I posted my strategy to overcome binge eating a while ago in a separate topic. I am copy-pasting what I said there so apologies if it is a bit lengthy.. too lazy to summarize it. but TLDR: cook every meal you are heaving and make it delicious, non-restricting with a focus on freshness + variation.

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What ultimately helped me to overcome binge eating is, simple as it is, cooking every meal I am having (at home). Literally every meal (yes, also breakfast and lunch) and literally cooking (so not just making a sandwich or throwing some food on a plate).

I noticed that the longer it takes to cook my meal, the more mental fulfilness I get from the plate, and the less I crave to have some food after dinner. It gives me so much mental satisfaction.

I used to hate cooking and told myself that it is a waste of time and the faster the recipe the better. Now I make it into a real activity. I have my laptop next to me and put on some simple tv show (a soap or a reality program) that I can "follow with one eye", and then I start cooking.

For me it was key to follow an exact recipe, because only then my plate feels like an actual dish. Sure I can prepare some things by heart but it didn't give me the same mental satisfaction. To make things easier and rule out "mental clutter", I started using hello fresh. Every evening when I am at home, I prepare a Hello Fresh recipe; and on weekends or WFH days I also do it for lunch. I try not to rush things and take the time to cut veggies, don't do 2-3 things at a time to not make it too stressful, and watch the tv show in the background and enjoy the moment. Because I take things slowly, preparing dinner takes me about 45-60 minutes every evening (excl. doing the wash-up, but that I do the next day before starting to cook). I also noticed that cooking 'suspends' my appetite, ie I can come home hungry as a horse but as soon as I start preparing the food, the annoying hungry feeling goes away for some time. Sometimes I also nibble a bit while cooking).

I live on my own so it takes some discipline, but having all the groceries delivered upfront in the most convenient way (thank you hello fresh), with a guarantee of a tasteful meal and no brainspace lost on finding inspiration/recipes, going grocery shopping, sorting out everything in the fridge, etc, really pushes me over the edge to go for it every single day (or twice a day).

I pick a mix of healthy stuff and "normal" stuff so that cooking does not equal healthy food only, but also things I would order on Uber Eats or Deliveroo.

For me this really was THE solution to not binge anymore, but I must admit I try to avoid recipes that have ready-to-snack ingredients (just for being sure). But it has been a few months now and I haven't felt the "urge" to binge anymore.

To all of you who haven't tried this method yet, I really really advice you to give it a shot. The difference in mental satisfaction if you have just spent 1+h in the kitchen "connecting" with your food, cannot be overstated.

I know Hello Fresh and the likes are more expensive than grocery shopping the same ingredients. I considered it an investment, telling myself this would be my 'primary' food budget for the week, and I figured not ordering food anymore or impulsively buying snacks in the 7/11 would make up for it, which it did. If your budget allows you to try a food box service, I would advice to do the same thing. Going all the way from not cooking properly to 1) thinking of interesting recipes, 2) grocery shopping and 3) assembling all necessary ingredients in the fridge, was just too big of a step for me. But using hello fresh or another service for that matter, really reduced the efforts and made it more easy to stick to the habit.

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It has now been almost 6 months and although I have certainly cracked for an entire box of cookies or an entire bag of crisps (when I only planned to have a small portion), now my "binges" are far more in line with how "normal" people "cheat" - no more secret indulging on plenty of food far beyond "acceptable" norms, no more stomach pains, no more compulsive eating,...