Hi Rheaslaya,
Congratulations on your two weeks doing Kathryn's method, and the amazing success of two weeks without bingeing. I totally understand the CONSTANT dieting/bingeing cycle, and understand it's insanity. Not restricting your eating sounds like it was a good plan, but the decision for "4 normal sized meals per day" though that may have been a "wise decision," may be the culprit to your present situation. Not cutting out any food groups is terrific, but no where in your post do i hear you talking about hunger / satiety. In my experience (i've been doing BOB 16 mos and I now coach BOB), you must reconnect to the BODY'S innate wisdom and not make blanket "decisions" that can easily be manipulated by the animal mind. When I began BOB, I strictly ate when I was hungry. Yes, this looked like meals and snacks, but i didn't "plan" anything, other than eating when I got hungry. I was lucky I had my husband to coordinate meals with. For some other people, going on a meal plan helps them organize their eating. For me, it stimulated the animal minds control. I'm so glad the 4 meals a day "worked" for two weeks and you felt absolutely amazing. Were you able to connect with hunger / satiety while doing that? I really understand that it felt like you finally discovered the answer to your problem at the time, but it seems to have as a whole, had a reverse effect on you. Sort of like a pendulum. It swang to extreme discipline, and now you are experiencing extreme lack of discipline. All I can say for myself is, I don't expect discipline from myself. My hunger creates the decision for meals, not because it's "time" for a meal. Without that crucial body awareness and connection, you are left awash at sea when the "discipline" lifted. I feel sad for you that the solution to binge eating (BOB) was met with "the biggest binge" of your life. It sounds like my old days in OA, following their suggestion for 3 meals a day, nothing in between. After going to OA, i never binged so badly in my life. I tell people, at OA I became a better binge eater. No one ever talked about hunger / satiation or legalizing food or not acting on urges to binge or about acting on urges being an intense HABIT that must be broken. It was all about "the food plan" as the solution. You "4 meals a day" was not the solution, though it might have felt like it. YOU are the solution and during that time you had a reprieve from binge eating, but you also are missing crucial elements. You are now experiencing the feeling of being a victim to a food plan, the after effects of putting the cart before the horse. By taking your own body's innate wisdom out of the picture you have robbed yourself of empowerment. Are you able to see the direction I'm getting it? In my opinion, you gave too much focus to the outward shape of your eating and put it in front of the real means of control and reasons for eating - feelings of hunger answered by the upper brains decision to have a meal. Maybe your body gets hungry 4x a day, but let "that" lead you. It will never fail you, and you won't be left out to sea because you left yourself wide open for guilt from the choice to eat a pear between meals. Were you hungry for the pear? I generally do not eat anymore unless I am prompted by hunger. Choices to eat because i had an urge-thought to eat have in the past ramped up the animal brains urges, so I avoid it today.
Your statement, "Sometimes, with really bad binges, i feel like i need to reset myself so I eat until I'm renewed" and "Almost feeling like i need to revel in my failure to get it out of my system" sounds like me in the old days. It's the animal brains urges to continue the scenario and you have just agreed to let it win. The only problem is, the animal brain has no POWER, it can only send urges. Thoughts like this are completely self defeating to act on. And not only that, they are ineffective. Binge eating will only ever continue if you act on these messages.
Let me see if I can answer your question, "Where do you draw the line between a binge/overeating?" Well, if I eat from hunger, it is automatically a good thing, i've started off right. Depending on my hunger and timing and my husband's and my plans, my hunger determines if this is going to be a meal or a snack. Now, sometimes i'm in a rush and i eat more of a snack when i am hungry for a meal, but i make up for it later at my next eating episode usually because then i am VERY hungry then. So, right off the bat, i am in line if i feel hunger. Like your pear incident, you were not aware if you were eating from hunger then as you did not mention it. You must be connected and driven by hunger / satiety, in my opinion, to arrest binge eating. Food plans, while often effective in the short term, in my opinion, are only temporary measures that "can" arrest binge eating temporarily, but not permanently.
Okay, so when I'm eating, if i was hungry, then i eat until I feel satisfied. My belly will not feel empty anymore. Sometimes I sigh, sometimes I feel a slight fullness. Becoming aware of your body's feelings during eating is crucial to recovery in my opinion.
