A key strategy to avoid bingeing that was taught in my treatment center was the use of coping skills.  They could be anything you like to do to distract from the urge to use symptoms (in my case, bingeing).  I typically read, listened to music, wrote in my journal or did counted cross stitching.  After months of invoking coping skills to avoid binges, I realized that using coping skills, while mostly effective, was more “muscling” and “willing” my binges away instead of identifying the root cause to decrease or eliminate them.  I realize that getting to the root cause can take time so coping skills are a good short-term tool to deal with the urges.  I use coping skills to tackle binge urges but very rarely because I prefer to rely on intuitive and mindful eating.  I’ve also realized that my binge urges are cluing me into something about my emotional state so I don’t want to “will” them away but meet them head on to figure out what’s going on in the moment.