Liberation from Binge Eating
Are you tired of feeling out of control or of trying to stop binge eating? Most likely your approach has been all wrong and this is what has made overcoming this addiction harder.
In order to completely overcome binge-eating, follow the below steps:
Step 1: Awareness, Acceptance and Action
The last time you tried to stop binge eating and you failed was probably because you attempted to jump straight to the solution. However, even before you think of the solution to binge eating, make sure that you are aware of the problem; otherwise, you will just be in denial, and you are unlikely to overcome the addiction.
It is important to understand that binge eating is not all about eating and knowing your problem does not mean knowing the food you crave. Knowing your problem means:
Once you are fully aware of your problem or situation, you can now move on to acceptance. This step is usually difficult because most people condone the situation instead of accepting it.
Acceptance simply entails agreeing with reality. The reality is that you are a binge eater or you have an unhealthy relationship with food. This is the fact right now and the sooner you accept it, the faster you will be ready for action or change.
It might seem to be a simple or unnecessary step but if you decide to skip it or just rush through it, you will not succeed in your liberation process.
Take your time; don’t stop being good to yourself and when you are sincerely aware of your problem, and have fully accepted it, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Check with Your Doctor
Before changing your diet to a healthier one and starting to exercise, it is important to visit your doctor and be tested for any disease or health problem associated with binge eating. Some of these diseases include heart diseases, diabetes, cancer, asthma, arthritis, etc. This way you will know of the existing and the potential health problem.
This is critical because it will influence your diet as well as exercise program. For example, if you are suffering from diabetes, you cannot do exercises that involve lifting heavy weights (if you have damaged blood vessels in the eyes) or putting too much pressure on your feet (if you have nerve damage in your feet) because they will worsen the situation.
While binge eating will not kill you, the diseases associated with binge eating (especially sugar and fats) can kill you. Seek medical attention first and let them advise you appropriately.
Step 3: Abstinence and Dealing with Cravings
There are two ways of recovering from binge eating.
Going cold turkey is the best way to overcome binge eating because you give up all the foods you like to binge eat unlike incrementally giving up some foods, as this will still trigger cravings making you binge on other foods or increase your consumption volume of the remaining trigger foods . Moderation is quite unlikely to work for you and if you don’t cut out all your addictive foods, you won’t succeed in abstinence from any of them; hence, you will never stop binge eating.
You might think that this is a lot to ask or that you are being asked to stop eating the only thing that brings emotional relief; however, think of the bigger picture. The kind of life you desire; a happy, healthy life where you are in control of your eating habits and this might give you the resolve to do something now.
So, how exactly does abstinence work?
How Abstinence Works
Your body has built a dependency on sugar or sugary foods and drinks because you have been consuming a lot of them for a while. In order to stop binge eating, you need to start with abstinence from all your trigger foods. The first step is to remove them from your kitchen then stop buying them.
Abstinence will give your body time to release the compulsion to use sugar and after two or three weeks, your cravings, which led to your addiction, will start to dissipate (the longer you abstain the faster it will be for you to stop binge eating).
Note: This essentially means you MUST come up with a list of the foods that you tend to binge on. You know yourself best; is it sodas, French fries, pizza, burgers; what is it you binge on when you feel you need some emotional release? Use the 80/20 rule to come up with a list of your trigger foods; you binge on 20% of certain foods 80% of the time. Which are your biggest trigger foods i.e. the foods that form 20% of the foods that you binge on 80% of the time? These are the foods you MUST stop taking immediately. This doesn’t mean you don’t avoid the other foods though; the most common ones seem to be the ones you’ve developed the most emotional connection with, which means you MUST at least avoid these.
Try as much as possible to avoid places or situations that involve sugar or sugary foods and drinks such as parties and bakeries. That’s not all; surround yourself with people or places that will help you abstain from trigger foods. For example, if you got to the movies with friends who must have sweets or snacks, you can’t ask them to stop but you can look for other friends who don’t need snacks to watch movies, or bring your own health alternatives snacks (apples, oranges, etc).
In addition, anytime you crave those trigger foods; divert your attention to something else. You can take a walk, do some gardening or house chores, or ask your friend to come over to your place. The good thing is that cravings only last for a while and by diverting your attention; within a few minutes you will even forget you were craving something.