So, then, if I am eating from hunger and feeling good about me and it, like I do, i am not frantic or negative or obsessed with food or hearing urge thoughts (though i used to before BOB) prompting me to look for more food.
If I would be in such a state, it would be easy for me to overeat. I have overeaten on occasion, and it should be noted that overeating is a habit like any other, like binge eating. In my opinion, binge eating needs to be tackled first, and then chronic overeating can be tackled.
Binge eating for me was two things: it was completely driven by the animal mind, and it was a behavior that allowed me to be completely disconnected from my body's innate hunger / fullness signals. Bingeing to me was a very large amount of food eaten in a short period of time, in which I was unaware and disconnected form my natural hunger/fullness. I acted on an URGE to eat. It was not a rational activity.
YES, overeating a normal rational meal CAN trigger the desire to binge. I have experienced bucket loads of those urges in my life. BOB helps us to recognize urges to binge and to learn how to 'ignore' the urges to binge. Binge eating is a decision made after an urge-thought.
Does that clarify anything at all?
The problem with grazing is, I don't know if you are hungry to begin with or not. And do YOU know if you were hungry to begin with or not. If you are not aware of hunger, how can you ever know when to stop???
When driving a car, we abide by green lights to drive and red lights to stop. If you live your eating life on YELLOW LIGHT (no stop or go, just proceed with caution) yet there is nothing controlling your eating like hunger / satiety, how DO you ever know when to stop?
What is grazing for you? How do you do it? Are you seated? Are you standing? Are you working?
For me, what works, and I have stopped binge eating for well over a year, is meals and snacks eaten when i am hungry, stopping when I sense i am satiated.
I do not have ANY set strict meal times, in fact, we (my husband and I) are completely unstructured in our eating, yet we work to coordinate. Yesterday, we knew we were going out to eat so we both promised to allow ourselves to be hungry without eating until we met at the restaurant. Man, did that food taste good. We were both so hungry and it was LATE. He met me after my late work.
Is it okay to graze? If you enjoy eating frequent small meals, can you do so from hunger prompting you?
You seem to be at odds with the desire to be fully strict or fully flexible.
This strikes me as very eating disorder-ish black and white thinking, which is very familiar to me. You need to live in the grey, yet have hunger / satiety guide you towards the shape of your eating (in my opinion).
Your last question," Is it possible that sometimes I genuinely want to binge and its not my av?" It is my opinion that no rational person wants to binge. The desire / urge to binge is purely a HABITUAL response to a HABITUAL behavior you have developed. My whole binge life i thought i wanted to binge. I got excited and reveled in the rebellion. Okay, so why did I feel intense remorse afterwards?
?? I don't think anyone wants to binge. But we want to EAT and we want to have permission to ENJOY FOOD and we are screaming for FREEDOM.
In fact, your intense binge eating as a reaction from the "4 meals" says to me "I wanted freedom from structure." The link you are missing is the control of hunger / satiety.
Your statement, "Sometimes I feel like i cant trust myself when I say "ill never binge again" because I've said that oh so many times and here I am again." sounds like the old me, too. Ahh, i don't remember her fondly. The old me felt that failure was a given, that allowing a disorder to victimize me was okay and that I was hopeless.
You will built tremendous boat loads of self trust after you learn to eat when you are hungry / stop when you are satiated, and learn the skill of ignoring urges to binge.
Your statement shows the typical defeatist attitude of the binge eater )*i know it so well!). In essence, it's another habit to think negatively and it will not serve you. It is a well worn path the animal mind has taken. It is not the truth. You are powerful beyond measure. And you CAN overcome this. You need to see thoughts like THIS, too, and ignore them. Your upper brain, which is connected to spirituality, to GOD, to your true empowered personality needs some room to breath and express herself. Stop squashing her.
I really hope this has helped.
God bless you on your journey forward. You made a royal attempt and i congratulate you, but i do believe you have fallen into a hole that alot of us fall into. I hope i have given you some ideas to help pull yourself out. I've coached myself out of this and others. You can do this!
Michelle LaSoprana@aol.com
http://www.FreedomFromBingeEating.yolasite.com
