Slimming World's 'free' food - a licence to binge? Help!!

Hi, I've been directed here by my SW consultant, and this is my first posting.

Having joing SW in January this year and lost 2st 12lb by the middle of May - by which time I'd been elected group man of the year; I hit a period of clinical depression - a feature throughout my life.

Since then, my weight has remained more or less the same, mainly because when I'm depressed I experience a number of food phobias and tend to binge on easily accessible things that don't need much preparation, such as yogurt.

Now, even when I use such foods as SW classifies a 'free' and therefore supposedly unlimited for this purpose, clearly there comes a point when it is unhealthy and, even if not actually contributing to weight gain, certainly not condusive to further weight loss; and of course the other problem is that it all but encourages the bingeing - which isn't a good thing at all!

Does anyone else experience such problems - and if so, how do you deal with them?

I've been to my doctor - he is referring me to a counsellor and to the community dietician - and this forum is SW's response...

Thanks in advance,

Paul.

Hi Paul and welcome to minimins

I've binged most of my life and have been really working on cracking this once and for all. Think I can safely say I've done it now :clap:

I found that my binging was usually followed a pattern. Few or no people around, certain days of the week etc. I realised that each binge was just the end of a chain reaction. Want=eat. In fact, sometimes even the 'want' wasn't question, just 'this' leads to 'that' leads to eating the contents of the fridge.

I had to work out a way of breaking the chain so that I could stop it before the food entered my mouth.

The way I did it was by putting a pause inbetween 'wanting' and having. I knew that I could have....but not just yet. Maybe in 15-30 minutes? Then I just sat with the desire. Not beating myself up for wanting, in fact quite the opposite. I just sat in peace with it.

Then when my time was up, I'd question whether I still wanted it and then either set myself another few minutes, or went and had it. Always remembering to pick an appropriate amount and that I could always come back and get more if needed.

Then I'd sit down with it on a plate and enjoy. You just have to learn how to stop it in your tracks, knowing that you can have it...just not yet, to rewire the brain.

I've written a load on this forum about this You might like to search for 'Addictive Desire'.

This method is used for other things besides binging and it really works. Just got to remember to 'stop...think....apply the technique'.

Very best of luck to you. Let me know how you get on!