5 reasons why you are binge eating and how to stop.
Do you want to stop binge eating and lose weight?
Does it seem like that the harder you try to diet, the more you binge and obsess about food, and you have no energy left for anything else?
When we talk about binge eating, we are talking about eating a relatively large amount of food quickly. The number of calories and time you spend eating them is relative to what might be a binge to some, maybe a meal to others.
For me, what constituted binge eating was how I felt while eating a large amount of food. The food was always outside of my eating plan and consisted of bad or off-limit treats that I'd been depriving myself of. I felt frenzied and out of control, often followed by a euphoric high that accompanied eating all this naughty food that I wasn't allowed.
Afterwards, I'd feel guilt and shame. I'd then restrict over-exercise, purge, take laxatives or starve myself the next day to try and undo all the damage I believed I'd caused by giving in to temptation?
Does this sound like you? I've now been free of binge eating for many years and wanted to share with you what worked for many of my clients and myself. Read on to discover the 5 top reasons I think you may be binge eating and what you can do to avoid a future binge eating episode.
Don't wait too long to eat
When your blood sugar dips too low, the lack of fuel to your brain can make you unfocused, stressed and cranky and more likely to reach for a bowl of smarties rather than something healthy. Quite often, we 'try' to be good and use willpower and go through periods without eating.
There is a trendy thing called intermittent fasting now where it seems like you have permission to starve, but this is not good if you already suffer from binge eating and are not eating a balanced diet, including essential macros.
I used to wake up and see how long I could go without eating, and then when I got hungry would drink gallons of diet coke to fill me up or eat an apple and yoghurt the whole day.
This is an incredibly unhealthy way to live, and I used to have the worst mood swings ever! Instead, fuel your body with substantial meals throughout the day, meals that contain protein and good fats. This will really satiate you at a cellular level.
Try a breakfast of bacon and eggs or an avocado with a poached egg and smoked salmon or mackerel, maybe a veggie omelette. Oatmeal bowl topped with nut butter and seasonal fruit. Lunch could be a chicken salad, sushi followed by a fruit salad, or a veggie burrito. Please take a look at my Pinterest boards.
There are some really great visuals and recipes for healthy food. If you are vegan, there is a ton of inspiring tips here.
You're too strict with your diet
You're on a strict eating list and restrict your favourite foods but end up craving them, and you end up breaking down and bingeing. I used to start with a small healthy breakfast of fruit and yoghurt, and then eat a small healthy lunch like a wrap and then have a sorry excuse for a mid-afternoon snack.
I was pretty hungry and cranky all-day food was constantly on my mind. Now I craved unhealthy stuff even more than normal (which is your body's natural response to starvation). By the time dinner rolled around, all I wanted to eat was pasta or a pizza, but that wasn't in the diet plan, so instead, I would eat a salad which left me unsatisfied.
As the night crept on, my hunger only grew even though I had finished eating the entire day worth of food. In my attempt not to sabotage all my effort.
I would have a piece of fruit to curb my hunger. Indeed, this 100-calorie piece of fruit wouldn't push me over the edge, and yet 30 minutes later, I was back in the kitchen looking for more tiny bites to eat to try and satisfy my raging hunger, so I had a rice cake and a handful of almonds indeed these little snacks won't undo my entire day now it's 10:30 at night. I'm ready for bed, but then my stomach grumbles and my body starts craving more food.
Now I'm in front of the fridge pulling out last night's leftovers. In eating the entire thing, it was probably around 1000 calories which put me well over an average calorie intake for the day, plus it happened at night. I created a ton of unnecessary stress and wasted willpower trying to resist the foods my body wanted in the first place. This is what binge eating is.
Instead, why don't you eat balanced meals throughout the day and give your body what it needs? Your body needs fats/protein/carbs/EFA’s ( essential fatty acids). Take a look at my Pinterest board to learn more about how to balance macros and portion control. Also, include your fave foods into your diet using the 80/20 method, eat well 80% of the time and splurge 20% of the time. Its called balance.
Depression
Feelings of despair, desperation and apathy can lead to binge eating. They can lead to drug abuse or alcoholism. The depressed person wants to feel something. Anything and food can trigger a response. It is also your friend in hard times.
It comforts you and makes you feel good while at the same time, numbing the feelings that made you feel low in the first place. Often depression goes hand in hand with disordered eating. As one of the symptoms of depression is low self-esteem, this self-hatred then compounds itself when you restrict your food and shame that binge eating is just another way to get trapped in the diet binge cycle.
