I used to be a binge eater!

Yesterday I was chatting to Professor Raj Persaud for a project we are working on at the moment. Raj writes for my magazine and is an eminent psychologist and psychiatrist who I first met on ITV’s This Morning with Richard and Judy. I am fascinated by the whole subject of psychology, particularly relating to the subject of weight loss.

Among many other topics that we were discussing, ‘binge eating’ was an obvious subject to be covered, and one that I was particularly interested in as I used to be a serious sufferer of the condition.

I first became overweight in my teens, having been a skinny child due to being a chronic asthmatic on the one hand but always pretty active too. As I left school just before my 15th birthday to go to secretarial college, I became fairly sedentary and my weight started to creep on. When I took at job at an American company where they gave you a half pint cup of all milk coffee and a Penguin bar each morning, it didn’t take long for the pounds to pile on. I slimmed down to eight stone for my wedding at 21 and then took a Cordon Bleu cookery course which taught me how to cook gorgeous food which I couldn’t stop eating. Then my weight problem really started. I started binge eating and the more I worried about my weight, and the lower my self-esteem became, the more I binged. It was as though my mind was fixated on becoming slim but my mouth was determined to eat as much ice cream; toast spread with lashings of butter and heaps of marmalade; bowl after bowl of cereal; any left-overs – even off other people’s plates and chocolate.

I would eat until I felt sick and then promise that the next day I would skip breakfast to compensate. Then, as I continued to binge, I would vow to skip lunch and then, later, dinner and have a fasting day! I felt so utterly miserable and totally stressed by what I was doing. I would get on the scales the next day and my heart would sink. I’d have gained lbs. As I skipped breakfast and lunch I still felt miserable, and by five o’clock I was starving and by six, I was in binge mode again. It was a relentless cycle of self-destruction and one that I battled with for years. By age 23 I was 10st 4lbs and at 5’ 2” tall I looked very overweight.

I managed to reduce my weight to an acceptable eight-and-a-half stone through enormous effort and at age 25 I had decided to help others who struggled with their weight and start my own slimming group with six of my neighbours. This was the start of a business that would change my life. But I still binged, right up until I had to go on a low fat diet for my gallstones in 1986. Going on a low fat diet transformed my eating habits and I haven’t binged for over 20 years!

I learned that by eating three, regular, meals a day I could eat a sufficient quantity to satisfy my appetite but, because the food was low in fat and therefore lower in calories, I could keep my weight at a lower level. I even dropped six pounds in the first three weeks and have pretty well maintained my weight at around eight stone ever since.

But there was something else I learned to do and that, I believe, is the reason for that success. If I did have a binge, I made myself eat my normal scheduled meal anyway – even though I was no longer hungry. By not starving myself to compensate, I stopped the binge-starve cycle and I have never looked back. And that was exactly the advice given by Professor Raj Persaud yesterday. So, if you are a binge eater, you are not going mad, you’re just trying too hard to compensate. So, eat more meals and, hopefully, you’ll stop your binging.

For more help with weight loss, have a look at my website at our Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs and Rosemary Conley Online services. Have a good day and eat your meals!