End Binge Eating Disorder

With the Right Attitude, You Can End Binge Eating

I’m going to let you in on the big secret of ending binge eating and having a healthy relationship with food…  Are you ready?  Grab a pen and paper and prepare to write down the magical formula to being the person that you want to be.  Being the person that is not consumed with food. 

The secret is something that we all have within us.  What is it, you ask?  It’s YOUR attitude.  Attitude.  That’s all.

It’s your attitude on how you feel about yourself.  It’s how you handle your daily activities.  It’s how you react to your life.  It’s being an active participant in your life.

When I struggled with bingeing, my attitude was simply to turn to food because I didn’t care.  I didn’t want to actually try to deal with my life (even though it wasn’t bad).  I didn’t want to face up to something not being right with me and my relationship with food.  I simply wanted to live an existence with food as my best friend… and I was successful in living that kind of life for about 8 years.

Something shifted for me one day though.  I realized “Hey, I don’t have to live this way.  I don’t have to feel absolutely consumed with food 24/7.  I bet there is a way out."  But what was this way out that was going to help me gain control?  It was ME. 

It was me deciding that I wanted to change.  Me deciding to gain control and deal with circumstances and emotions when they happened instead of drowning myself with Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Arby’s, and whatever else I could find (in one binge, mind you).  Me making the decision to tell someone about my deep, dark secret so that I could move one step forward to making progress.  Me realizing that I didn’t want to be overweight in my twenties.  Me realizing all of the health problems that could arise due to bingeing and gaining weight.  Me realizing that I wanted to fit into many of the clothes that I had in my closet, even though most of my pants couldn’t even fit up one of my legs, let alone both legs and up to my waist.  Me realizing how nice it would be to keep a doctor appointment instead of cancelling because I knew they would weigh me and I didn’t want to have to deal with the scale and numbers, let alone any comments about my weight from the doctor.  Me realizing that I wanted to hang out with my friends and family without having to worry about them commenting on my weight.  Me realizing that I only wanted one life – not a secret life that no one else knew about. 

Do you want to change?  If you do, stop living in the reality you’ve known for so long and being OK with your situation.  Open your eyes and face up to the things that bingeing has limited you to doing.  What would you like to be able to do? 

With me, it was just so easy for my weight to be out of my mind.  I’m a very good pretender (liar) to myself.  If I didn’t know how much I weighed, then I didn’t have to face up to how it would feel to know the numbers.  Of course I knew that I gained weight – all of my clothes were tighter.  Being oblivious to the numbers also provided some consolation to me, as silly as that sounds.  I didn’t have to know if I was close to 200 pounds or not.  Instead, I had a number in my head (the last time I weighed myself) and I convinced myself I wasn’t too far from that. 

Now, as you know, I weigh myself daily.  While numbers are just numbers, it truly helps me to stay on track and makes me feel good. 

After I made a decision to start taking control of my life, I went to the gym one day and met with a trainer who weighed me and took my body fat.  Maybe I wasn’t quite prepared for all of that.  She told me how much I weighed and how much body fat I had and it took all I had not break down in tears.  I went right home after that and cried and cried.  How did I let myself gain so much weight?  How was almost half of my body fat?  It was because I chose not to have a say in my life.  Sadly, I had only sat back and did what was comfortable for me (eating) without searching for another way out.

At this point, I decided that it would be in my very best interest to start making some big changes in my life.  I knew that it would be hard, but I also knew that it was going to be the best thing in the world for me!  Here’s where my attitude played a very vital role…

Of course when you are used to bingeing for so many months or years, it becomes a habit.  Almost without knowing what you are doing, you find yourself reaching for food.  I found that it was incredibly hard to try to change these patterns.  Many times I felt like two different people: one telling me to binge because it would make me feel better and another one telling me not to binge.  There were times when I would drive to Taco Bell, circle the parking lot without getting anything, leave, and find myself going to another place only to do the same thing.  I wasn’t hungry, but it was what I was used to doing when I was in the car and had a rough day.  It had been my way out for so many years.  Finally I learned to just drive home without stopping anywhere.  I would say 9 times out of 10 that I would be in a horrible mood when I got home.  I was forced to handle my rough day without food and it was hard. 