If you suffer from depression, there are many ways you can alleviate this and its too vast a subject to write down all the methods and ways I do this with my clients. One of the most powerful ways to help with depression is EFT tapping (emotional freedom technique). It’s probably one of the most successful healing modalities in my practice. It works by reducing the flight or fight response.
Tapping on specific energy meridians on the face and body activates the area of the brain called the amygdala, responsible for the fight or flight and permanently reduces the stress response.
My clients are so shocked when they see results in just one 90 min session. You can find free utube videos online, or you can book a 121 session with me here. Try to have a support network around you, finding someone you can talk to or vent to when you feel low.
Your diet can also play a massive role in depression. Processed junk food, crisps, pastries, ready meals are so nutritionally devoid. Read this article for more info on how to eat for depression. If you need some help in this area, I also offer a coaching package centred around anxiety and depression. Take a look here.
Trauma
Binge eating can be a way to cope with trauma. It could also be a form of punishment or even self-harm for those who deal with a lot of internal and external hatred resulting from their trauma, physical or sexual abuse, assault.
A Life-threatening accident, Violent or accidental death of a loved one, Seeing a severe crime such as murder or rape or being the victim of that. It can be a form of escapism, just like drugs or alcohol. It numbs the pain. I can really relate to this, and what helped me was a mixture of therapy and counselling, and then I discovered EFT, in which I'm now a practitioner. Other ways to deal with trauma could be cognitive behavioural therapy, EMDR.
Lean on your loved ones. Identify friends or family members for support. If you feel ready to discuss the traumatic event, you might talk to them about your experience and feelings. You can also ask loved ones to help you with household tasks or other obligations to relieve some of your daily stress.
Face your feelings. It’s normal to want to avoid thinking about a traumatic event. But not leaving the house, sleeping all the time, isolating yourself from loved ones and using substances to escape reminders are not healthy ways to cope over time.
Though avoidance is normal, too much of it can prolong your stress and keep you from healing. Gradually, try to ease back into a normal routine. (Support from loved ones or a mental health professional can help a lot as you get back in the groove.)
Prioritize self-care. Do your best to eat nutritious meals, get regular physical activity and a good night’s sleep. And seek out other healthy coping strategies such as art, music, meditation, relaxation and spending time in nature. Be patient. Remember that it’s normal to have a strong reaction to a distressing event. Take things one day at a time as you recover.
Self-sabotage
Creating healthy habits can be challenging to start with because we tend to fall back to our familiar but unpleasant comfort zone for binge eating. Why do we self-sabotage when we have such great intentions? It's because of a few reasons, lack of self-work, scared of leaving your comfort zone, sometimes change is really scary.
Because our body is used to the comfortable bubble we have created, it creates ways to sabotage new habits for fear of success. You'll have to believe that you can enjoy life be strong and happy, all while eating normally.
Please read this article for more reasons why we self-sabotage. The best way I have found to alleviate self-sabotage is by finding out why I'm doing it in the first place.
I have created a handy and free food journal that can help track your eating and improve your food relationship. It will also help you connect the dots in your eating patterns, and if you self sabotage, once you know the emotions behind your eating behaviours, you can address them better. I use a mixture Of NLP and EFT for getting rid of self-sabotaging actions. You can also listen to subliminal sleep hypnosis.
There are many that you can find on youtube that are free. Subliminal messages are powerful because you can access your subconscious mind while you are in a hypnotic state. It is our subconscious mind that makes us self sabotage.
Your brain produces five different kinds of brain waves, each of which operates at a different speed from fastest to slowest: gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta. While sleeping, your brain is in a theta and delta state. For hypnosis to be effective, you need to be in those states.
Habits are embedded in our subconscious minds. Subliminal messages work through a process in which external sensory stimuli work to trigger reactions without noticing the signals. This is a great article explaining this in more detail.
Break the cycle that’s holding you back
If you're a binge eater, you can put your body through an insurmountable amount of stress. Start apologising to your body for everything you have put it through, finding compassion for yourself, knowing that you punish yourself so severely for eating food. You really owe it to yourself to get to the core root of why this is happening in your life.
Be kind, compassionate and patient with yourself. This process takes time, and none of these methods is an overnight fix. It took me years to figure all this out, and I trained as an eating psychology coach, which was a huge turning point for me.
You will be eating for the rest of your life its time to release the struggle and live life without the drama of food and deprivation. Let me short track you to success and help you achieve the results right now. If you would like to work with me and stop self-sabotage and binge eating, drop me an email info@kamsokhi.com.
Download my free food journal its a non - diet tool to record observations of what you eat and circumstances associated with your eating. It will provide clues as to why you reach for food and what’s really driving your behaviour.
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