THIS stopped my binge urge (of 18 years) in 3 weeks.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re not on your first attempt to recover from binge eating. You might be feeling skeptical, taking everything with a grain of salt—or worse, you may have started to doubt everyone in the therapy field, seeing them as scammers trying to profit from your struggle (even the licensed therapists, yes!). I get it. I was once full of anger and frustration too, only to feel even more hopeless with each dollar spent on anything labeled “therapy.”

Here’s a list of what I tried:

• Psychotherapy
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychiatrists
• Medication
• Yoga
• NLP
• Willpower
• Overeaters Anonymous
• Spiritual counseling
• Psychics
• Exercise
• Religion
• Energy healing
• Breathwork
• Trauma healing
• Family therapy

And that’s just to name a few. Each time I overate right after a $175 therapy session, it only deepened my despair. I couldn’t even wait for the subway ride home before giving in to the urge. With every “after therapy” failure, I felt more convinced that nothing really works. I was angry at myself, doubtful of the methodologies, and frustrated with the world. I even asked God, “What kind of lesson am I supposed to learn from this?”

Beneath all that anger, sadness, and old wounds, a voice whispered, “I’m a lost cause. I’m just different from those happy people.”

Does this sound familiar?

I want you to know that you’re not alone. More importantly, I want to help you understand the mechanism behind this so you can find your way out, because the exit is much closer than you think—with the right approach.

The Issue with Traditional Therapy for Eating Disorders

Traditional therapy can unintentionally reinforce negative self-beliefs, such as the idea that you’re a lost cause or fundamentally different from others. When therapy sessions end in failure, without direct follow-up and support around eating issues, it can deepen feelings of hopelessness and self-doubt. Often, traditional therapy revisits childhood issues, like neglect or “daddy issues,” which, while important, may not address the immediate problem: your relationship with food.

Talk therapy is based on the premise that there are underlying reasons for your distress, and that addressing these reasons will lead to improvement. However, this approach doesn’t always work for body-habit-based issues like overeating and binge eating. In fact, it can unintentionally justify your overeating, delaying recovery while masking it as progress. In my experience, this approach only took away my sense of control.

Therapy can also reinforce a sense of victimhood and helplessness. The underlying message is that unless you resolve all your issues, you won’t get better. But here’s the secret: when you focus on the eating itself, you can improve without addressing every underlying issue.

Don’t get me wrong—therapy is a wonderful tool for self-discovery and working through layered mental and emotional issues. But it’s not the first aid solution when you’re struggling with overeating or emotional eating. These issues involve your entire body, and the solution requires restoring and reinforcing your hunger and satiety cues, healing your digestive system, training your mind to savor food and eat mindfully, and unlearning the patterns that drive binge eating. Reflect on your therapy experiences—were any of these elements ever addressed? I bet not!

The Turning Point: Structured Eating

After years of spending my hard-earned money on bingeing junk food my body didn’t even want, I decided to try something different. I want to introduce you to an approach that might feel unfamiliar, but stick with it for a week and see how your body and your urges respond.

I began nourishing my body regularly—three balanced meals plus two or three snacks a day. I know, planning three nutritionally balanced meals a day can feel overwhelming. But try to pick just a few meal patterns that consist of 50% carbs, 25% protein, and 25% fiber, plus a bit of healthy fat. This approach, known as structured eating, helps restore your hunger and satiety cues while re-nourishing your body.

Note: I use the word “famished,” but your body can be famished at any body weight. The number on the scale doesn’t reflect how nutritionally or systemically nourished your body is. The important thing is to restore the proper connection between what you “feel” as hunger and what your body actually needs. Until this signal is working properly, you’ll likely experience intense urges to binge whenever you “feel” hungry—urges that are more emotional than physical.

Before I started structured eating, I was eating constantly—at dangerous levels—and purging up to 20 times a day. It chills me to think about it now. I’m so grateful for my life and everything recovery has given me. There was doubt, of course, but the risk of not trying was too high. My finances, health, life, dreams—everything was at stake. And most of all, I couldn’t let my beloved dog suffer alone any longer. He deserved a better owner, a better life, and a real connection.

To my surprise, after just three weeks of structured eating, my binge urges significantly reduced. By the fourth week, I knew this approach was different from anything I’d ever tried. Today, over eight years after my recovery, I can’t be more grateful for the courage I had at the beginning of this journey, even after so many years of failures.

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting about how I overcame the fear of gaining weight during the initial phase of recovery. Stay tuned!