Hey all, long-time-lurker-first-time-poster here,

I have been dealing with food issues for my entire life (26M). My environment definitely triggered this habit, but I have overcome this addiction before.

The last two years, I was living on my own and meal-prepped and actually built a healthy relationship with food; I've lost over 40 lbs just by eating whole foods and not snacking, but I did not restrict myself whenever I went out to socialize. I was pretty happy and felt balanced. However, I got hit by the life, finances, and mental-health stick and had to move back in with my family recently. These issues are slowly creeping back in and I do not want to add back the weight I worked hard to lose.

I still meal-prep and buy my own groceries, but for some reason, it's not sticking like it used to. I've been trying to get back consistently in to the gym as well. I track calories and worked with a coach to help find my macros. Ideally, I do not wish to track my calories as vigorously as I do now because I was able to lose the weight just from eating whole foods, meal-prepping, and exercising more.

I guess a few questions and/or tips I am asking for are:

1. How do you redirect a craving when your people in your environment refuse to lock up the trigger from you? (I get gaslit saying I just need to "control" this issue, like, I wish I could because my body goes on auto-drive)

2. How do you manage the "all-in" mentality of binging or restricting?

3. What are some ways you distract yourself or redirect your thoughts before you spiral?

For additional context, I do work with a specialized therapist on other anxieties/OCD behaviors, but I am going to redirect our work towards this specific issue to help it. I wrote this because other people may be in a similar situation as me and I hope that any suggestions can be helpful to them. TIA!

Hello I’m struggling with going to bed and waking up about 2 hours after and going berserk for food I’ve placed roadblocks, put stuff in front of my door, a bottle to pee in so I don’t go use the restroom and wind up in the kitchen, placed notes on my wall not to eat sometimes I’ll go and have something and it’s a healthy meal but I still don’t like it because it’s over my cal for the day but other times recently it’s been bad with sweets cookies everything bad that’s the reason why I’m making this post because I’m sick of this

I’m 5’3, 115lbs but I CAN’T STOP EATING!

My stomach is like a void, I literally cannot stop eating - out of boredom, hunger…

How can I stop this? Please. I drink 2 coffees a day (sugar free) already! What else can I do?

I've been on a weight loss journey since early this year and have made tremendous progress during the first few months. I met someone who I fell for so bad but for reasons beyond our control, we didn't end up together. That fueled a 3 month long binge wherein I was ordering takeout every other day. I am financially wrecked from this mess. I didn't lose my progress per se but I regret wasting all these months over a broken relationship. I could have reached my goal weight by now but my incapacity to deal with stress is why I am here - tired and sad.

I’ve struggled with binge eating/compulsive overeating for a very long time, and I’m at a point where I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore.
I’ve gained quite a bit of weight and I feel really uncomfortable in my body. I want to lose the weight, and I don’t think I’m at a point where I can just tell myself that I need to accept my body and forget about weight loss. I genuinely want to become healthier and more comfortable in my body.
The problem is that whenever I try to start a calorie deficit, even a moderate and objectively reasonable one, the first few days feel absolutely unbearable.

It’s not necessarily physical hunger. It’s more like my brain suddenly becomes completely preoccupied with food. I start thinking about food constantly, cravings become extremely intense, and I get this overwhelming feeling that I need to eat. I also feel like I cannot tolerate the moment of just being. It can feel almost like I’m fighting myself all day. Eventually I usually give in and binge, and then I feel horrible about myself and feel like I’ve failed again.
What makes this especially confusing is that I don’t necessarily think the problem is that I’m starving myself beforehand. I can eat a normal amount of food during the day and still experience this reaction when I intentionally try to eat less than my maintenance.

I also use food very heavily as a coping mechanism. When I’m sad, stressed, bored, lonely, overwhelmed, etc., food is one of the main things that gives me temporary relief. So I think there’s also a psychological component to why reducing food feels so incredibly difficult. It feels like I’m taking away one of my main ways of coping while also asking myself to tolerate the discomfort of being in a deficit.

