How I overcame my years long ED overnight

I've been recovered for a few years now. I've always struggled with my self image, literally since kindergarten. When I decided to seriously start dieting is when the binging started (eventually some bulimic behaviors too). I read so much information online, and most of the advice I see, even here, is to eat healthier, avoid triggers etc etc. That literally never helped me! It made things worse and made me feel like I was broken. I physically could not stop my binges when they came on.

Then one day I saw a Youtube video from a girl (she was foreign, cannot remember her name) and she talked about her story and recovery. Her main point was that BED and bulimia stem from trying to control your food intake, so it backfires and your lizard brain does the complete opposite and you end up binging. The way to stop this is to NOT further try to control your diet, but to let your brain relax by allowing yourself to eat however much you want, no limits whatsoever. This is very scary at first, but eventually your brain goes "phew, I can relax now" and you stop thinking about food. I can't remember how long it took me but must've been less than 2-3 days of eating whatever I wanted, and then I stopped wanting to binge.

Now I have sweets and snacks at my house and I'm perfectly fine having only a little at a time, when in the past that would NEVER be the case, I had to finish it all. That's how you break the cycle, not with further dieting because that's what got us here in the first place. When I tried to diet after being recovered, even slightly, I would actually start to feel those compulsive thoughts coming back. It's like my brain would automatically be triggered, so this is how I know that the control issue is 100% the root cause. Nowadays I eat healthy with occasional snacks and junk food, not enough to affect my weight or health. I also don't keep track of my calories (if I tried, the compulsions would come back).

I also want to mention that from my research there is a great misunderstanding of BED. I feel like there's two types, one time is compulsory BED that almost feels like a part of OCD (which I have a theory that those are connected, I have OCD as well and these felt very similar). And the second type is more of emotional eating/food addiction. I'm pretty sure all the advice I've been seeing online is geared towards that second type, which is why it never worked for me. I hope this post will help people just like that girl's experience helped me. If you have any questions feel free to ask!