u/hungryfrvr

Not sure if this will help anyone but figured I’d put it out there in case it does.

I’ve binged for years on sugary stuff. Mostly candy, ice cream, anything from a bakery, anything in a wrapper. After 4 years of actively trying to stop, therapy, calorie counting, every diet you can think of, every book on bed I could find, I finally just completely cut sugar. First 5 days were honestly miserable. Headaches, mood swings, weird dreams about cake. Another week or two of random cravings hitting out of nowhere. But months later I’m basically urge free and binge free, which I genuinely never thought I’d be able to say.

What helped me actually push through those first couple weeks was tracking every single urge instead of trying to ignore them. I’d been using this app called urgr to log cravings as they hit and it kept me weirdly accountable through the worst of it. The streak thing got me. I didn’t want to break it.

I still eat fruit, carbs, lots of protein and veg, fats. Haven’t cut anything else. At this point I genuinely have zero desire for anything sweet which still feels insane to type. Of course we’re all different and I’m not saying this is the answer for everyone, but my honest sense is a lot of us know deep down that sugar is the main thing keeping the binge cycle going. Wanted to put this out there in case it helps even one person. Shocked myself with how well it worked once I actually committed.

i’ve been noticing this pattern and i can’t tell if it’s just me or if everyone deals with this.

the days i actually eat well, hit my protein, get my workout in, drink water, all the things you’re “supposed” to do… those are the nights i’m most likely to spiral. like clockwork.

it’s almost like the more disciplined i am during the day, the more my brain decides i’ve earned chaos at night.

but the days i wake up late, eat random stuff, don’t really track anything, kind of just exist? those nights i barely think about food. no urge to binge. nothing.

it makes zero logical sense. you’d think the disciplined days would make me feel proud and reinforce more good behavior. instead they make me feel like a coiled spring waiting to snap.

i talked to a friend about this and she said the same thing happens to her. the harder she “tries” the worse the binging gets. only when she stops gripping so tight does it loosen up.

i started using this app called urgr a while back to track my urges and one of the first patterns it showed me was that my worst urge nights were almost always the days i’d been the most restrictive. seeing it in data instead of just feeling it made me realize how much my “good behavior” was actually setting me up to fail.

i don’t really have a solution i’m just curious if other people experience this. is this a binge eating thing? a restriction thing? both? am i just broken in a unique way or is this universal?

curious to hear if anyone else lives this exact loop.

this is gonna be long and i’m sorry for that but i’ve been wanting to write it for weeks.

3 months ago i hit a moment that finally broke me. it wasn’t even that dramatic looking from the outside. i’d just come home from a friend’s birthday dinner where i ate “normal” in front of everyone, smiled through the whole thing, and the second i got in my car i drove to 2 different drive thrus before i even got home. ate it all in the parking lot. went inside, ate whatever was in my pantry.

threw up from how full i was. then lay on my bathroom floor at 1am crying because i finally realized i’d been doing some version of this almost every single night for years.

i was 27. i’d been binging since i was 19. i’d spent my entire adult life either binging, recovering from a binge, or white knuckling it to avoid the next one.

i had no real relationship with food, no real relationship with myself, and i was slowly watching the person i could’ve been disappear.

that night i sat on the floor and did the math. if i kept going the way i’d been going, i’d be 35 still doing this. maybe 40. maybe forever. something about actually seeing that number terrified me more than any diet or doctor’s warning ever had.

what i tried before that night

every calorie app. noom, mfp, lose it. weight watchers twice. therapy for 3 years on and off. keto, carnivore, whole30, intuitive eating. i read brain over binge. i read geneen roth. i told my best friend to hold me accountable and lied to her for 6 months straight. i signed up for personal training and binged harder on my “rest days.” i froze my debit card in a block of ice one night, waited for it to melt, and ordered food anyway.

none of it worked because i was trying to solve a coping problem with diet tools. it was never about the food.

what actually changed

after that bathroom floor night i decided to stop treating it like a weight problem and start treating it like an addiction. that one reframe changed everything. i stopped trying to “eat better” and started trying to understand why i kept running to food every single time i felt anything uncomfortable.

i was scrolling the app store a few nights later looking for something different and i found this app called urgr. it’s built around food addiction recovery instead of dieting. you log every urge when it hits and build a streak of not giving in. i was skeptical at first because nothing else had ever worked, but something about tracking the urges instead of the food flipped a switch in my brain.

i could watch the cravings come and go without acting on them. each one i rode out felt like proof i wasn’t the person i’d been telling myself i was.

the first 2 weeks were the hardest. i hit the urge button probably 8 times a day. by week 3 it dropped to maybe 3 times a day. by week 6 urges started feeling less like emergencies and more like weather. they showed up, they passed, i kept going.

what it’s like now

i’m 84 days in and the thing nobody prepared me for is how quiet my head is. food used to be a radio station playing in the background of every single thought and now it’s just gone. i can have ice cream in my freezer for a month. i go to dinner parties and eat one plate. i wake up without dreading the mirror. i feel like i got my brain back.

i’m not cured. i had a close call 2 weeks ago where an urge almost won. but i rode it out and that’s the only difference between the old me and the new one.

if you’re reading this in the middle of it i’ve been where you are. bathroom floor, drive thru parking lots, all of it. the answer isn’t another diet or another calorie app. it’s figuring out what you’re actually running from. once i started doing that the food lost its grip faster than i ever thought was possible.

84 days is nothing in the grand scheme. but it’s 84 days more than i thought i’d ever have. rooting for every single one of you.

Not sure if I’m allowed to feel hopeful yet so I’m writing this instead.

I’ve been binging for 4 years. Like full blown, lie to everyone, eat until I’m sick, hide the wrappers binging. Every January I’d promise myself this was the year and every December I’d look back and realize I wasted another one. 4 birthdays. 4 summers I spent hiding in baggy clothes. 4 years of “tomorrow I’ll stop.” I’m tired of writing that sentence.

The worst part isn’t even the binging. It’s the all or nothing spiral that follows. I’d go 8 days clean, feel invincible, then overeat one night and think “well I already ruined it” and by the weekend I’d have gained back everything I worked for. Over and over and over. Same loop, same shame, same promise to restart Monday.

I see the success posts on here and I swear I get happy for people but some nights I scroll through them crying because I’m scared that’s never gonna be me. Like I’m built different. Like I’m the one person this doesn’t work for.

Something feels kind of different the last couple weeks though and I don’t wanna jinx it. I stopped trying to be perfect. I stopped treating a slip like the whole day is ruined. I’ve been using a tool that helps me ride out urges instead of just acting on them and it’s been the first thing that’s ever actually broken the spiral for me. Not cured. Not fixed. Just… less stuck.

I don’t know if this lasts. I’ve been here before and watched it fall apart. But for the first time in 4 years I’m not dreading tomorrow. That’s something. That has to be something.

If you’re in the loop right now I see you. If you’ve restarted a hundred times like me, I see you too. Writing this for both of us.