As someone who has struggled with binge and emotional eating in the past and again with most recent Covid restrictions put in place in my city that forced me to isolate, I wanted to address this topic because I know so many struggle with it.
First of all what is binge eating? It’s eating a large quantity of calories in a short time frame, usually past the point of discomfort even when you aren’t hungry. Most people binge eat alone and having feelings of shame, disgust and guilt during or afterward. Binge eaters often feel out of control and like they are in a trance while they eat.
While emotional eating can lead to binge eating it revolves more around eating to cope with emotions. Sadness, depression even boredom can cause someone to eat emotionally. Emotional eating comforts due to the calming effect eating has on us. Our bodies automatically go into a parasympathetic state while we eat. Our parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for rest and digestion. It decreases our heart rate and breathing and just over all makes us feel calmer, which is why eating can be comforting especially if we eat foods that we associate with times we felt good.
There was a time where in public I was the advocate for health and well being but then in private I’d go home and eat my weight in sugar in the form of candies, cookies and cakes past the point of feeling sick. I wouldn’t fall asleep during times like these, I’d describe it more as passing out from a food overdose. I would wake up feeling so ashamed. I hated myself and felt like a fraud. I’d then spend a few days eating a very low calorie diet and working out like crazy in some sick attempt to “balance out” the binge session, only to do it all over again a week later.
Just when I thought I had kicked this disordered eating for good with strategies that I will mention below, the constant message of fear that the media has been bombarding us with since the onset of this Covid outbreak has led me back to emotional eating due to my feelings of uncertainty, fear of the unknown and the sadness I felt for those who have been greatly affected by Covid.
With some self-awareness there are ways to deal with emotional and binge eating. Here are a few strategies that have helped me:
- Set clear goals: Know exactly what you want and why. Be clear on what will happen if you don’t get your eating under control. Think about the potential dis-ease that may come about from overeating, the weight gain, the unhappiness you will (and may already) feel when you are not at a healthy weight. Think about how you feel when you eat poorly. Likewise, think about how you feel when you do make healthy eating choices. Think about how you will feel when you have reached your health goals. Really try to embody these feelings so that you can call on them when necessary.
- Disassociate yourself from your craving brain: The more you understand your brain the easier (with practice) you’ll get at getting control of your cravings. Our brains are designed to be highly responsive to food, along with anything else that is responsible for our survival. But we now live in a world with an abnormally high number of food cues, restaurants and cafes on every corner, advertisements for foods on TV and on the radio, uber eats at your service, co-workers bringing in treats. We also celebrate almost every occasion with food. Now throw in the fact that companies literally engineer food so that it will activate the reward center of our brain to its maximum and you have yourself a recipe for disordered eating. Its no longer about satisfying hunger but about getting pleasure and our brains are designed to move towards pleasure. But try to understand that the part of our brain that is responsible for decision making is not the same part of your brain that is responsible for craving and reward. Craving comes from your “lower self”, decision making comes from your “higher self”. MAKE THAT DISTINCTION when a craving comes on and choose from your higher self.
- Break the cycle: When you give into cravings on a regular basis you create a pattern in your brain. The more you perform that pattern the stronger it becomes until it’s automatic, a.k.a a habit. The best way to start to break down that pattern and reprogram your brain is to break the cycle as often as you can. Next time you have a craving don’t immediately give in, take a few minutes to think about your goal and your why as mentioned in the first bullet point. Think about what you will feel like if you give in and what you will feel like if you don’t give in, think about a healthy alternative you could have instead. This process breaks the normal pattern of unconsciously seeing food and eating food without any thought. Make the association of pain if you binge or eat things that aren’t healthy very vivid in your mind. Please don’t get this confused with shaming yourself. Don’t call yourself names for even thinking of giving in, this will likely increase negative feelings that lead you to binge/emotional eat in the first place. Start looking at this from a logical point of view that says you’ve created a pattern and changing it takes time but it is possible. Rather than from an emotional point of view that paints you as this awful person with no will power. Always be gentle with yourself as you would with a good friend. Knowing your triggers is also important, if watching TV triggers you to want to eat an entire bag of chips, break the cycle by turning off the TV. Read instead, sing, dance, YELL and SCREAM. Do ANYTHING that will break the cycle.
- Don’t go on a diet: A diet is usually a short-term way of eating to achieve a very specific goal. If you eat in a way that is not sustainable long term, there will usually be a breaking point where you just give in and binge. Or the day your diet ends you return to your old ways of disordered eating. It’s better to find a sustainable, healthy way to eat to reach your goals even if it will take longer vs thinking you can reach your goals quicker with a low calorie diet that will only cause you to eventually crash. Don’t think in terms of diet, think in terms of health.
- Change your mindset: Don’t look at a change in your eating as all the things you are giving up instead think about all the good you are gaining: Self-control, better health. When you eat a healthy meal really think about how its fueling your body for the better. Avoid the “all or nothing” mindset. A little slip doesn’t have to become a big slip”. If you’re sad and you end up eating a few slices of pizza because you think it will comfort you, don’t be down on yourself which may lead to you thinking you might as well just eat what you want for the rest of the week and start again on Monday” mode. Every minute is a chance to do the right thing. And anytime you break your cycle is a step towards reprogramming your brain.
Once you implement these strategies all you have to do is be consistent. If you relapse don’t be judgemental towards yourself because it’s an inevitable part of the process. Just pick up where you left off! Be curious about your own mind and its patterns and habits and cravings! All of this doesn’t mean you should never have another comfort meal or eat sweets, but do it in a way that is mindful and that makes sense for you and your goals. Ask yourself am I making this decision from my higher self which might look like: I’ve been eating really clean these last couple of weeks and so I’ll allow myself a to have a burger and a slice of cake at my friend’s birthday this weekend. Or is the decision coming from your lower self which might look like: I know I said I was going to make healthier choices but I’m too tired to cook so I’ll order a pizza and just start eating healthy again on Monday. You can also give yourself a fighting chance by always having healthy options on hand and not keeping unhealthy food at home.
If you have issues with binge eating or emotional eating feel free to reach out to me, because I’ve been there and no how difficult it can be to overcome without support.
