I struggled with binge eating for 7 years. And during this time, I tried every diet in the book – thinking that a diet would help and give me the answer, but it never did. The thing is that I was focusing on the wrong thing.
I was focusing on how to lose weight rather than how to eat intuitively – which is what I needed to do. And what I didn't realize is that if I ate intuitively – my weight would go where it was supposed to go.
In this episode, I am dropping the tea on the 5 things that finally helped me stop binge eating!
01. FOLLOW A HUNGER SCALE RATHER THAN JUST NOT RESTRICTING
The hunger scale teaches you about hunger cues, ranging from 0 (empty) to 10 (sick to your stomach full). The goal is to stay roughly between a 3 and a 7
Three is I need to eat now; I could last a bit longer if necessary, but if I drop to a 2, I'm in a danger zone of binge eating. Seven is I could eat more, but I am happily full and satisfied.
As I learned to play around with the hunger scale – I found that it helped moderate my binges.
02. FIND SOMEONE YOU CAN CONNECT WITH ALONG WITH CLEANSING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FEED
Cleaning your feed is amazing; however, if you do not have anybody you can reach out to when you are struggling – that will only get you so far
Having just one person to reach out to help you get through the feeling of wanting to binge or helping talk you out of the shame spiral post-binge will make you feel a little less alone and a little more hopeful about being able to stop.
03. PUT ALL FOODS ON A PLATE/BOWL WHEN EATING RATHER THAN JUST KEEPING TRIGGER FOODS OUT OF THE HOUSE
Keeping trigger foods out of the house didn't work because I could binge on anything.
The goal with this one is to make the binges a little more difficult. Rather than eating foods out of the box or bag, in your car, or front of the tv, tell yourself that you must take the food out of the packaging, put it on the plate, and sit down at the table.
THIS DOESN'T MEAN YOU CANNOT GO BACK FOR MORE.
But I realized that the more difficult and less pleasurable I made it to binge – the fewer and further between them.
04. PUT THE FORK DOWN BETWEEN BITES, ALONG WITH EATING WITHOUT DISTRACTIONS
Eating without distractions is A MUST. However, I want to take this further and say slow your eating. If you're anything like me, you eat as you've never eaten. When I am eating, a bite goes in my mouth, and the moment the fork leaves my mouth, I am loading up that next bite, and I'm ready to freaking go.
This is a problem for 2 reasons:
- 01. You're not giving your stomach enough time to signal to your brain that you are full
- 02. It feels like you are not eating as much as you are because you're consuming it so quickly
05. STOP EATING FOODS YOU DON'T LIKE, ALONG WITH NOT LABELING FOODS AS GOOD/BAD
If you struggle with binge eating, you eat some pretty gross food that you try to convince yourself is good because somebody else with a body that you want eats it.
- DON'T EAT the protein shakes if you don't like them.
- If you don't like these “healthified desserts,” DON'T EAT THEM.
- DON'T EAT a salad that tastes horrible.
It took me a while to realize that for me, binges weren't going to go away with the snap of my fingers, and all I was doing was dieting over and over, expecting to stop binge eating with nothing changing other than the type of diet.
Nothing changes if nothing changes, and I knew I needed to put in the work and effort and get uncomfortable if I ever wanted the binges to stop. And if you do that, I promise they will stop!
