After a rich meal or a binge my resolve could be quite strong, but grand intentions quickly faded when I'd wake the following morning or feel the next hunger pang.

What is it that you want to start?

Diets, by common definition, are temporary ways of eating designed to cause weight loss. They have a beginning and an end. The problem with that for people like me who have Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is that when the diet is finished we still have our binge eating disorder. Diets cause cravings. Diets always caused me to feel deprived, which in turn would trigger my next binge. Diets led me to years of Yo-Yo Dieting, a dangerous cycle that only served to take a toll on my health and emotional well-being. Diets always failed me in the long run and only led to more diets. I finally asked myself, if "diets" were part of the problem, why start one?

The first and most important step in preventing my long time pattern of yo-yo dieting was to eliminate the artificial boundary between dieting and normal healthy eating— weight loss and weight maintenance. From the start, I had to consider my new healthy way of eating a lifestyle change, not a diet. Diets don't cure Binge Eating Disorder, they exacerbate it.

It took me a very long time to get to my top weight. Binge eating and severe obesity had become my lifestyle—my life. My relationship to food was sick and compulsive. I almost always ate for reasons other than to satisfy my body's need for nutrients and energy. I used food to handle or mask difficult and painful feelings. I substituting food for honest relationships and most of the other passions life had to offer. I ate when I was bored. I used food to cope with stress and anger. When I was focused on the food or how badly I felt after a binge, I didn't have to feel, think, or worry about anything else.

Finally I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I reached out for help. I started doing my own research. While contemplating and writing about my weight problem, I began to realize that being so fat wasn't a diet problem, it was a living problem. The way I ate and my obesity was a complex set of issues, behaviors, and reactions. In my research, I discovered that I had two distinct medical problems. I had a problem with binging (Binge Eating Disorder) and I was suffering from morbid obesity. I learned that weight loss does not cure BED, but if I could stop binge eating, I could then, begin to shed my extra weight, naturally.

What I needed to start changing was my lifestyle. That involved learning new coping behaviors, changing my relationship to food, increasing physical activity, learning all I could about healthy nutrition, and getting a support system in place. Instead of starting yet another diet, it was more constructive to start changing my lifestyle one little bit at a time. Changing my lifestyle did not happen over night—it couldn't. No one can "turn their life around" all at once in the way they would turn on a light switch. It's a process. A process that anyone can choose to start today by taking the first small step.

Willingness

I wondered if I was willing enough to be willing to do whatever it took to develop a healthy relationship to food. Was I really ready to do the footwork required to regain my health and well-being. I sat down one day with a pencil and paper and asked myself the following questions.

• What behaviors and ideas am I willing to give up?
• What am I willing to do; what changes am I willing to make?
• What priority does recovery have in my life?
• Am I willing to go to any length?

I ended up with several pages of notes. Some of my notes regarding what any length could mean were pretty frightening to me. Going to any length would mean admitting that I couldn't do it all by myself hidden away in my little vacuum of isolation—that my best thinking and best efforts had only gotten me up to my top weight after all these years. Going to any length would mean breaking out of my comfortable rut, seeking out and asking for professional help from a doctor and probably a registered dietician. It could mean seeing a psychologist or social counselor to overcome emotional blocks or deal with my emotional issues. It could mean making an appointment at an eating disorders clinic to discuss my options and see if Medicare might help pay for treatment. It undoubtedly would mean seriously educating myself about what and how I ate in the past and what and how I wished to eat from now on. It would mean being willing to give up old ideas that haven't worked. It would mean I could no longer use my weight as an excuse to not participate fully in life; my fat never really protected me from getting hurt anyway. It would mean being willing to grow and change as a human being—to learn more about the art of being human. Going to any length would definitely mean change and more change. It would take dedication and persistent effort.

Awareness

One of the most effective tools I had for getting started was to begin to keep a food and mood journal. That is, an ongoing list of everything I'd eat throughout the day—what time, how I felt before I ate, why I ate—everything. Please don't shortchange your recovery by shortcutting or omitting this important step. Before journaling this way I didn't realize just how much or how often I was eating. I had no idea of my total daily caloric intake and how that broke down in terms of nutritional quality. I didn't know what percentage of fat, protein, and carbohydrate was in my diet. I didn't know how much of those carbohydrates were simple sugars and starches and how many were nutrient dense complex carbohydrates. Sure, I knew that I was eating a terribly unhealthy diet and that I overate all the time, but I needed to see it in black and white. More importantly, I needed to begin to recognize what specific feelings I had that revolved around my binging and misuse of food. Honesty was crucial here. If I binged, I still had to write it down and itemize the food and what I was feeling just before and after I binged. Cheating at this step would have only been cheating myself. I didn't have to show this to anybody!

