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Marijuana and Binge Eating Recovery

in Alcohol, Anxiety, Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, bulimia, Calories, Cravings, eating disorder recovery, Emotions, Habits, Health, hunger, hunger and fullness, marijuana, mindfulness, Self-Control, stop overeating, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

In podcast episode 112: Marijuana Use and Binge Eating, we explored the connection between marijuana use, overeating, and binge eating, and we encouraged you to determine if marijuana is right for you in binge eating recovery. I encourage you to listen to the full episode, but I also wanted to turn it into a blog post as well, for those who learn better though reading. This is a transcription, but I streamlined certain parts to make it easier to follow.

Intro: Why are we talking about marijuana and binge eating recovery?

Marijuana often has the effect of stimulating appetite and the desire for food. My boyfriend Jeff pointed out to me that in some cases, this can look and feel a lot like binge eating episodes. Because marijuana use is on the rise and the laws are changing to make it much more mainstream and accessible, I think this is something really important to talk about as it relates to recovery. Jeff and I decided to share own experiences and thoughts on this topic to help you determine if and how marijuana fits into your own life and recovery.

Jeff and I say this a few times during the conversation that follows, but I also want to say here that we are not medical professionals; and because marijuana is often used for medical reasons, please consult your doctor about your specific situation, needs, and health concerns. Also know that Jeff and I do share some details about overeating episodes as far as food and calories…not overly so, but I just wanted to let you know that upfront.

With all of that being said, I’ll go ahead and share our conversation:

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What sparked this conversation about marijuana and binge eating?

Kathryn:

Jeff was here last time on the show to talk about the new edition of Brain over Binge, and we had such a great conversation, and then he had an idea for this episode, so now he’ll explain what we’re going to discuss and how it came about.

Jeff:

I had my medical marijuana card, and I would smoke and partake in medical marijuana, and one of the things I found is when I was high, I would overeat sometimes, and I would like really overeat…I mean 5,000 calories overeat. It was really interesting because I remember going through it, and then bringing it up to you, and asking, “Is this binge eating?”

I curious if this was what you experienced or others in your realm have experienced?

Kathryn:

Yes, I remember you calling me one time after you had overeaten after smoking marijuana and wondering if this was what I experienced as a binge eater. And thought that was so interesting because in a lot of ways what you described to me seemed very similar.

To be honest, I haven’t really smoked much pot, so it’s not something I’ve personally experienced, but I’ve personally experienced the binge eating side of it. So just talking about our experiences and how they line up has been interesting.

Jeff:

The majority of the time I ever would take marijuana was just to help me sleep. But sometimes, every once in a blue moon, I would do it earlier in the night. And then, you know, you kind of come down off the high and that’s when you “have the munchies.”

Kathryn:

We’re here today with this as a topic, but we’re not experts on this. I’ve done some research and I’m going to talk about some of that research, but we almost have more questions than answers at this point. But, we want to bring up this topic so you can figure out what’s best for you at this point because there’s really no doubt that marijuana increases your appetite.

I mean, there are people who have different experiences, but as a general rule, statistically most people do experience that increase of appetite, and most people will call it the munchies. We basically want to help you determine if marijuana fits for you right now in your recovery from bingeing. So to get this conversation rolling a little more, Jeff and I are going to compare our experience—him smoking pot and me as a binge eater. And we’re going to talk about some of the ways they’re similar and some of the ways they’re different.

Marijuana creates an experience that is similar to that of a binge eater

Jeff:

Yeah, I think it’s interesting too because as you looked it up, they said, “well, no, marijuana doesn’t make you binge eat, but it can make you overeat.” And it just seems like that’s semantics. Like how are you really defining that? Isn’t that different for every individual and can’t anything become a habit?

Kathryn:

Oh for sure.

Jeff:

I just find that the book definition is not necessarily real life.

Kathryn:

That’s a good point. I feel like a lot of articles that I’ve found said pretty emphatically that binge eating is not the same as marijuana-induced overeating. But then you go on to read the descriptions and they’re pretty much the same.

Clinically binge eating is defined as eating within a discreet period of time, a lot more food than a normal person would eat under similar circumstances. …And Jeff is pointing at himself right now—so is that what you feel like you do? You’re eating an abnormal amount of food within a discreet period of time?

Jeff:

Yes, and I remember describing it to you and I had the light bulb go off more when I said, “there was no bottom, there was no full.” I remember that night in particular, I ate, uh, pizza, which I love pizza, it’s like my favorite thing in the world. And usually I can eat two slices and be fine and move on, but I think I ate like a whole large pizza by myself. I’m not too proud.

Kathryn:

We laugh, but if a binge eater said that we would not be laughing.

Jeff:

Well, and I’m laughing out of embarrassment. I remember feeling there was no bottom, I could just eat, eat, eat. And I remember I didn’t just eat the pizza, I ate more salty and sweet snacks. I don’t think I was exaggerating, I probably ate around 5,000 calories. I mean, I ate everything in my fridge, I went to the cupboard and ate more salty and sweet snacks, and I could find no bottom.

And sugar is my worst because I love sugar and nothing makes me feel worse than overindulging sugar. I get really sick. But I think I talked to you or I went to bed, but I remember lying in bed and just being so sick, and just pain in my stomach. And you go through it in your mind like, “what in the hell did I do? I didn’t need to eat all that.” I knew I had enough calories for the day but there was, there was no bottom, there was no full. I could just keep consuming and enjoying the consumption until you get to that point where you’re lying in the bed, and I remember just being so sick, I couldn’t go to sleep because I was in so much pain.

Kathryn:

Anyone out there listening, from what Jeff is describing, I’m sure you can relate to that as a binge eater and that feeling of just never finding your bottom, never feeling full, and feeling like you could continue to eat and eat and never feel satisfied. And also just the feeling of being out of control and then the regret after, and feeling physically awful.

So the experiences really line up, you know, they seem very similar. And I was saying that we were laughing about it before, but I don’t think it’s just us. I think on a cultural level we hear “the munchies” and it’s just something kind of funny that people do, and it’s not taken seriously. Whereas, you know, binge eating is considered to be a “mental disorder.” So a lot of the resources I’ve found said, “oh, bingeing is not the same as the munchies because binging is a mental disorder.”

Marijuana and binge eating both create a brain “glitch” that enhances appetite and desire for food

Jeff:

But is it a mental disorder or is it just habit it brought on by urges?

Kathryn:

Good point, because a lot of my work focuses on that and focuses on helping people see that it’s not because of these other psychological problems, it’s not because of emotions, it’s because you have this glitch in your brain and this habit that you’ve developed over time that is bringing on an experience just like the experience that you’re talking about Jeff.

Jeff:

Yeah, and I think you did in your research, because I’d be really curious…I, for the most part, when I did marijuana, I always liked to smoke it. I smoked it not with flower, but the vape pen. Flower can really affect your lungs. Vape pen supposedly doesn’t affect your lungs as much. You get higher quicker, so it hits a lot sooner. And, and I felt that if I smoked it then I could be high and I could control the level of highness that you’re getting because you take one puff or two puffs. But the thing with the edibles, you don’t know necessarily what you’re getting. I think it’s gotten a lot better now that it’s in medical, you know, like what’s five milligrams versus 10 milligrams.

