Emotional Eating

I am an emotional eater. I sometimes binge on whatever I can get my hands on to fix emotional problems. Examples: when I'm angry, frustrated, sad, lonely, depressed, bored...you get the idea. These binges usually happen at night, when I'm tired on top of everything else, but they've happened in the middle of the day as well. This is something I battle with everyday. See, drug addicts, alcoholics can simply abstain from the substance of choice. People who binge eat cannot abstain from eating. That's a whole other ED...

I'm working on journaling to deal with my emotions on paper. I also have called/skyped friends to distract me or just listen to me vent. That really helps. I also have a couple of super close friends that know that I like to eat to feel better and they help keep me on track. I also draw to distract myself when I want to eat an entire bag of bagels. Yes, this happened (4 bagels, 1/2 box cereal, 5 granola bars, 1 brownie, 3 yogurts) all in 2-3 hours. Binging like this makes my feel physically sick and also obviously causes weight gain which is a problem for a ballet dancer. So I'm done. I let myself have one last binge to get it out of my system last week. I felt sick for 2 days afterwards and am so done. I'm just going to eat for fuel, not for emotional gratification/healing/whatever else. Food is now fuel, with a sprinkle of pleasure (Biology is inevitable and inescapable)

To any other emotional eaters out there, I'll try to share my tips I find while battling this ED.