Tip: Sometimes our connection with food is so strong that even without thinking; we seem to just reach out for our trigger foods. You don’t even notice the cravings consciously but simply react to them subconsciously. To help you to identify your cravings when they arise, you can start practicing mindfulness meditation to build your awareness of the present so that you unplug from the autopilot mode that’s in your mind. To practice mindfulness meditation, simply start focusing on the sensations in your body, your breathing, the thoughts going on in your mind and your immediate environment. Do not judge them; simply observe them as they come and go as if you are a spectator. When you notice your mind getting distracted refocus on the sensations you were observing then keep at it for five minutes. Practice this every day. Over time, you will start noticing that you can easily take note of your emotions as they start developing, which ultimately makes it very easy to break the habit loop (habit loop is the pattern in which a habit takes place from start to finish i.e. trigger, action and reward). Mindfulness helps you to identify a habit when it is at the trigger level before taking the necessary action. By doing something else that breaks the pattern in which a habit takes, you effectively break the habit loop- this takes time and constant repetition.
Always remember that you will feel uncomfortable when you start abstaining but this is normal and sooner or later, the feeling will disappear entirely. Most binge eaters or addicts want to feel great immediately but this is impossible. You need to be patient, and just as it took you some months or years to become addicted to food, the same will happen to reverse the addiction (well, you might not take years but don’t expect instant relief).
As you try to abstain from the foods that you mostly binge eat and start eating healthy, you will experience withdrawal symptoms. Let us learn how you can deal with these symptoms because your ability to deal with these symptoms will determine your success with overcoming binge eating.
Dealing With Withdrawal Symptoms
Once you have abstained from your addictive substance, you enter into the withdrawal phase. Most people do not pay attention to this phase and that is the reason they fail in their liberation from binge eating. You should not expect your physical and emotional attachment to these foods to disappear overnight.
This simple understanding will better prepare you to deal with the withdrawal symptoms. Below are some of the common symptoms that you are likely to experience:
In the first day of withdrawal, you will not experience any symptoms because cravings are not too bad but after three or four days, things will get bad. You may not be able to function well because you have increased cravings and the withdrawal symptoms will be in full swing. These symptoms will last for a few weeks or months depending on how long you have been binge eating, how frequently you have binged, and your health.
The good news is that cravings will disappear after some days or weeks but the urge to use sugar will take much longer. Because of this, you will need to have strategies in order to get through the abstinence process successfully. These strategies include:
  1. Development Of A Good Relationship With Food
Having abstained from sugar, you have to start developing a healthy relationship with food. This entails eating healthy meals with all nutrients as a replacement for your binge food. Some of the things you have to remember when developing a healthy food relationship are:
Do not diet
Remember that you are not on a diet; all you did was to stop eating sugar and other processed food you used to binge eat and replace it with healthy meals. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied. This is the rule.
Do not try dieting because restricting food will make you preoccupied or obsessed with it and this will take you back to your binge eating habits. Instead of thinking of dieting, focus on all nutritious foods you did not eat because you were too focused on eating processed food.
Have a regular eating schedule
Do not skip a meal or even fast because you will be starving yourself and all you be left doing is thinking of food. This doesn’t mean that you should eat all the time though. Since you might not have a properly functioning satiety mechanism, you are unlikely to control how much you take in your snacks. The best approach is to not snack; just have 3 meals a day and eat to your fill.
Develop a meal plan
A meal plan can help you to minimize instances of binge eating because you know what you are supposed to eat and at what time you should eat it. Therefore, develop a meal plan based on healthy foods (there is an endless variety of these some of which are discussed in the next chapter ).
Choose your most preferred healthy foods and include them in your meal plan so that you know what to eat everyday of the week.
  1. Get Support
You can’t do this alone. You need support from a friend, a family member, a therapist, or a support group. Most people think that support groups are havens for people who can’t just stop binge eating or those who are weak such that they can’t do it themselves.
However, that’s not the truth, we (human beings) are social and we need each other in order to succeed. We tend to act and react better when we are in a group. A group member’s story will encourage and motivate you or the other way; you can be a hero by telling your story. You can encourage someone and he or she will look up to you throughout the liberation process, which will help you even want to stick to your resolve.
  1. Exercising
Regular exercise not only affects the body but also affects your emotional and mental state in the following ways:
Boosts mood: When you exercise, your body releases endorphins in the brain, which in turn gives you energy and makes you feel good. This hormone also helps in relieving depression and anxiety and can at times prevent you from relapsing.