You don’t necessarily know how long it’s going to take to hit, and like I said, the majority of the time when I would partake in marijuana, it’s to go to sleep. It kind of shuts the brain out to relax, and that’s when I would do it. So I didn’t want to take the gummy, wait an hour, “oh, did it work? or did it not? do I then have to wait an hour to take another gummy. So that’s why I always did the vape pen and they hit differently. So, my question to you is: is there any correlation between taking marijuana through either flower or vape pen versus an edible? Is there any correlation between overeating and how you take marijuana?

Kathryn:

Jeff, that’s a really good question, and it’s not something that I know at this point. I mean, my research has not been extensive. This is a topic that, you know, we’ve gotten interested in and I would love to explore more and talk about more one day. But what I do know is that the active ingredient in marijuana, the THC, does stimulate appetite. Some mechanisms by which that happens—some research shows that it increases the smell and taste of food, so it actually makes food more pleasurable. Do you find that to be the case?

Jeff:

Oh, I think it enhances everything.

Kathryn:

Yes, and it also stimulates specific neurons that drive overeating. It basically switches the brain wiring and sends strong messages of hunger, even though, like you talked about, you’re not necessarily actually hungry.

Jeff:

It was an interesting place to be, because I remember being very conscious of the fact that I should be full and I’m not full.

Kathryn:

It’s lines up so much with the experience of a binge eater because, as I talk about in my books, bingeing is also a brain wiring issue. Your brain is malfunctioning, if that’s the right word, because of a habit, and also because of survival instincts. When you diet, you put your brain in this state where your body does shut down your fullness because that’s what you need to survive. You don’t need that “off” switch. You don’t need to feel full if you’re starving. So, it’s kind of a similar thing. If you’re dieting and really depriving the body, you’re not going to feel full in the same way that marijuana artificially shuts down that fullness signal. Does that make sense?

Jeff:

It does make sense. But it’s interesting too, I guess because you were saying that the THC specifically targets neurons in the brain—because with alcohol, which I honestly believe alcohol is worse than marijuana. It can damage your whole thought process, and doesn’t that lead to lessening inhibitions? The first thing alcohol goes after is judgment, and so if you have a predisposition to bingeing, wouldn’t alcohol consumption almost be worse? or about the same? I really don’t know, again, I have more questions than I do answers. I can only tell you my experience of marijuana…and yeah, most of it is great except for…

Kathryn:

Except for the bingeing. I mean, I would call it bingeing.

Are there ways to use marijuana in binge eating recovery without triggering out-of-control eating?

Jeff:

That’s what it felt like. I remember waking up the next day, again feeling the guilt, and that’s when I would just go back to smoking marijuana before I went to bed, because I can do it right before I go to bed, and then I’m in bed, and I’m not going to get up and go to the kitchen. I’m asleep, and I’m going to sleep through that period where there’s the comedown and you have the munchies as it were.

Kathryn:

That’s a good point for people to know—people who do smoke marijuana and are recovering from bingeing and really feel like they need the marijuana. I mean, some people are prescribed it for anxiety and for different conditions, and it has a use and it’s very helpful for some people. So, things like you’re saying as far as going to sleep and timing it right so that you avoid being awake for the time that your appetite is abnormal is a good tip.

Now, we’re of course not doctors, and speak to your doctor, but it is something to bring up—that you are also struggling with binge eating—and maybe you can come up with a plan to see how it can fit into your life without affecting your recovery.

Jeff:

Yes. And I’m not a doctor, but I still feel like marijuana is still being accepted in the medical professional arena. So as you talk to your general practitioner, I’m wondering what the reaction would be if you said, yeah, I’m recovering from bingeing and I also take marijuana. I’m curious, I don’t mean to go off on a rail here, but I still think it’s probably seen as a street drug. Though, again, in my arguments, I think alcohol would be a lot worse than marijuana.

Kathryn:

I’m glad you brought up alcohol because I do have a podcast on that (Episode 19: Should I Drink Alcohol While Trying to Stop Bingeing). But I basically advise people to really see how alcohol affects you personally, and it’s not the same across the board. I think it’s similar with marijuana in that you have to decide what’s right for you, but with alcohol, yes, it lowers your inhibitions.

Now for some people, those lower inhibitions lead to you acting on the habit, and lead to you having those out of control behaviors. But for some it doesn’t—it puts you in a state where maybe you’re not going to have urges to binge because you’re having pleasure from the alcohol and maybe you don’t want the pleasure of the food.

Jeff:

It is so different for each individual. Marijuana is going to affect each individual differently. How you smoke it or how ingest it, it’s going to affect people differently. Alcohol is going to affect people differently. I mean, I do drink alcohol, but I think it’s terrible for people. It’s poison that you put on your internal organs and on your brain, and there’s so many studies about how it rewires your brain and not for the better, and it slows you down.

And, you know, marijuana can have a lot of the same effects too on your neurons and, if you’re smoking it, on your lungs and capillaries and things of that nature when it comes to circulation. So I think the ideal situation is don’t do any of it, but it can have both beneficial and non-beneficial results for people.

Again, it’s just so individualized. You can’t make a general rule for everybody because it just affects people so differently. As I just told you, I’ve had that happen when I’ve overeaten a number of times—not every time I’ve taken it, but a number of times when I’ve taken it, and I can understand the correlation. So then I kind of change the habit because I don’t want to eat 5,000 calories and feel terrible. I try to set myself up for success. But I think it’s that individual journey where you’ve got to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.

The relationship between marijuana use and binge eating is nuanced

Kathryn:

Yeah, for sure. From what I’ve found, people are not saying in the research that marijuana use leads to binge eating disorder.They’re saying as a general rule on the whole, that’s not the case. But they’re actually saying the reverse is true in some studies—in that binge eaters are more likely to turn to marijuana, because of depression for example. Because of the stress that the binges cause in their life, they’re more likely to be using marijuana because of that.

So it’s interesting because that could lead to a spiral where you’re feeling depressed, so you either get prescribed marijuana or you start using marijuana and then you end up with these appetite increases that make things worse. So I do think the relationship is very nuanced and I’m sure there will be more studies that come out, but for now, I really recommend looking at the research for yourself and also just your personal experience.

Jeff:

Yeah and I think those things can be leaned into too much, especially when it comes to marijuana. I don’t know if I mentioned this in the last podcast, but I’m a veteran. So I went to Afghanistan and Iraq, I’m a combat veteran. And they’ll say, oh, for PTSD, you should smoke marijuana. I think when you’re reliant on anything external, it can lead to these habits. And as you write in your book, it’s breaking the habit and the urge.

I’ve seen my fellow soldiers just become dependent. Now it’s not a physical addiction, but again, as you articulate in your book, it’s not about a physical addiction. It’s about, you know, the mental addiction and the habit that you’re forming. If you need to smoke marijuana to get over the hump, you know, I’m not a doctor, but I would say that does work. But if you’re not doing some sort of meditation or some sort of other practices outside of it that you’re not reliant on an external thing (whether it be food, alcohol) then I don’t think that’s the right path as a whole.

