 100 calories a day in conjunction with the revised risk assessments should get me back on track. Once, I am back on track, I can increase the calories back up to <800 per day and drop the extra exercise.