Improves sleep: Stretching exercises such as yoga and walking can help improve your sleeping habits especially if done in the evening
Increases your self-esteem: When you exercise regularly, you positively affect your sense of self-worth, which will greatly improve your self-esteem
Boosts energy levels: Starting a day with exercise gives you a boost of energy and strengthens your immune system
Helps you to cope better: When you feel stressed, depressed or anxious, you can do some exercise to help you deal with the feeling instead of thinking or trying to go back to binge eating.
You probably are new to exercise or it has been a while since you exercised because you were too consumed with binge eating. Therefore, start with 5-10 minutes exercise sessions daily and then slowly increase your time.
At first, you will feel like you don’t have enough energy but remember that the more you keep exercising, the more energy you will get. Some of the moderate exercises you can do are walking, swimming, yoga, dancing, Frisbee, cycling, badminton and house chores like raking, vacuuming or mowing the lawn.
  1. Practice self-care
As you focus on overcoming binge eating, you need a break. This is not the kind of break where you can stop abstaining from sugar but a break that acts as an antidote to negative self -talk, inability to take wrong actions and poor body image. Self-care simply means being kind to yourself. This might seem to be a simple concept but it works.
Some of the helpful safe care activities you can start today are:
The list is endless but believe or not, if you do any of the about activities twice or thrice in a week, you will find yourself feeling good and this reduces the chances of wanting to binge eat.
  1. Accept your body image
It seems easy when said than done but if you truly want to succeed in the liberation process, you have to accept and love yourself irrespective of your body weight or shape. Furthermore, as you adopt a healthy diet and healthy relationship with food and even as you exercise, you are likely to start feeling good about yourself. Also, the below tips will help you accept your body image:
Dress for yourself but not others- Do not dress to impress others. All you need to do is to choose clothes that make you feel confident, comfortable and highlight your best features.
Don’t use the scale- Do not weigh yourself. Leave the scale with the doctor because right now, your aim is to love yourself and not keeping track of your weight.
Keep off fashion magazines - The images in those magazines might be photo-shopped but to some extent, they can trigger feelings of inferiority or insecurity. Stay away from them until you are sure that you won’t undermine yourself.
Step 4: Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself
The truth is that you will err many times. When you fall down and succumb to a temptation, being hard on yourself is the last thing you want to do, since beating yourself up too much will only make you feel guilty and after the guilt, you will want to eat to get some sort of comfort from the stress; hence, the cycle of binge eating will continue.
The main reason why many people struggling with some addictions are unable to overcome the addiction is having an ‘all or nothing’ attitude. With such an attitude, you believe that even if you did not binge eat for a week and you binge eat, you think that you have failed then revert to your binge eating again. This is the wrong kind of attitude. Learn from your mistakes and pick up your pieces once you fail.
In addition, treat yourself with compassion. Every time you feel like criticizing yourself, remind yourself that you are binging not because you are the worst or the unhappiest person but because it is a mechanism you use in order to cope and handle bigger and deeper struggles such as stress, depression, unhappiness, or anxiety.
Tip: Stop thinking that you are weak in the face of binge eating. Instead, start feeling empowered. When you already know the foods you binge on and have gotten rid of them, have a meal plan and know exactly how to go about living a life free from binge eating, believe you can actually live a normal life which is free from binges. When you do that, you will stop putting too much pressure on yourself, which weakens your resolve; you won’t have to use your willpower to fight binge eating unnecessarily because your subconscious mind already believes that you have somehow won the fight against binge eating.
Let's do a little recap, so remember identify and eliminate your trigger foods ( usually your favorite foods), become a conscious eater, reframe your state of mind, and lastly empower yourself by thinking about how you will conquer binge eating through incremental steps. Anytime the urge to binge eat is conceived in the mind, ask yourself a simple question, am I truly hungry? Or is this an emotional/stressed induced coping mechanism to make me feel good?
Once you start identifying your functional eating habits from your "binge habits", this consciously empowers you, and the more you practice this, the better you get at it!
Preplan your meals, incorporate whole foods into your diet, increase lean meats and proteins, fruits, nuts, and more leafy cruciferous vegetables.
Design a scheduled meal plan ahead of time 7 days a week. Stick to it! If you can try to get an accountability partner who's transparent with you.
Finally, as you break binge eating, you need to eat the right foods if you want to sustain your freedom from binge eating. Let’s discuss that next.