Blurry lines...needing encouragement

[lilly]

Hi all,
Would love to hear others' experiences over time with a feeling of blurry lines between "less than ideal eating" as KH calls it, and a true binge.
I have not had a binge in over two months, but the last few days have been experiencing eating that has that slightly 'bingy' feeling. I feel the need to sharpen up my goals and my definition of binging, but also to get some feeling of how to work with the desire to eat when not hungry and be comfortable that it will happen here and there but doesn't have to feel like, or lead to, a binge.
I am working very hard to keep a single-minded goal: freedom from binging, without any critique of my eating habits, and without dieting or restricting in any way.
Anyone have advice or similar experiences?

[tom]

I go through this as well but don't know how to help. Hopefully somebody will chime in!

[Hailey]

I think you need to define your limits yourself. For one person, eating a pint of ice cream all at once may be normal. For me, about a half a pint would. So before I would even start eating I would consciously decide that I was going to have a half of it. If I end up having more, which is totally fine, but still over what I planned, I would be more aware of the "danger" of going into a binge. In other words, I think planning ahead is how I define binges vs non binges to myself.

[lilly]

Hailey,
Thank you so much for that. I will start doing that right away: make a plan in advance for how much I plan to eat - whatever I think is a normal amount.
I have also been trying to just pause for a while when I want to eat/eat more. Just long enough to see how my body feels and to see if I really want to have more food right now.
Tom, thanks for posting. It means a lot to know I'm not alone in this. Hope you're hanging in there too.
As KH says, it really helps to get excited as you make progress and to praise yourself often!
Take care, both of you!

[lychee]

It can be a slippery slope too... I've gone for the past year saying to myself that I wasn't binge eating, I was just overeating a little sometimes, like "normal" people do, therefore it's okay, and I don't need to make some big STOP BINGE EATING effort. In reality, I realize now that it was just the same binge eating habit creeping back in. It has a desire to perpetuate itself and creep back in and then expand on that more and more.