Kathryn:

Yeah. Because it runs the same risk of you constantly using something external to deal with emotions and cope with emotions. And I think our society feeds into that, I mean, a lot of my book is focused on that. And when we have that in our minds—that substances are coping mechanisms, binge eating is a coping mechanism—and when we have that urge to do it, we think that we’re sort of justified in doing it, and that it’s going to help us, and that we have these deep reasons and these emotional needs that need to be fulfilled. Whether we’re turning to food, whether we’re turning to marijuana, it can just lead us down a terrible path.

Jeff:

And I think it’s interesting too, because one thing I really respect about you is your integrity. As you wrote your book, as you do these podcasts, you are your true self. I always respect how you present your arguments or present your point of view…one it’s just that, and as we’re talking here about marijuana, we’re obviously not saying this is the cure or the damage. It’s just, this is the experience and you do need to have that individual journey to figure this out.

Kathryn:

Yes, that’s a good point. I think some people are out there even promoting marijuana as a weight loss remedy…

Jeff:

Which is insane.

Kathryn:

But it seems to have a regulatory effect on our appetites overall, which again, I found very interesting because in the moment, it’s shutting down fullness, it’s making you have increased hunger. So I’m just throwing these ideas out there to say that the research is very, very nuanced.

But from Jeff’s experience, and you know, this is not just Jeff, this is so many people who consume this…you do get this out of control feeling and this out of control eating behavior. And I just don’t think that can be a good thing for people trying to recover from bingeing. I’m hesitant to say, “don’t do it” because there are people who find that the benefits outweigh the risks. But I just don’t see how it can be a good thing to put yourself in that state where you’re basically mimicking what the urge to binge does to people.

Jeff:

I’ve taken marijuana in a lot of different realms…we go to concerts, I’ll take marijuana, we’ll watch Seinfeld, I like to smoke marijuana sometimes. It’s an enjoyable activity when I do it, you know, safely and not driving and all those things. And at times it has caused me to binge, again, I’m saying bingeing, but I’m not trying to diminish anything, I’m not trying to minimize anything. Maybe what I have done is overeat and not binge. But it has at times led me to overeat and go through that process—not every time, but that’s something now I’m much more conscious of.

Advice for recovering binge eaters is different from advice for people who overeat after marijuana

Kathryn:

And I want to talk about that because when I was looking into this—and again, I’m not an expert, I keep saying that—but the recommendations for helping people overcome the urge to overeat after marijuana were very, very different from what you find for binge eaters.

So the recommendations for marijuana users dealing with the munchies were things like distract yourself, keep better food in the house. One of the big ones that hit me was like—realize that it’s all in your head, realize that it’s not real hunger, realize it’s just a brain glitch. It’s something going on with your neurons and your appetite mechanisms, but it’s not real. And honestly, that’s kind of what I teach people as far as bingeing.

You realize that this is a glitch in your brain, this is what I call neurological junk. It’s a habit. Your brain has created a pattern that your neurons have gotten into that’s firing, but it doesn’t mean that you’re actually hungry. It doesn’t mean you actually need those calories, and you basically have to ride it out and that is what the recommendation was to the marijuana users.

But then you go to binge eating and it’s like, “cope with your emotions,” and “learn to deal with depression.” And no one is telling that to someone who’s high having a brain glitch because they’re high, but they’re telling that to a binge eater who’s having a brain glitch for a variety of reasons—or because of dieting.

Jeff:

Well, use this or don’t use this, but it sounds like one of those persons is a victim and the other person is just going through a momentary lapse. And I think you would argue that you’re not a victim, you’re just going through that momentary lapse where you can overcome it. I don’t know if it was this in your book or you and I talking, but it was that no one tries to get spiritually whole to quit smoking.

Kathryn:

Oh yeah, same thing with marijuana, you don’t get spiritually whole to overcome the munchies.

Jeff:

Yeah. I think what was interesting though, because I’m recalling now, when I first started eating that pizza, it was, “oh, I’m starving.” I mean, it was real, and this is before we had the conversation for me to have that extra layer of consciousness over it. Because when I was eating, I felt like I needed to eat—like I was starving. To say, “oh, just sit down and you’ll be fine,” I would’ve said that is a lie.

I remember feeling, “oh my gosh, I have to eat.” And so I think after our conversation and kind of working through it, there is that next level of consciousness to where, when you do feel that way, I can say, “oh, okay, I’m going through this momentarily and it will subside,” and it kind of works, and it kind of goes away. But not that night! It was real, and there’s nothing that anybody could have told me to change my mind about that, until I was lying on my bed sick. Then I was like, what did I do?

Kathryn:

Yeah, the first time I binged due to being calorie restricted and being in a starvation state, yes, that was the experience. Even though I didn’t need thousands and thousands of calories (I needed normal meals, I needed nourishment over time, I didn’t need it all in that one sitting), if someone would’ve said, “this is not real,” I wouldn’t have believed them at the time. It was real. But once you get an understanding of what’s happening in the brain, once you understand those mechanisms, then you’re able to step back from that.

You can overcome binge urges and marijuana-induced desires to overeat

Jeff:

For whatever reason, it reminds me of like when you’ve had too much alcohol, you know not to drive. You become self-aware that okay, I’ve had too many, I’m not going to drive anymore. To me, it’s the same consciousness of, “okay, I’ve gotten high, I’m going to go through this period, it’s not going to last, and then I’ll be fine. And once you just do that, you kind of do develop that habit, and it just kind of goes away.

Kathryn:

That’s really interesting. So, do you feel like now—learning what you’ve learned about the brain and kind of how this happens and how it’s a brain glitch—do you feel like under the influence of marijuana, you’re still able to access that self-control?

Jeff:

Yes, and more so, I think it’s heightened my enjoyment of it because I’m focusing on the benefits and not the detriments of it. Because you can go through it, enjoy it, and realize, okay, this is a part, but that’s not the whole part. And you just kind of move past it.

Kathryn:

From your experience, and there’s probably research out there, how long does it take for that heightened desire to eat to go away?

Jeff:

You know, the clock moves very slowly when you’re high. I really can’t say, I would estimate, probably an hour.

Kathryn:

And I’m sure everyone is different as far as how long that would last. And, it’s not that you can’t eat anything—you know, if you’re hungry, eat something. But I think you have to go into it knowing that you’re not going to have a bottom.

I always advocate for people to make sure they eat enough, to make sure they don’t go hungry. So if you’re in this state and you feel hungry, absolutely eat something, but know that you’re not going to get the stop signal. So you have to choose basically with your higher brain, how much is enough. You have to choose with your eyes—like, looking at everything you ate, all the pizza, the different things, you know that’s too much food. So you basically have to visualize what’s enough, and use your rational capacity more than your internal mechanisms.

