“How do I stop myself from binge eating?”

October 20 2018 by , medical content by in Addiction, Q&A, Sugar/fructose

Can you have bread as a sugar addict? How can you get past binge eating?

These and other questions are answered this week by our food-addiction expert, Bitten Jonsson, RN:

The red dog and bread

Wow! I am that person. I thought it was just me, all these years! I have those voices, I get irritated, I used to hide food, suicidal thoughts — all if it. I am now in my 40’s and managing a healthy weight just through working it out on my own. Listening to my body and learning trigger situations.

I still have the red dog about bread which I’d love to ask about. But before that, I must tell you — I visited an Applied Movement Neurologist for help with insomnia, which worked, but a very pleasant by-product if that work, which I’m sure was accidental, was that my sugar cravings disappeared, lfaceiterally the first session. I was stunned and very, extremely happy. What a lovely little gift I thought. Perhaps it might be worth looking into it for some of your other clients? I see Gareth Riddy in my question – my red dog lights up at bread, nothing else, I’ve gotten over sugar, ice cream, cake, pasta – all if it, just bread. Do you have any tips to help me deal with this, please?

Nikki

Dear Nikki,

You might not want to hear this, but bread is sugar too. Any starch will turn to sugar when we put it in our mouth and chew it. With the enzymes in our mouth, starch (even starchy food like potatoes, chips, rice, cereal, starchy veggies and such) breaks down to sugar so your addiction is still on/active, you have just replaced sugar with bread. I usually write sugar/flour to point this out.

My experience is that flour addicts have a harder time to quit flour (bread, pasta, cereals) because it does not look like sugary stuff. I have never meet anyone that was “cured” and stayed “cured” but I do meet many people that for a while are able to quit some of our trigger foods but relapse hangs over the head. I advise you to quit flour and flour/bread substitute and learn more about your addicted brain. Are you a member of our closed support group on Facebook? If not, please join us and learn more ways to stay away from “sugar”.

Wish you a happy recovery,
Bitten

Sugar/bingeing

Hi,

I keep trying the free two-week challenge and love the food, but I almost complete it when I get the overwhelming urge for sweet and then I find myself in binge mode and full of regret. I’m desperate to lose the 28 lbs (13 kg) I’ve put on in a year as I hate how I look and I’ve noticed one of my daughters having my food demons. How do I get past this? I’ve tried the traditional slimming World and that but it doesn’t lose the sugar binge.

Many thanks for your time,
Katrina

Dear Katrina,

What I hear is that you probably are a sugar/flour addict. And this is the name of the game for us until we surrender and do what needs to be done. First I recommend that you read Dr. Vera Tarman’s book “Food Junkies” where she explains the mechanisms in our brain that is the problem. There is so much to learn about our addiction and unless we take the lessons we will keep repeating the same behavior again and again.

Secondly, I advise you to read up on our website http://www.foodaddictioninstitute.org. and look for “self help groups” in your area: people there have surrendered and are more than willing to share how they manage this on a daily basis. I also recommend you to join our closed group on Facebook in order to communicate with others and share tools for recovery. There is no “magic bullet” to deal with this and in taking care of yourself you will help your daughter and I wish both of you great recovery

// Bitten

Tips to overcome behavioral roadblocks

Keto works. I have experienced that first hand. I’m down about 30 lbs (14 kg) since May 2018. I believe I would have lost more if I would:

Walk more, for some reason, I keep bailing on the daily routine after short periods of compliance and small success. I think what is happening is that I want to be able to jog but still cant. It’s painful for me to see others jogging on the trail. Except now due to an incident that freaked me out, I must go when the trail is more populated. So I think what happens is I get discouraged and I stop going.

I keep stopping my prescription. I take something to control cravings, which I clearly need if all these little carb sugar binges are any indication. For some reason cheating always leads to these binges which eventually leads to a stall. A stall to me is falling off keto for greater than 72 hours.

Lastly, keto only works if you stay on plan. Unfortunately, I suck at meal prep. And I work a crazy schedule. So once the work week starts there is no chance that I will be able to rectify my lack of meal prep. Which makes me susceptible to cheating. So I guess what I need is a backup plan, redundancy, what is the plan for when I have no plan?

I think if I can overcome these three things I should be able to drop these last 20-30 lbs (9-14 kg) rather quickly.

Marzella,

As addicts, we say “self-will run riot” and it means that we are not accepting reality. We want to keep a backdoor to our “drug” sugar/flour and do it our way. All of what you call “behavioral roadblocks” spells “addictive thinking” in my world. One of the hardest obstacles for us addicts is to surrender to the fact we have an addiction and if we don’t, we will keep doing the same “self-destructive” behavior over and over and getting sicker and sicker.

I suggest you read my answer to Katrina and do what I suggest to her. If that doesn’t help I suggest that you contact my colleague david@triggerfreenutrition.com and ask for help.

Wish you great recovery,
Bitten

Low-carb basics

MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Low-carb tips with team Diet Doctor – Traveling
08:05
How do you stay low carb when traveling? Watch this episode to find out!
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
A global food revolution
34:30
The mistakes behind the obesity epidemic and how we can fix them together, empowering people everywhere to revolutionize their health.
MEMBERS ONLY
7 tips to make low carb simple
09:41
The star of the BBC series Doctor in the House, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, gives you seven tips that will make low carb easy.
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Women's questions introduction
01:36
In this video series, you can find expert views on some of your top questions about low-carb and women's health.
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Q&A with Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt
23:06
Has Sweden adopted low-carb dietary guidelines? Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt answers questions about the work we do at Diet Doctor and low-carb as a treatment for different conditions.

