Binge Eating Disorder

Apt analogy.

... well, further -- just writing "serving of cookies" has my mind obsessing about damn cookies.  All kinds of cookies -- sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, short bread cookies, Girl Scout cookies -- cookie dough...

Yeah, I am not a food addict.

I made maple bacon cookies for my husband for Valentine's Day.  I don't know WTF I was thinking doing that.  Sure, eating some of the bacon while making them helped to keep me under control ... but I quite literally had a conversation with the addict inside me the entire baking process.  By the time I finished making them, I had completely turned my inner rage on my husband for his apparent ability to eat just about anything without gaining weight nor obsessing about eating all of something. Indeed, that rat ******* still has two cookies left!!  Impossible to imagine having a single cookie left after 1/2 hour for me... but that's the difference between people with normal relationships with food and BED.

Now I'm thinking about chocolate marshmallow pinwheel cookies.

When they first started selling those clips you put on potato chip bags, my first thought was WTF? Do people not finish bags of potato chips in one sitting? If you want a little, get a small bag. If you want a lot, get a big bag. But finish the damn bag.

I can't abide slackers.

I don't even like those pinwheel cookies.

But that wouldn't stop me from polishing off an entire container of them right now.  

That was one of the things I hated about myself. I'd eat a whole bag of something like Chips Ahoy, even though they are pretty ****ty cookies. Eating a pile of homemade chocolate chip cookies was at least understandable, because they are REALLY good. But eating a container of marginal pseudo cookies? Shameful, but I'd still do it.

Add me to the list of "this will never work for me."  

There is no "serving of cookies" to me.  It's the entire box or nothing.  Eating foods that trigger me are a slippery slope that is better left alone.

According to my eating disorders therapist, the approach for bulimia is not the same, nor will it work for most people with BED.  Staying on plan is the way I can maintain/lose weight.   I will crave cookies until the day I die.  Nothing is going to change that.

I have diagnosed BED, and had surgery about eight months ago.  It is an ongoing struggle.  Surgery has actually helped enormously because I simply can't eat as much as previously.  When I slip up really badly I post here and people are always supportive.  

There are always lapses.  What we work to prevent are multiple relapses.  As for not trying hard enough, we with eating disorders try very hard all the time.  Extra support and counseling are how we succeed.  I work 80 hour weeks now and drive 10-14 hours a week as I finish grad school, so it's very hard for me with eating right now.  My counselor always reminds me that I am still doing 100% better than pre-op, even when I make mistakes.  

There are going to be mistakes - it's how we handle them that matters.  Other patients without BED might not struggle as badly with this.  Even when I have all my food prepped I still will want the old BED foods, because the old BED foods set off the addictive/neuroendocrine response.  Heck, even as a counselor myself I struggle and I know all the science.  

It does sound disordered.  You aren't making excuses.  Genuinely admitting you struggle isn't making an excuse.  An excuse would be "I have BED so I am going to bother controlling my eating because I will mess up anyway."  Many of us with BED feel and think the same way you do.  You are definitely not alone.

To the OP -- 

You aren't rambling and you aren't alone in your feelings.  

It makes me sad, but the OP, Ginnie, has posted a few of these calls for help, every once in a while. But she never interacts, comments, or becomes involved in any way. Until the next, almost identical post a couple of months later.

I don't think things will improve as long as there is this kind of stasis. I wish her the best, though.

Vyvanse has been approved for BED and has worked well.