Jeff:

And you obviously know more about this than I do, but especially that night, the salts, the sweets—that just made it worse. It hits the right taste bud or the right neuron in your brain, and you go, oh yeah, that’s it.

What I’ve done, and I probably have done this subconsciously now that I think about it, is avoided those things. So I don’t go for the chips. I’ll go for the celery because I know I don’t want to eat that much of it—you know, celery and peanut butter, or I do a lot of apples and peanut butter.

Kathryn:

Yeah. It’s like when you’re in a state where you know you’re vulnerable, you choose foods that are not going to really stimulate those pleasure centers, really stimulate the appetite. And then that’s not a cure for bingeing because people can really binge on anything, but it’s just developing that extra layer of consciousness and supporting yourself better—not getting yourself into a situation where you’re just surrounded by salty and sweet snacks where you feel like you can’t control yourself.

I feel like we’ve covered this pretty thoroughly. I mean, I know there’s more we could talk about.

Jeff:

I feel like I was vry unhelpful…

Kathryn:

What do you mean?

Jeff:

I don’t feel like I provided any definitive answers…

Kathryn:

You’re not supposed to. I mean, I feel like you just describing your experience, it normalizes it for people. You’re a healthy man without an eating disorder and you can have something flip in your brain. You know, Jeff is in good shape, he eats a lot but not terribly unhealthy…and just to hear him talk about this experience of marijuana flipping the switch in his brain to kind of make him become a binge eater in the moment—whether or not we want to call it that—I hope it just gives you some level of comfort that you are not alone in these experiences that you have. And Jeff, would you like to say something to that?

Jeff:

I think that’s the really interesting part and I think that’s really what sparked this conversation. I told you about this experience and how it really related to the experience that you had when you were binge eating. And so I think it’s interesting to understand that anybody can be in these situations with different things, and so you do have to be that next level of conscious of your actions if you’re going to partake in marijuana.

Again, I think there are a lot of benefits to marijuana when it’s done safely. I think it’s just that you should understand how you’re going to react. And that’s just something I had to go through in my journey and again, talking with you about it.

Kathryn:

Yes, I think it points to, I guess a common humanity or a common way all of our brains work. Like in binge eating, people are often told, “oh, there’s something wrong with you, you know, this is your past, this is your childhood, this is because of deep reasons.” Whereas all you did was smoke pot to have this created in your brain—to have the appetite become dysregulated. So for whatever reason it’s happened to you the listener, just realize that it doesn’t mean you’re fundamentally broken.

Jeff:

Truth, that’s the absolute truth.

Kathryn:

And there are ways you can overcome it. And like Jeff says, we don’t want to minimize binge eating disorder and say, “oh, it’s just like the munchies.” No, there are differences here, but there are also some common elements, and we can learn from each other, and I hope you’ve learned from Jeff’s experience, and I appreciate you being here today.

Jeff:

Thank you so much for letting me be back on the show. I can’t wait to do it another year, hopefully, I’ll keep nagging you.

Kathryn:

I think it was May that we did the other show together, and I thought it was great. You asked me a bunch of questions about the new edition of Brain over Binge and yeah, it was by popular demand that you come back.

He kept asking, when are we going to do the marijuana show? And the thing is, I kept putting it off because I felt like I needed to become an expert on it before I came on and talked about it. But as I looked at the research, I feel like there’s more questions than answers. So we’re just coming on, you know, vulnerable, sharing our experiences, not knowing all the answers, but we hope that it’s been helpful.

Jeff:

I’ll never nag you again to be on your podcast.

Kathryn:

I’m sure that he’ll be back.

Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. I hope that it helped you have some of your own insights about the effect that marijuana or other substances may have on you as you let go of binge eating.

If you need some extra guidance, you can learn about the options available through BrainoverBinge.com/Subscribe.

There you can find information about the extensive self-paced online course, as well as the highly supportive structure of group coaching or one-on-one coaching with our amazing Brain over Binge coach Julie.

I look forward to talking to you again soon, and as always, I want to encourage you and remind you that you have the power to change your brain and live a binge free life.

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Brain over Binge Holiday Resources

in Alcohol, Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, binge free life, Blog, Coaching, Cravings, eating disorder recovery, Emotions, group coaching, Habits, Health, holidays, indulging in food, Meals, motivation, Overeating, overindulging, Processed foods, Resolutions, social events, stop dieting, stop overeating, Stress, Support, Trigger Foods, Triggers, urge to purge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

I wanted to put together a collection of blog posts, podcast episodes, and other resources to help you overcome challenges that may come up during the holidays. I hope what I’ve included below will guide you to have a binge-free holiday season (if you celebrate), or simply help you end the year with progress toward recovery.

Below you’ll find an image link to each post/episode/resource along with a short description. You can refer back to this post whenever you need some extra help.

Whether it’s a big holiday meal, or a simple dinner at home, you may find yourself struggling to end the eating. It can be tempting to keep going back for more, and before long, you may find yourself spiraling into a binge. This free track from the Brain over Binge course will give you ideas and strategies to approach holiday meals or everyday meals with more confidence.

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T️his blog post addresses dealing with challenging conversations about food and weight that often come up during this time of year. You can learn to react differently and not let what people say interfere with what you know is best for you.

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This episode addresses the tendency to link your ability to binge or not binge to the choices that you make. I want to encourage you to believe that you can choose not to binge regardless of your other holiday decisions.

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This blog post addresses the same topic as Episode 32 of the podcast (above). I wanted to include it here for those of you who would rather read than listen, and there are also a few new ideas in the blog post. The holidays are a great opportunity to teach your brain that binge eating is not an option in any situation.

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The holidays also provide many opportunities to drink alcohol, and you may wonder how that factors into recovery. In this episode, I talk about the effect that alcohol has on the higher and lower brain, and why drinking may make it more difficult to dismiss binge urges. You will learn how to make a good individual decision about whether or not to have alcohol.

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In this post, I address the tendency to give up on recovery in December and make a resolution to stop binge eating in January. I’ll help you change this harmful pattern, so that you can make progress toward freedom from binge eating now, rather than telling yourself you will start over in the new year.

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In this episode, I talk about motivation, and I also give you one of my coaching sessions that focuses on staying motivated to dismiss binge urges each day. You can use this coaching session during holidays or any day that you want to remind yourself why you want to avoid binge eating.

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This episode will help you stay on track to a binge-free life as we approach the new year. If you are going to end binge eating for good, you can’t turn back to restrictive behaviors come January. You can still focus on being healthier and improving yourself, but ensuring that you eat enough is a fundamental part of recovery.

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This blog post addresses a topic similar to what I discussed in podcast Episode 30 (above). The more reminders that dieting is not a healthy path, the better! I hope this post helps you realize that restricting your food will only lead to more problems.

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You can have help at your fingertips through the holidays (and beyond) with my online course. This course is self-paced and includes an app for only $18.99/month with no commitment. You’ll be able to access 8 lessons and over 120 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

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During the holidays, and whenever you need it, you can get support from Brain over Binge coach Julie and from others who are overcoming this habit. The Brain over Binge group includes a forum that is open 24/7, group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.

