long-term binger, yo-yo dieter, fasting queen

This is my first time posting, and I really want to make a change. I'm too ashamed to tell my friends/family exactly what is going on with me-- I binge eat at least once a week (often more, especially when stressed).

I'm looking for support from people who have gone through or are going through the same up and down battle of binge eating.

I've been doing this for a least a few years-- going through periods where I feel depressed, miserable, and fat, avoiding friends and school and work. Then I will enforce strict eating regimens, patterns and charts, I'll lose weight or at least feel less bloated and terrible, but I always crash and burn, bingeing again within a month or two.

I don't want my whole life to revolve around the food-- what I won't let myself eat and what I can't help but eat. Help?

Hi, pandagirly! Welcome to the forum. I think you will meet people who've been through similar stuff and make friends here. We will try to give you all the support we can.
It must be difficult for you. Do you have any idea why you might be doing it? Maybe it's for controll or maybe there is something that triggers it becouse of stress.

I almost want to say both. The bingeing is definitely a response to a particularly stressful or depressing or whatever day, even though I always feel so much worse (emotionally and physically) afterwards. But I go through these reactive, dieting phases where I'm hyper-organized about the foods I eat, going so far as to plan out and chart "menus" and the like, days in advance. Of course, that doesn't and can't last, but I just seem to be incapable of having a normal relationship to food.

I exercise regularly, and I actually like the taste of healthful foods, so I think if I could just let go of this bingeing thing, I would be much more stable and happy and healthy. But I can't seem to figure out how to do that.

I tend to comfort-eat too and I don't even realise sometimes. Exercising helps me a bit too. Are you living in a really stressful environment? Maybe you should try to change some things, if you can't seem to controll the eating. I was in a bad place too untill some triggers were removed, I think. Well, sometimes we can't change our environment, but you can still try to controll this.
Maybe keeping some kind of diary where you can write why you want to stop and what the benefits would be might help. You can write down how much you thought about it and what you did to distract yourself and if it worked. If you go a while without binging, you can give yourself a treat that has nothing to do with food and it'll make you feel better about yourself.
Also, think about what was happening when all this started and maybe you'll be able to find another way to deal with it.