Become an expert

I'd read a lot of diet books over the years and felt I knew quite a bit about nutrition. The problem was, most of what I thought I knew was not based upon the latest science, and it was not necessarily based on good science. Most of the information in all those diet books ranged from outright lies and malicious misinformation to pseudo-science based on twisted logic, rumor, and half-truths. They quoted studies that seemed to support their claims and totally ignored studies that went counter to their claims. Their main purpose was to sell books and associated diet products.

Much of what I took for granted as being good information was outdated and not helpful. Concepts that I grew up believing often turned out to be just plain wrong. The science of human nutrition has evolved a great deal over the last several years. The more I learned, the more I found that I had to learn. I began to get excited about learning. It was as if a whole new world was opening up. I became revolted by the junk and highly processed foods I'd lived on for most of my life; I found out that it was literally killing me. This new knowledge greatly empowered my abilities to shed extra weight and change my relationship to food. The best book on the science of human nutrition that I've found is "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy—The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating".

Baby steps

The longest journey begins with the first small step.

I didn't have to do this all at once. After all, I was not dieting, I was working at changing my lifestyle and developing a healthy relationship to food. I was sure that small successes would be cumulative over time. What I sought was to make those small changes permanent. This meant seriously working at changing many of my basic patterns, automatic thinking, and automatic responses to life in ways that would eventually come to feel natural to me.

Changing my diet for the better could also be done one step at a time. Adding fresh vegetables to meals, cutting salt intake, eating fish or dry beans instead of beef at least one day a week, going to 100% whole grain breads, all could be increments of change. I approached exercise the same way. Start slow but remain consistent.

Persistence and acceptance

Face it, no one does recovery perfectly. I sure couldn't. One of the biggest traps I use to fall into is giving up for the day just because I deviated from my intended food plan. The self-talk would usually go something like this, "heck, I already blew it so I might as well go ahead and finish this box of cookies". The truth is, that one cookie might be 100 empty calories, but a full blown binge might be thousands. The only winning way to deal with those kinds of situation for me was to count the one cookie like a vegetable and move on. A small lapse or a single binge didn't have to turn into a full blown relapse to chronic binging and compulsive overeating. I didn't need to start over, I only needed to stick to my path even when I encountered potholes and small detours.

Recovery was not really about my weight loss per se. The idea was for me to be the fittest healthiest person I could be no matter what size I was. It was that change in thinking, I believe, that opened the door to real recovery.

Progress not Perfection

I tend to think in black and white, all or nothing ways. The messages I use to tell myself were usually not very compassionate or loving. "I'm either a success or I am a failure." "I'm either good or I am bad." I'm either worthwhile or I am worthless." "I'm either 'dieting' or I'm binging" I'm either in recovery or I'm not." "I'm either mentally ill or I'm not". The truth is, there is a lot of grey area between all these extremes and that's where we, as human beings, live. I'm not perfect, but I can strive for progress. It's hard for me to recognize my own progress except when I have the distance of time and look backward. Progress on anything is always achieved through a lot of little failures and missteps. In AA I learned that I need only seek progress, not perfection and that applies here too. We can't possibly be perfect. There's always room for improvement. There's always more to learn in life. There's always room to grow.

Compassion

An important part of my recovery is to practice a more compassionate and realistic form of self-talk. Instead of thinking to myself, "I suck" I now stop and think about that and realizes that like any other human being, I suck as some things and am pretty darn good at others. One of the tools I use to do this is to consider how I would talk to a friend who is going through the same thing. If a friend had a lapse in their healthy eating plan or didn't lose any weight that week, I would try to support and encourage them in a positive and loving way. I can choose to treat myself that well too.

Expectations

Having realistic expectations and goals is important. Time takes time. My first goal was simply to reduce the frequency and amount of my binging. Once the binging was largely under control, I continued to make incremental improvements to the quality of the foods I chose to eat. The weight loss began to happen as the result of binging less and eating healthier foods. I didn't have to be in a big hurry. It may take me two, three or more years to lose most of my excess fat tissue. I find now that acknowledging smaller goals along the way is highly motivating.

Be prepared

I'm quite sure that the end result of losing significant amounts of weight in a healthy way will be remarkable, it already is, however, it does not mean I will have fewer problems in my life. I will not automatically shoot to the top of the ladder, improve my relationships, or find my one true love. It does mean I will look and feel better and improve the overall quality of my life in ways I cannot yet see or know. As I change on the inside and the outside, the other people in my life won't necessarily change, my family members won't necessarily become more agreeable or manageable, my landlord's personality won't improve. I may get perfectly healthy but I still won't be perfectly happy or content all of the time. Life will keep happening, but I'm sure I'll be better equipped to deal with the problems life brings and have a better chance to experience joy in my life.

The 24 hour plan is particularly helpful to me. "I only have to worry about getting through today. I'll worry about tomorrow when I get there. I can do just about anything for one day."  Sometimes it helps me to break that down to just one hour at a time.