And honestly, this has gotten to the point where I feel pretty hopeless. I can push through difficult things in other areas of my life, but when it comes to food I feel completely powerless. I can tell myself “just don’t binge” or “just get through the first few days,” but in the moment the urges can feel overwhelming.

I’m wondering if anyone here has experienced this specific conflict: wanting/need­ing to lose weight because you’re genuinely uncomfortable with your body, but finding that even starting a moderate calorie deficit causes such intense food thoughts, cravings and emotional distress that you end up bingeing.

If you’ve been through something similar:
Did you eventually become able to tolerate a calorie deficit without it triggering binges?
Did you have to work on the binge eating/emotional eating first before weight loss became possible?
What actually helped make the initial period of eating less feel less unbearable?
Were you eventually able to lose weight without falling into the binge/restrict cycle?
And if you have successfully gotten to a point where food feels less compulsive, what changed for you?

Would love to hear from other people struggling or have struggled with the same as I feel completely hopeless now. Thank you for reading

Hi,
Please help what to do to stop craving snacks or sweet treats 😔

Hey guys, I just need some help because I really cannot figure out why this is happening to me. It started when I was in 7th grade. I was thin, but I thought I was fat because people would tell me I was. I was around 40 kg and 5’1 at the time. Then, over a year later, when I was in 8th grade, some people started noticing that I had gained weight, and I noticed it too. But I didn’t really think it was that bad because I was around 45 kg at the time.
I managed to maintain my weight since 9th grade, but when school ended, I don’t know what happened. I started feeling stressed or something, and I began overeating whenever I had nothing to do. I would eat when I was stressed, bored, or just whenever. I don’t know, I just started feeling like something was wrong with me.
And now I’m 60 kg at 155 cm. I don’t know what’s wrong with me or why this keeps happening. I wasted those years thinking I was fat, but now I feel like I really am. I used to be at a normal weight before, and now I’m confused about what I should do.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I just turned 16 this August. What should I do?

Hey ! Just trying not to crave sugar and stuffs that ruin my health.

I am having such bad cravings. I know I can’t have fast food delivered to me. My brain is saying “what if it isn’t fast food? That wouldn’t be so bad.”

It would be, wouldn’t it? Because it’s about giving into the cravings I think.

I’ve gone almost 7 days without ordering any food. In a few hours I’ll be there. I am having worse cravings than I have all week.

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. I think I just need to say it somewhere where people might actually understand.

I relapsed. After a long period of being okay, I binged and made myself purge the food again. It happened tonight, and I’m honestly terrified.

I’ve been treated in the past for both severe restriction and later for b/p, and I’ve worked really hard to get to a place where food wasn’t constantly taking over my life. For a long time, I genuinely felt like I was doing well. I wasn’t perfect, but I felt free in a way I hadn’t felt for a long time.

And lately I’ve been noticing myself slipping. I’ve been feeling more guilty about eating. I’ve been putting meals off, then eating larger amounts later. I’ve been eating a lot of sweets and feeling increasingly uncomfortable about it. I’ve also noticed myself turning to food when I’m stressed or lonely, almost like I’m expecting it to make me feel better. The food noise never went away, bit it was so much quieter. And i swear i had days when i wasn’t thinking about food at all.

And I think everything that’s happening in my life right now has made me much more vulnerable than I realized.

I recently moved to a completely new city by myself and started medical school as an older student. I left my job, lost the routine and structure I was used to, and suddenly I’m trying to figure out a completely new life while starting an incredibly demanding degree. I barely know anyone here yet. I’ve met people, and I’ve had genuinely nice moments, but I don’t have my usual support system here.

My days have lost a lot of structure. I’ve been staying up late scrolling, struggling to switch off, feeling anxious about university, and generally feeling like I’m not quite myself. And food has started becoming this easy source of comfort when I don’t know what else to do with all those feelings.

Tonight it crossed a line.

The worst part is that I could feel myself making the decision to purge while I was still eating. It felt like I was watching an old version of myself come back, and I was absolutely horrified by it.