Striving to have a healthy relationship with food all boils down to a person’s attitude.  It is completely unnatural to expect that our problem with food will be fixed overnight.  In the times when you fall, but pick yourself right back up, get back on track, eat healthy, exercise, and do whatever makes you feel good about yourself – those are the most important times.

Really, that is all my success is.  I was determined to not let food control me and my thoughts anymore.  I was determined to become a healthier person.  So, naturally, I had to start taking action.  After all, aren’t we all responsible for our own lives and well-being?  I’m not going to lie, there were times when it was really hard.  Times when I wanted to drown myself in food.  But, I was making progress even if I binged only 10% in the beginning because that still meant that there was 90% of me that was still working towards my goal.  If I did give in, I learned to pick myself up and move on.  No dwelling on anything that wasn’t going to get me closer to my goal.

In time, I got better and better.  All of the small times when I noticed myself moving forward began adding up until I was finally healed.  Totally recovered.  Every single person is capable of having a success story like me, and I truly wish that for all of you.

Notice to publishers: you have rights to republish this article on your website as long as you keep all links in tact and clickable.  Thank you.

Kristin Gerstley is the owner of http://www.endbingeeating.com which is a site that helps people overcome Binge Eating Disorder.  She also publishes a free newsletter offering encouragement, tips on how to stop binge eating, and regain control of your life.

Learn to Accept and Love Yourself

How many people can actually say that they love and accept themselves just as they are?

Learning to love yourself is quite possibly one of the hardest things to accomplish in your life. And that is when there is nothing wrong with you. Imagine having an eating disorder. It is even harder for people to love and accept their own bodies when they have an eating disorder.

One can find hatred for our bodies everywhere. On the street, you can hear a total stranger complaining about the size of her thighs to a friend. In the grocery store, you see the man looking at the nutrition facts with a puzzled look on his face. In magazines, almost everyone is airbrushed. So, it’s no wonder why we don’t love ourselves like we should. We are constantly surrounded by negativity that tells us that we are never good enough. We should not be happy until we achieve that certain number on the scale, right? Wrong.

The most essential thing for people to incorporate into their life is personal development or self-improvement. Personal development can help people shed the layers that they hide behind. Personal development is just wanting to better yourself. Self-improvement can help a person unravel who they are and morph into who they want to become, which is someone that loves themselves. Anything is achievable when you learn to work on yourself. Nothing seems too far away.

Personal development is what will help teach you how to accept and love yourself, along with any flaws that you may have. It is also the stepping stone for you to start making important, positive changes in your life that will ultimately change your eating habits.

There are many things that can be done with personal development to help Binge Eating Disorder. The first thing that one can do is to stop surrounding themselves with any negative talk. Negative talk is any thoughts or conversation that you enter that is negative. These thoughts and conversations will not help you to become more in love with yourself. They will make you see all of the bad that is in you. Your mind will be clouded. Learn to appreciate the positive and beautiful things in your life.

Another thing that one can do is to start reading personal development books and listen to audio tapes. Instead of watching television at night, read a good book that will teach you how to appreciate yourself. While driving to work, pop in a personal development CD that will expand your mind and get you to start thinking about what changes in your life you want to make.

When you start to accept your body and love it in the present, even though it may not be exactly what you want forever, your mind will start to change and you won’t be so hard on yourself. Imagine how our lives would be if everyone gave themselves a break and just accepted the way they were at any given moment.

Kristin Gerstley is a former binge eater that now has a healthy relationship with food. She is also the owner of http://www.endbingeeating.com which is a site that helps people overcome Binge Eating Disorder. She publishes a free newsletter offering tips on how to stop binge eating and regain control of your life.

• Previous Posts:

• With the Right Attitude, You Can End Binge Eating
• Learn to Accept and Love Yourself
• Ten Things To Do Instead of Binge Eating
• Change is Vital to End Binge Eating Disorder

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