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You can also work on your holiday challenges (and other recovery issues) privately with coach Julie. You can book a 45-minute Zoom session where Julie will help you change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from binge eating.

Thinking Too Much About Food?

in Anxiety, Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, bulimia, Cravings, Dieting, Food Addiction, food thoughts, Habits, Health, Meals, Self-Control, Sugar, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

Is food constantly in your thoughts? Even if you’re not having urges to binge, are you incessantly thinking about eating?

This post will help you learn to manage these bothersome food thoughts.

You can listen to a audio version of what follows at BrainoverBinge.com/subscribe (Scroll down on that page until you see the audio except from course Lesson 8: Food Thoughts)

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In addition to your struggles with bingeing, you may feel like food takes up too much of your brain space. If you’re around food, you may have a hard time focusing on anything else. Even if you’re not necessarily thinking about binge eating or feeling that impulse to eat very large quantities of food, you might be thinking about what’s in your refrigerator or what you’re going to eat next.

You may be at work and trying to get things done, and all you can think about is getting your lunch, even if you’re not hungry yet. If this is the case for you, you may find yourself eating just to make those incessant thoughts about eating go away. Eating might feel like it just quiets your mind for a minute—but then once you’re done eating—it’s possible that more thoughts start to pop up about what you’re going to have next. It can feel exhausting to be constantly thinking about eating or trying to talk yourself out of eating. Understandably, you want to be able to concentrate on the rest of your life and not just concentrate on food.

It’s definitely not your fault that you’re feeling this way and that you’re having these incessant thoughts, but it’s important to accept that this is simply the way that your brain is wired at this point in time. Getting upset at the food thoughts, or strongly wishing they would go away, or getting upset at yourself is only going bring more attention to these food thoughts. So as much as you can, try not to react emotionally to these thoughts. Notice them with a level of detachment, so that you’re observing these thoughts without so much judgment.

As far as why your brain seems to be so zoned in on food, there could be various reasons for it. One factor could be a natural tendency based in your genetics that does make you more attracted to food. Everyone is different, and some people do find food more rewarding than others. This doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. It’s just part of a normal variation. The reason that you’re so zoned in on food could also have to do with past dieting and the fact that your lower brain is still trying to protect you—by encouraging you to eat as much as possible.

This fixation on food could have something to do with conditioning from childhood—if you were constantly given food—and now your body and brain still expects that constant supply of food. It’s possible that a partial cause could be some of the types of food that you’re eating, which may be causing drops in blood sugar and therefore some thoughts about getting more food to get your blood sugar back up. Another cause could be that the binge eating itself has trained your brain to make food a priority, even when you’re not bingeing.

But whatever the theoretical cause may be, you can learn to redirect your focus and change this habit of thinking about food too much—and if the cause has anything to do with the types of food you’re eating, you can look at that as well. Even if the cause has some of its roots in you being more genetically attracted to food and rewarding experiences, that does not mean you’re destined to be constantly consumed with food thoughts. Knowing your tendencies helps you deal with those tendencies appropriately. Once you’re self-aware of whatever your susceptibilities may be, you can take steps to help yourself.

For example, if you’re naturally prone to anxiety or worrisome thoughts, you can be prepared for them and you can use strategies for calming yourself down in difficult moments. If you’re naturally more prone to focus on food, then you can be prepared for the thoughts to come up and you can use strategies that help you turn your attention elsewhere. This tendency is probably very common, but it does not have to interfere with your life. Everyone is susceptible to something, but your genetics and your brain-based tendencies are not your destiny. Your brain is plastic, it can change. You can teach it to function at its best, and take advantage of your strengths—and you can simply be aware of some of the thoughts and the behaviors that you’re at risk of engaging in, and then take steps to prevent that.

So far, I’ve basically explained some of the possible reasons you may be focused on food and why it’s important to accept it, and also believe that change is possible. I’ve also mentioned that learning to refocus your attention will be very important to changing this tendency. Through the rest of this discussion, I’m going to give you some suggestions for learning to shift your attention away from food and onto other things.

My first suggestion is to set the proper expectations.

Even when you bring your food thoughts down to a normal level, you should still expect to have food thoughts. Normal eaters enjoy eating, they look forward to eating, they certainly may have thoughts that pop into their head while they’re working or doing other things about what they’re going to eat next. They’ll probably look forward to their lunch break or look forward to getting home for dinner. Normal eaters also have feelings of desire surface when they have these food thoughts. They may think about how delicious something is going to be. They’ll definitely look forward to eating a great dessert. If their favorite food is around at a party, they may be thinking about it more than they would like to.

These examples are just to show you that you do not need to label all of your food thoughts as problematic. It’s normal to have a desire for food and thoughts about food. But I want that to have its proper place in your life and not feel like it’s taking over your mind. You’ll want to get to a place where your thoughts about food feel more fleeting, and less incessant. You’re certainly capable of bringing your food thoughts down to a level that feels much healthier to you, but make sure you’re not expecting them to go away completely.

My second suggestion for refocusing your attention is to notice when you’re not thinking about food.

I know it can sometimes feel that you’re thinking about food all the time, but I know that there are moments in the day when you’re not thinking about it. There are times when you’re focusing fully on your work or on something else in your life. I want you to notice that and see that your brain does have the capacity to go in other directions. Now, I realize that looking for those moments that you’re not thinking about food and then possibly saying, “Wow, this is great. I’m not thinking about food right now” can possibly have the unintended effect of making you then think about food. So try to do this in a way that you’re just observing your mind in a relaxed way, instead of constantly judging whether or not you’re thinking about food in that particular moment.

My third suggestion is to notice when your mind wanders onto other things that are not food, and then realize that the food thoughts don’t have to have so much significance.

I’m going to explain what I mean by this. Right now you may be thinking that when your mind wanders, food is the only thing that it’s turning to. But when you step back and observe your mind, you’ll notice that you have wandering thoughts of other things as well—but the difference is that you don’t take those other thoughts so seriously. You likely don’t get mad at those other thoughts that your mind is creating. You don’t criticize yourself for having those thoughts. You don’t think those other thoughts mean that you’re diseased or damaged. You just let those thoughts come and go.

Try to view your food thoughts as just one type of countless thoughts that run through your head during the day. When you view the food thought just like any other thought, you’ll see that you can have the food thoughts running through your head and still do what you need to do in your life—because that’s exactly what you do when you’re experiencing other types of thoughts.

My last suggestion for redirecting your attention is to simply refocus, refocus, refocus.

When you notice the food thoughts, you can redirect your attention back to the present moment and focus on whatever you’re doing or whatever you want to focus on. You may need to refocus a lot at first, but it will get easier over time. You could compare this to a meditation practice. When you do a meditation practice, your mind naturally wanders, and then you bring your attention back to a focal point or a mantra. And when you first start a meditation practice, you may need to refocus your attention on the mantra or on the focal point hundreds of times, even within just a minute—but it gets easier over time, and your brain starts to stay more and more focused on what you want to be focusing on.