Q&A

MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Women's questions introduction
01:36
In this video series, you can find expert views on some of your top questions about low-carb and women's health.
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Is low carb bad for gut bacteria?
02:14
Can a low-carb diet be potentially harmful to your gut microbiome?
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
Is saturated fat bad?
07:29
Low carb is great. But could the saturated fat clog your arteries and kill you? Top low-carb doctors answer this question.
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY
MEMBERS ONLY

Earlier Q&A

All earlier Q&A posts

Name

Provider / Domain

Expiration

Description

ckdc-premium

.dietdoctor.com

1 month

app-banner

.dietdoctor.dev.dietdoctor.com

1 day

This cookie shows whether user closed the App Banner prompt

_gaexp

Google LLC

dietdoctor.com

1 year

Used to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in.

_gaexp

Google LLC

.dietdoctor.com

1 year

Used to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in.

_opt_awcid

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_opt_awmid

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_opt_awgid

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_opt_awkid

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_opt_utmc

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_opt_expid

.dietdoctor.com

25 seconds

gtm_auth

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

gtm_debug

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

gtm_experiment

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

gtm_preview

.dietdoctor.com

3 days

_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress

Hotjar Ltd

.dietdoctor.com

30 minutes

The cookie is set so Hotjar can track the beginning of the user's journey for a total session count. It does not contain any identifiable information.

_ga

Google LLC

.dietdoctor.com

2 years

This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports.

_dc_gtm_UA-3268327-1

.dietdoctor.com

1 minute

This cookie is associated with sites using Google Tag Manager to load other scripts and code into a page. Where it is used it may be regarded as Strictly Necessary as without it, other scripts may not function correctly. The end of the name is a unique number which is also an identifier for an associated Google Analytics account.

_hjFirstSeen

Hotjar Ltd

.dietdoctor.com

30 minutes

The cookie is set so Hotjar can track the beginning of the user's journey for a total session count. It does not contain any identifiable information.

_dc_gtm_UA-22012422-2

.dietdoctor.com

1 minute

AWSELBCORS

Amazon.com Inc.

www.podbean.com

5 minutes

The cookies AWSELB and AWSELBCORS are functionally the same cookies. The latter has an explicit SameSite attribute set because of changes made from Chrome 80 and upwards.

_ga_YMCP8KW9S4

.dietdoctor.com

2 years

_hjIncludedInSessionSample

Hotjar Ltd

www.dietdoctor.com

2 minutes

This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the data sampling defined by your site's daily session limit

__cf_bm

Cloudflare Inc.

.vimeo.com

30 minutes

This cookie is used to distinguish between humans and bots. This is beneficial for the website, in order to make valid reports on the use of their website.

_gid

Google LLC

.dietdoctor.com

1 day

This cookie is set by Google Analytics. It stores and update a unique value for each page visited and is used to count and track pageviews.

CookieScriptConsent

CookieScript

www.dietdoctor.com

1 year

This cookie is used by Cookie-Script.com service to remember visitor cookie consent preferences. It is necessary for Cookie-Script.com cookie banner to work properly.

__cf_bm

Cloudflare Inc.

.podbean.com

30 minutes

This cookie is used to distinguish between humans and bots. This is beneficial for the website, in order to make valid reports on the use of their website.

_hjIncludedInPageviewSample

Hotjar Ltd

www.dietdoctor.com

2 minutes

This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the data sampling defined by your site's pageview limit.

_dc_gtm_UA-22012422-1

.dietdoctor.com

1 minute

_gaexp_rc

.dietdoctor.com

25 seconds

Name

Provider / Domain

Expiration

Description

IDE

Google LLC

.doubleclick.net

1 year

This cookie is set by Doubleclick and carries out information about how the end user uses the website and any advertising that the end user may have seen before visiting the said website.

_uetvid

Microsoft Corporation

.dietdoctor.com

1 year

This is a cookie utilised by Microsoft Bing Ads and is a tracking cookie. It allows us to engage with a user that has previously visited our website.

loc

Oracle Corporation

.addthis.com

1 year 1 month

Stores the visitors geolocation to record location of sharer

test_cookie

Google LLC

.doubleclick.net

15 minutes

This cookie is set by DoubleClick (which is owned by Google) to determine if the website visitor's browser supports cookies.

_gcl_au

Google LLC

.dietdoctor.com

3 months

Used by Google AdSense for experimenting with advertisement efficiency across websites using their services

_uetsid

Microsoft Corporation

.dietdoctor.com

1 day

This cookie is used by Bing to determine what ads should be shown that may be relevant to the end user perusing the site.

uvc

Oracle Corporation

.addthis.com

1 year 1 month

Tracks how often a user interacts with AddThis

YSC

Google LLC

.youtube.com

Session

This cookie is set by YouTube to track views of embedded videos.

MUID

Microsoft Corporation

.bing.com

1 year

This cookie is widely used my Microsoft as a unique user identifier. It can be set by embedded microsoft scripts. Widely believed to sync across many different Microsoft domains, allowing user tracking.

_fbp

Meta Platform Inc.

.dietdoctor.com

3 months

Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers

VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

Google LLC

.youtube.com

6 months

This cookie is set by Youtube to keep track of user preferences for Youtube videos embedded in sites;it can also determine whether the website visitor is using the new or old version of the Youtube interface.

Name

Provider / Domain

Expiration

Description

_ga_7S1SXKKDKN

.dietdoctor.com

2 years

Name

Provider / Domain

Expiration

Description

_hjSession_1945121

.dietdoctor.com

30 minutes

_hjSessionUser_1945121

.dietdoctor.com

1 year

_ga_Y4DLH4EPXM

.dietdoctor.com

2 years

The red dog and bread

Sugar/bingeing

Tips to overcome behavioral roadblocks

Top food addiction videos

Low-carb basics

Q&A

Earlier Q&A