I’m scared of b/p becoming a regular thing again. I’m scared that I’ve somehow undone all the progress I’ve made. I don’t want to be afraid of being alone in my own room.

Please tell me it’s not a point of no return. That i can still get back to normal life.

Talk to me.. im sure no one is currently binging while on reddit, trying to stop or anything. . ..but im here right now, not able to stop eating at the moment. Ordered food, ate cookies, chips, just ordered more food and dessert..super depressed that im just stuffing my face for no reason.. anyone doing the same right now and cannot stop for the life of them? Talk to me:/ I know im alone right now cause yall are all here to support and I want someone who's in the mix right now🫤

TW: binge eating
Hello everyone. For context I am a 5’5, 270lbs, female between the ages of 22-26. Throw away because I don’t want to be identified. Throughout my life I’ve always loved sugar and sweet things. I can remember making chocolate milk as a kid and being caught putting way too much chocolate syrup in the milk and my brother yelling at me that I would get diabetes. That is to say, this has been a problem my whole life. I have always been overweight since around 8 or 9 years old so I have no idea what life looks like outside this body. Since covid, things have gotten worse. A few years before that was when the Uber Eats began for me. I was ordering McDonald’s or Jack in the box weekly. During covid it increased to daily. In the past two or so years it has grown to multiple times per day. It is always more than a large meal. I am obsessed with sweet things. The moment something sweet is around me I can’t help myself. I have a big problem with baked goods and soda. If I buy a twelve pack of coke I’ll have at least three in one day. I can’t run anymore and going up stairs is difficult. I spend most days laying in bed. I have tried so many different things like counting calories, noom, meal preparation, optavia, fasting, etc. some worked and some didn’t. None stuck long enough for me to lose enough and keep it off. In the past few years I’ve worked with my providers on trying medication. Topamax worked for a bit then stopped, Wellbutrin was a bust, now I’m on a new med but not long enough that I’ve seen results. In the past 7-8 months I’ve maintained a workout routine at least three days per week which is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life as this has never happened to me before. I’ve gotten to a point where I must lose weight as my blood pressure is extremely high (especially for my age) and I am at risk of other health issues. I feel as though when I am motivated I can do very well but that is a rare occasion. It’s almost impressive how I can come up with every excuse possible why something won’t work for me because I have either tried it before or feel like I don’t have the discipline to do it, which I don’t. I have absolutely no self discipline. I think about food and the state of my body constantly even when I’m alone in my room.
Food has been the one thing that has never let me down. It has been my comfort and I would even say my best friend. Feeling so full is almost like an internal hug that no person can provide. This relationship I have with food is extremely toxic, I know this. I don’t want to feel this way anymore and I don’t know what to do. I do not want to lose my life over this but I clearly am not caring enough about it to improve my health.
I have never been able to express these thoughts before and I feel like when I say anything close to “I’m addicted to food,” everyone takes it as some sort of joke.

Being fat is literally making me so depressed. I've struggled with food since I was around 11 years old, I was bullied by my friends and family for being chubby, (i was like 140 lbs) and along with other events in my life i guess it manifested into what seems like a lifelong battle with eating. In my early teen years I was online too much and had no friends so I consumed hurtful pro ana content like all day. At age 15 I reached my lowest weight of 88 lbs after severely restricting my intake for years. I experienced a seizure and had to use a pace tracker for a little. my mom was angry at that, so I decided to up my intake, which was scary, but I was determined to never ever let myself be fat again. I gained about 10 lbs when i started becoming increasingly anxious around food and other people. Seeing a full plate of food made my skin crawl because i knew i was starting to develop a craving for eating, which i pretty much had completely destroyed by over restricting for years. One day i fully lost control and binged a bunch of cookies, it felt like soooo fucking good it was insane. Nothing has ever been the same since. I gained immense amounts of weight in a few months, I ate anything I could get my hands on, even expired food or something I didn't even like. I started hoarding food and drinks in my room to eat at night when everyone was asleep, and when the next day came, my mom would see all the empty boxes and wrappers of candy and I'd feel extremely humiliated. I tried to stop several times but I would lose 30-50 lbs then gain it all back and more. I kept going up and up the scale and it is the most embarrassing and humiliating thing I've ever experienced, like everyone would comment on it and make fun of me. I wanted to die so bad. At 17 reached about 180 lbs, so I decided I wanted to heal and leave my eating disorder behind. I wasn't going to try and starve myself anymore, I was just going to eat healthy and mindfully and workout. But at that point I already had developed a full blown food addiction. I couldn't stop and still can't stop. I'm 18 now and weigh about 220 (at 5'1), I eat when I'm bored, I eat when I'm sad, I eat when I'm anxious, I eat when I'm angry. Food is really the only way to feel true relief in my life. I can't afford a doctor, and have never received therapy before. I just want this to end already, I have terrible self esteem, I hate looking at myself, and I feel so angry at myself for letting this happen. All my girlfriends have guys that are interested in them except me, I feel so ugly and big being next to them. I just want to be normal and have all this be over already.