It’s the same with the food thoughts. You may need to bring your attention back from the food thoughts onto something else many, many times before it starts to become more effortless and the food thoughts start appearing less and less. Your brain learns that the thoughts you focus attention on are the ones that are important to you, and will keep producing those thoughts over and over; but when you stop focusing attention on certain thoughts, the brain will learn that those thoughts have less significance to you, and the food thoughts will stop being so intrusive in your life.

One last thing I want to mention here is that, if you are struggling with incessant food thoughts—just make sure that you are eating enough food. Everything I’ve said here assumes that the problem does not lie in current restriction. If you are restricting and you start nourishing yourself well, you’ll likely find that a lot of these food thoughts simply go away on their own.

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More help:

If you want extra guidance as you learn to develop a healthy relationship with exercise, food, and weight, here are some resources for additional support:

Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, weekly group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private session with coach Julie. She will help you change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

5 Tips for a Healthy Relationship with Exercise

in Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, bulimia, Calories, eating disorder recovery, Exercise, fitness, Habits, Health/by Kathryn Hansen

I want to give you 5 tips for incorporating exercise in a healthy way during binge eating recovery and beyond. If you have a history of using exercise to purge or to try to control your weight in a way that is harmful to your body, you may feel confused about how to exercise now that you are focused on being free of the struggle with food. My goal is to help you learn to exercise in a way that benefits you, and doesn’t cause any physical, mental, or emotional harm.

[Before reading this, know that you should get your doctor’s approval for any exercise routines that you’re incorporating into your life.]

Tip 1: Ask yourself: Is my exercise an unhealthy compulsion or a healthy habit?

It’s important to make this distinction because even healthy habits have some similarities to unhealthy compulsions. When you develop a healthy habitual behavior, you will have urges to perform that behavior (for example, you feel compelled to brush your teeth). It’s okay to feel driven toward something that’s healthy for you, and this includes feeling driven toward exercise. I want you to look at your desire to exercise and ask yourself: Is my brain encouraging me toward something beneficial (as a healthy habit) or something harmful (as an unhealthy compulsion)?

You may find it difficult not to exercise, but that doesn’t always mean it’s an unhealthy compulsion. However, if you feel you absolutely have to exercise even when you are extremely tired, sick, or injured for example, then this is clearly in the territory of an unhealthy compulsion. Just do some self-observation and self-reflection and see if you can sense the difference when it comes to your own exercise. Here are some additional questions you can ask yourself to gain clarity:
Are my exercise patterns taking over my life?
Do my exercise patterns prevent me from doing other things that I want to do?
Does my exercise take up too much time that I’d rather be spending elsewhere?
Does my exercise take me away from my relationships or my family and friends too much?
Does thinking about exercise take up too much of my mental space?

If you feel like your exercise is an unhealthy compulsion, it doesn’t mean you have to completely give it up. It means you need to alter your routines and mindset to bring it back into the healthy-habit category.

Tip 2: Use exercise as just one tool in managing your health.

Exercise is just one single aspect of your overall health, and there are so many other things to consider. This is not to overwhelm you, but to help you reduce any overemphasis you may be putting on exercise. When you think about the other factors that can affect health and weight (for example: stress, sleep, relationships, career, eating, mood, environment), it makes you realize that you don’t need to obsess about any one factor, but instead work toward a balance.

There has been a pervasive cultural idea that weight results from an overly simplistic equation of calories in – calories out. When you operate on this assumption, it can make exercise seem vitally important as half of that equation. But it’s been proven by now that our bodies, weight, and metabolism are much more complex than that. Nevertheless, when you try to use exercise as a way to “burn calories” to try to control weight, you can get in a mental rut of calculating calories in/calories out, and this obsessive mindset takes any joy and stress-relief out of exercise.

However, when you stop using exercise to “offset” your eating, you can return it to its proper place in your life—as just one factor in maintaining overall health. And a healthy body can much more easily arrive at and maintain a weight that is natural and normal, and that weight is unique to each person.

Tip 3: Don’t use exercise to “compensate”

You may be in the habit of overexercising after binge eating or after eating what you think is too much. I don’t want you to criticize yourself for that, but it’s important to move away from using exercise as a compensatory behavior. Sometimes our bodies may naturally compensate, meaning that when we eat more, we may end up with some extra energy and a desire to move more, and that’s okay. But, when we’re not listening to our bodies, but instead to a harsh mindset that says we must “undo the damage of eating,” then we are going down a dangerous path.

You’ve likely trained yourself to have an urge to overexercise after overeating or binge eating, but you no longer have to follow that unhealthy urge. You can take a step back and realize you don’t have to be driven by those old habitual patterns.

Tip 4: Eat enough to support your exercise

You don’t need to do any obsessive tracking of your food intake, but if you are exercising, you can’t eat as if you’re not exercising. Exercise naturally increases hunger and our fuel requirements, and you never want to ignore that.

Don’t try to get by with as little food as possible; instead, give yourself plentiful proteins, healthy fats, and goods quality carbohydrates, as well as any other foods you enjoy. Do your best to nourish yourself to support whatever exercise routine you’re doing. Eating adequately is a big part of the Brain over Binge approach, and when you consider what eating adequately means to you, it’s important to take your exercise routine into account.

Tip 5: Don’t compare yourself to others

Try to find your own balance and what works for you. There is not only one right way when it comes to exercise, and the amount that works for you will depend on factors like age and lifestyle. Think about how different exercises, in different amounts and intensities, make you feel—without worrying about what other people are doing or promoting. It’s about tuning in to your own body and also knowing your own unique circumstances.

That being said, I think there are also some objective and common-sense standards of what is “too much” exercise. For example, in Brain over Binge, when I talk about how I exercised for three to seven hours on the days after binges, anyone would look at that and agree that is unhealthy and out of the range of normal. If your exercise amount is more of a gray area, try thinking about it as if someone you love was doing that amount of exercise. Would you think it is too much? Would you tell them that you believe it is unhealthy? While avoiding comparison, try to start treating yourself with the same compassion and kindness you would give to someone else. Engage in some honest self-observation and self-reflection when deciding what works for you, knowing that you can always adjust if necessary.

I hope these 5 tips will give the simple guidance you need to start using exercise as self-care, and not self-punishment.

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More help:

If you want extra guidance as you learn to develop a healthy relationship with exercise, food, and weight, here are some resources for additional support:

I Don’t Know How to Eat!

in Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, Calories, eating disorder recovery, Health, hunger and fullness, Intuitive Eating, intuitive eating for binge eating, Meals, Nutrition, Overeating, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

As you work on ending binge eating, do you find yourself saying, I don’t know how to eat? Feeling confused about how to approach normal eating might create overwhelm and cause you to want to give up on recovery. Today, I’m going to talk about dropping the I don’t know thoughts around food. I want to help you stop telling yourself that you don’t know how to make eating choices, and help you start feeling more confident in your food decisions.

