You could never tell by looks alone that I used to struggle with food. I was never a fat kid, and from my teen years onwards, I had a fair bit of muscle with only the slightest layer of fat on top of them at my worst. But there’s more to eating well than just looking good, and through this post, I want to re-visit some of my darkest times, nutritionally speaking.
I had a fair bit of sweets as a kid and as a teen, but never insane amounts in one go – perhaps during Christmas, but not on a regular basis. The worst I did was a half-litre can of Rockstar energy, followed by a pack of Haribo cola bottles or a block of Rittersport Olympia. Far from ideal, but nothing compared to what I went through when I started eating less and cutting carbs.
For reasons I touched on previously, I “supplemented” my new, better baseline diet with horrific binges every week or so. While I do remember bits and bobs of many of these, there was one night where I tracked everything I ate. I was trying to send my future self a message: “You may satisfy your cravings. It may feel intensely pleasurable while the chocolate is in your mouth, but it’s not worth it. Look at this monstrous list, and tell me you’d make a conscious, sober decision to eat this stuff in any other state of mind.”
So what did I have? Besides a pain au chocolat I had earlier in the day, I had the following in the course of a single evening:
Just after 7pm:
- Cadbury Puddles with a hazelnut filling
- Oreo Cadbury (I didn’t note down whether it was a bar or a whole block, but I wouldn’t even be surprised if it was a block)
- Two white choc & cranberry cookies from the local uni store
- One triple choc cookie, also from that store
- One Barr ice cream soda
- Three caramel shortbreads (also known as Millionaire’s shortbread, or caramel slice – quite possibly my favourite sweet)
I’ve mentioned before I had a monstrous appetite. What made it worse was the fact that sweets didn’t fill me up at all, and unlike a lot of people, I never had that feeling of “too sweet”. Which is weird, because I remember feeling like shit after downing a whole box of Kinder Country as a stoned teen, but who knows, maybe I slowly worked my way up to these ungodly amounts.
Either way, I enjoyed every second of each of the above, though I did also reach a point of diminishing returns, where the last few sweets, while not too sweet, just didn’t give me the same level of pleasure the first ones did. Nonetheless, I soldiered on, because another thing about me (even now) is that once I start, I can’t stop. I can ignore sweets all I want, but having one makes me want more. And at the time I also ate them all in one go to “get it over with” and return to my otherwise healthy baseline again ASAP.
Before returning to baseline, however, I needed more. As so often, as soon as I finished the last bite, I felt depressed. First, that there was no more yummy goodness, and perhaps I didn’t savour it as much as I could have. But more intensely, because with nothing else to eat, I could now feel the full effects of the sugar rush, shaky and intestines working overtime. As was customary for me at the time, I did some jumping jacks and jumped up and down and shook my body, in the hope of shaking off even just a few of the gajillion calories I consumed.
But it was still early! I went for a walk, during which I ended up drifting toward the uni store again, and by the time I was there, I was craving more. I returned home, with a pile possibly worse than the first.
Around 11pm:
- Three Kinder chocolate bars
- One Snickers bar
- One Twix bar
- Another caramel shortbread
- Two or three hazelnut Cadbury bars
- Two more triple choc cookies
- Another white choc cranberry cookie
- One choc chip cookie
In the same notes file, I added:
“Note to self from 14 Feb, 3:36 am: Intestines doing some fucked up shit. Not fun. Been going on a while. Enough to make me write this fucking thing. STOP.”
I tried anything to tell my craving-driven future selves that it wasn’t worth it, but they didn’t listen. Perhaps the fact that, on balance, I didn’t gain weight made those future selves overconfident. I don’t know whether this was the single worst binge I had, but my worst were at similarly bonkers levels. I could tell you roughly what I had, but not recall everything I had in a single night like this, which I feel has more impact.
A few months later, I did find a way to stop binging for close to a year, and I’ll dedicate a whole post to that. Unfortunately, I returned to some binges for a while, but as I write this, I haven’t had a binge since October 2020 (that’s around 6 months, if we exclude Easter and Christmas – no self-caused binges let’s call it). I also don’t eat sweets during the day at all, so while it’s too early to say I have it all figured out, it certainly feels sustainable. I eat a lot, but it’s good stuff, so I’m satisfied and happy throughout the day.
In other words, if you’re prone to cravings and binges, you’re not doomed. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but you need to try out some new behaviours to get there. And with some upcoming posts, I’ll walk you through exactly what I did.
What were some of your worst binges? Have you found a way to sustainably stop them?