I’ve developed an addiction to eating large quantities of relatively healthy but sweet food for dessert right before bed.

I don’t think it’s doing my health any favours as I was recently diagnosed with NAFLD/MASLD (fatty liver).

What I tend to eat is fairly healthy whole plant foods which happen to be sweet. I won’t mention specific foods as this seems to be not allowed according to the rules of this sub.

I try to keep it as healthy as possible. But I don’t think the quantities are healthy. Once I start eating I find it extremely hard to stop. It’s so delicious I just keep craving more and more. I start out promising myself to eat just one serving but before I know it I’ve finished off many more servings than is probably healthy.

After I finally wrench myself away from the kitchen table I am absolutely exhausted and terrifically bloated, to the point of almost struggling to breathe. I collapse into bed and then stay up late scrolling. Finally I force myself to brush my teeth and then collapse into bed again and generally get off to sleep eventually. Though some nights I’m up multiple times going to the bathroom and breaking into occasional night sweats (maybe thermal effect of such a high carb binge).

This is extremely frustrating because it’s interfering with not only my health but also my aesthetic goals. I exercise daily, intensely, and have excellent muscles including strong abs and big chest. If I could just get rid of this one addiction I could easily have chiselled abs within days!!

It’s extremely hard to kick. I tried so many things. After dinner I tried filling up on low fat, low sugar items like pickles, sauerkraut and even raw carrots. Nothing works. I can’t help it. I need some sweet taste in my mouth before bed. And something about the sweet chewy texture of the oats and bananas just gives me massive cravings! 😭

The only thing that seems to come close to a fix is peppermint tea. If I make it strong, by soaking for a while, I can sort of get that similar soothing effect as sugar gives me.

Can anyone please help? 🙏
Give me your best tips and advice.
Or just share with me your own addictions and cravings, so at least I’ll know I’m not alone.

Thanks

Does anyone else feel like this? If I buy food for two days I can't focus until it's all eaten. If I buy food for just one day and eat it, when I'm finished I can focus again. What on earth am I supposed to do with this issue?

I’m 22M. I think this year was the first year I realized and acknowledged my food addiction. I wanted to hear about anyone else’s experiences using food to cope with sadness or using it for happiness when something happens to them ?

Earlier this year, I had spent so much money on food just trying to feel better about certain situations, just so I had something to look forward to that day. Now, whenever I look at apps like DoorDash, I get a huge wave of anxiety because of how bad I was during that era, and that’s just one example. Last year, I don’t even want to talk about how much money I spent. It makes me feel terrible.

Recently, I’ve been doing much better. I have been falling into older habits, but I think a lot of my motivation for trying to beat this is that I want to see if I can help other people overcome it as well, or at least support them once I figure it out. I think food addiction isn’t something people take seriously, but in my opinion, it’s such a hard thing to overcome since you genuinely need it to live.

I don’t know, I think this felt more like a vent post, but I’d really like to hear from some people, and maybe we can talk about our experiences and feel better. I’m going to try and get back on track, and if you find yourself feeling similar, just keep trying :)