Why It Feels Like You Don’t Know How to Eat in Binge Eating Recovery

The I don’t know how to eat thoughts likely seem very believable and true right now, but you can learn to overcome them. It’s necessary to overcome them because you will need the essential ability to make food choices throughout your life. Deciding what, when, how, and where to eat is something you will always need to do many times every day. It’s completely understandable if that feels impossible right now, because eating likely has not come naturally to you for a long time. You’ve probably spent months, years, or even decades not only binge eating, but also trying to follow certain diets, or meal plans, or fasting regimens, or specific food rules or requirements.

Restrictive dieting and binge eating can definitely make you lose touch with your innate ability to simply make food decisions that feel right in the moment and then move on with your life. If you’ve followed my blog or podcast, or read my books, you know that in order to recover from binge eating, it’s vital to give up restrictive dieting. However, when you do this and no longer have a “diet” to follow, it can lead to you feeling lost. You may sit down at meals and wonder how much is “normal” or how much is too much, or you may overthink your body’s signals of hunger and fullness. You may worry about certain foods making you gain weight or worry that certain foods might lead to urges to binge. You may even be concerned if you choose healthy foods or turn down unhealthy foods because you want to make sure you’re not depriving yourself. You may feel uneasy about what you see other people eating or not eating, and you may think you simply don’t know when to say yes to food and when to say no.

Added to that, you’ve likely heard a lot of advice about how you should be eating in order to recover from binge eating. There are many different philosophies out there from recovery advocates, and those philosophies don’t always agree. For example, some say that you need to eliminate sugar or other “addicting” foods to recover, and some say you must learn to eat those very same foods in moderation in order to truly recover. The reality is that there is no one right way to eat, but if you’ve spent any amount of time believing in one philosophy, it can be difficult to let it go. You may find yourself questioning if you should be eating completely intuitively, or if you should be measuring your food (or counting your servings or calories) to make sure that you’re getting enough, or if you should be avoiding any sort of measurement or calorie counting. You may question whether you should have a more structured meal plan or eat in a more flexible way, or if you should allow all types of foods, or avoid some specific foods while you get the binge eating habit under control.

Not only do you have this confusion about normal eating, but you also have the reality of dealing with the urges to binge and breaking the binge eating habit itself. (If you are new here, you can get started with breaking the habit by downloading my free PDF, “The Brain over Binge Basics”).

In times of confusion, a very common pattern is for the I don’t know how to eat thoughts to lead to thoughts that say I can’t possibly figure out how to eat, to lead to thoughts that say well, I might as well binge. It’s as if that primitive, habitual part of your brain automatically offers binge eating as a “solution” to not knowing what or how to eat. The binge-encouraging thoughts basically tell you to give up on even trying to determine how to eat and to instead just eat anything and everything. This is a common lower-brain tactic—using a circumstance surrounding food, or a circumstance in your life to rationalize bingeing. My goal is to help you stop believing that there is ever a reason to binge. I know that when you are not experiencing a desire to binge, you can look at this rationalization and see that it simply makes no sense to binge in response to feeling like you don’t know how to eat.

If there is one thing you do know about eating—without any doubt—it’s that binge eating is not how to eat.

Even if you genuinely feel confused about your food choices, it’s very powerful to realize that there is zero confusion surrounding binge eating—it is extremely harmful to you, and any thought that says it “makes sense” to binge because you don’t know exactly how to eat is absolutely false. You know that a binge is not a good food decision, so start there, and then any food decision you make will be a step in the right direction.

How to Eliminate the I Don’t Know How to Eat Thoughts

Now let’s move on to helping you learn to make food decisions and eliminate the I don’t know thoughts around food. I want you to take a step back and look at food decisions from a bigger picture perspective and realize that it’s a modern thing to have confusion about what or how to eat. In the ancient past, it was simply about what was available, and a lot of times it was simply about survival. Still today, if your situation was completely different—for example if you lived somewhere else or if a natural disaster happened—and food was not plentiful, it would also be about availability and survival.

I mentioned this in Brain over Binge, but as an example from my own life, I think back to going home to the New Orleans area after hurricane Katrina in 2005 to help my family, and food was not readily available, as there were no functioning grocery stores or restaurants for many miles. There were some wonderful volunteers and organizations that provided free meals, and in this situation, there were no food decisions to be made. We ate what we were so graciously provided. You may be able to find related examples in your own life, when there were simply no choices, and when there wasn’t any self-doubt about food. I think it’s helpful to remember that you have that ability inside of yourself to eat without confusion. It may only come out in certain situations, but it is there. The problem is that all of the food options available in your life today and all of the advice that you’ve heard over time is getting in the way of this ability to simply eat.

I’m not saying that plentiful choices are to blame, or that the solution is to avoid giving yourself options. I believe the solution is in your own thinking. You can have many choices, and still have a mindset that does not promote self-doubt and confusion. You can learn to make decisions and move on, for example, like when you were a child—think back to when you were outside playing and you got hungry and therefore came inside to eat. You likely just picked out something quickly, ate to satisfy your hunger (and enjoyed the food), and then got back to playing without any overthinking whatsoever.

I realize that, as a child, you may not have always made great choices about what to eat. Kids tend to be very pleasure-seeking, and it may have been the cookies that were most appealing to you. Your choices as an adult will be different of course, but you can still approach those choices with the same certainty and confidence, and then you can get back to living afterward. The difference between you now and the child in my example is that you started having I don’t know thoughts. Even if you can’t relate to this example and you think there was never a time in your life when you had the inherent ability to make food decisions, I want you to think about the multitude of other decisions that you’re able to make in your life that don’t have anything to do with food. You make decisions at work, in your education, about your kids, your relationships, your home, and even about mundane everyday choices that come with functioning in the world. Even if you need some practice in the area of food decisions, you can learn from your ability to choose in other parts of your life.

When you start to hear those I don’t know thoughts, I want you to just acknowledge them; but tell yourself that you’re going to make a decision anyway. Also remind yourself that any decision you make is much better than deciding to binge, and any decision is also better than staying stuck in indecision. You basically want to start exercising your decision-making muscle, even if it feels weak right now. Gently challenge yourself to choose what you are going to eat, fully acknowledging that there is no “right” choice, and that you’re simply doing the best you can in the moment. Tell yourself that at your next meal or snack, you may choose differently, and that’s okay. Tell yourself that this is just one food decision of countless food decisions that you’ll make throughout your life and that it does not have to be perfect. Aim for decisions that feel good enough. Tell yourself that you’re simply going to choose, you’re going to eat, and then you’re going to move on.

This does not mean you’ll just be choosing on a whim all of the time, although you certainly can. I know you’re an intelligent person who knows a lot about yourself and who also knows a lot about nutrition. You can take that into account, and also consider the situation when making a choice. For example, you may make some food decisions simply for convenience because that’s what you need in your life at that time, and that’s okay. That may mean you’ll be eating less-healthy foods in those moments, but you have other priorities in your life, and there is no need to feel guilty about that. At other times, you may decide to spend the extra time or money to give yourself more nourishing foods, because that’s what you feel is best at that point, and that’s okay too.

As you make decisions that feel good enough, you can get feedback from your body, and you can make adjustments over time—without all of the self-doubt. If you like your reasons for your food decisions, that’s all that matters. When you know there is not some “ideal” way to eat that’s out there somewhere, it’s easier to deal with the daily reality of making everyday choices. Your choices teach you things that you can use to improve your decision-making abilities in the future. In other words, you learn from every decision that you make.

After you make any decision about food, and eat the food, it’s helpful to redirect your focus onto something else in your life. Think again about the child who gets back to playing after stopping to refuel. Redirecting helps train your brain to see that eating is just eating, and it does not have to consume so much of your brain space. The more you practice deciding imperfectly, and the more you stop giving attention to the thoughts that say you don’t know, the more confident you will become at choosing the foods, and the amounts, and the eating times that feel right for you. Then, those I don’t know thoughts can simply fade away.

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You can find a deeper discussion of this topic in the Brain over Binge course, in the Q&A track titled “I feel like I don’t know how to eat.” The course is only $18.99 per month (cancel anytime) and includes over 90 Q&A tracks, 8 extensive lessons, worksheets, and other resources.

In addition to the course, you can also get group coaching or one-on-one coaching for personalized support.

Best of the Brain over Binge Podcast [Transcript]

in Addiction, Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, binge free life, Blog, Body Image, books, Brain over Binge Book, bulimia, Calories, Coaching, course, Cravings, Dieting, dieting weight gain, Emotions, Exercise, Habits, Health, hunger, Intuitive Eating, mindfulness, motivation, Nutrition, Overeating, Purging, stop dieting, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

In episode 100, I did a “Best of the Podcast” episode where I put together audio clips that I thought would best summarize the Brain over Binge concepts and would be the most useful for you to keep in mind as you work on recovery. I thought this would be helpful for you to have in writing as well, so I’ve turned the “Best of the Podcast” episode into a blog post here. I hope this post provides an additional source of inspiration and practical advice to apply while you stop binge eating.

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Transcript:

Today is Episode 100 and I feel like it’s a big milestone. I’m very happy to have been able to produce 100 episodes! I want to thank everyone who has listened to the podcast along the way, whether you’ve listened to one episode or all 100 episodes.

I wanted to do something special for the 100th episode so I decided to compile a Best of the Podcast episode. What I did is just went through and picked out some of my favorite parts that I felt like would be the most useful for you to review and to keep in mind as you work on ending the binge eating habit.

I found it to be a fun project to go through all of the episodes and revisit a lot of the topics that we’ve covered so far, and also to hear a lot of the guests that I’ve had on the show. I’ve had some really amazing guests, and I want to thank everyone who has been on the show and shared their ideas. Although I wasn’t able to include everyone, just know that I’m so thankful for all of the insights and information that my guests have shared over the years.

I’m also very thankful for everyone who has subscribed to the podcast, and for those of you who have not subscribed already, I would encourage you to subscribe because I plan to keep this podcast going for as long as I can, and I would love for you to be here listening.

So now I’ll go ahead and share the best of the Brain over Binge podcast…

“The Brain over Binge approach is about learning to see your binge eating in light of the brain, and then using that information to empower yourself. It’s about changing your perspective to see yourself as fundamentally healthy, and not broken, and not diseased. In the Brain over Binge philosophy, binge eating is a natural (but also very primitive) brain response to restrictive dieting, which becomes a habit over time. Or, binge eating can also develop as a primitive response to repeated overeating of highly stimulating foods, which increases over time and then forms the same binge eating habit. Either way, it’s a primitive brain response that makes you feel out of control, and what we’re going to teach you is to take control back.”

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“In conventional treatment, it’s common to hear that the urges to binge are symptoms—that they are symptoms of underlying emotional problems or psychological problems. This is a very popular and mainstream idea. The theory is that you have urges to binge because you’re not able to cope with those problems or with difficult emotions in your life in an effective way. Because binge eating is seen as a coping mechanism, then the urges are viewed in a more symbolic way—like a signal that you need to learn to cope better. This is what I was taught, but to me, the urges never felt like a need to cope. They always felt like a need to eat massive quantities of food. At a very basic level, it didn’t seem any more complicated than that, and it wasn’t.”

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“One of the things that’s important for you to know very early in learning about this approach is that it may improve your life if you learn how to deal with moods, it may improve your life if you learn how to solve problems and live a better life, but the most important thing is to separate improving yourself/improving your life from stopping binge eating. It is not necessary to be the best that you can be in order to stop this problem. You may be interested in that anyway, but it’s really important to know that you can stop binging and not perfect all these different areas of your life, because we see the urges themselves as the problem. And when you look at it that way, the answer is to stop responding to the urges, and eventually they will fade away.” -Cookie Rosenblum

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“All the lower brain can do is send impulses and encourage you to act. But when you feel these urges, know that you have complete power to choose not to act. When you know you’re separate from the urges, it allows you to have access to the self-control functions in your higher brain. In other words, when you absolutely believe you have this power over the urges and that these urges can’t control you, then it’s much easier to choose not to act on them.”

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“It’s possible that you’ve learned the information that we’ve shared so far about dismissing the urges to binge, and (either because you have a strong desire to lose weight or you’re just still in that habit of food restriction) you’ve taken the strategy of dismissing urges too far. Maybe you’ve been thinking that you should dismiss every desire for unhealthy food or every desire to eat more than a very strict calorie limit that you’ve set for yourself. This is not the intention of the Brain over Binge approach. Dismissing urges is not a way to become a better dieter—it’s a way to stop binge eating.”

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“It’s not that you truly want to binge one last time, it’s that this “one last time” mentality is just something that our lower brains automatically produce when we have a destructive habit. I want you to think about all the times you’ve thought “just one last time”…you truly believed it in the moment, but then the next time you had a urge to binge, the thought came up again and you believed it again. What if you stopped believing this thought? What if you instead realized that the “one last time” mentality is a reaction of the primitive part of your brain with the goal of getting what it wants right now. The lower brain is not concerned with your long term goals or even what you’ll do tomorrow. It’s job is only to get you to binge right now, and the one last time thought is an extremely effective way that it does that.”

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“It’s very important not to put too many conditions on your ability to recover. However, if there is truly an area that you feel, if you worked on it would help you either better dismiss urges or eat adequately, then please work on it. Looking at it this way, you aren’t endlessly trying to work on other problems in hopes that it will take your urges to binge away or that it will make recovery effortless. You’re approaching it in a much more targeted and practical way. If you’re having trouble dismissing the urges to binge, think “what can I do that will help me better dismiss them?”… then work on it, and you will be ready for recovery. If you’re having trouble eating adequately, think “what can I do or what can I work on that will help me eat enough food?”…and then work on it and you’ll be ready for recovery. In other words, please do what you need to do so that you can start to feel more capable of eating adequately and dismissing binge urges. Don’t just say you “aren’t ready,” for whatever reason, and then not do anything about it. You deserve a binge free life, so try to remove any issues that you feel are truly holding you back.”

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“My personal opinion is that relying on your intuition is a good thing. However, you always need to know that you have your higher brain to oversee your actions and your choices, and you can use your higher brain to steer yourself toward better choices if your intuition seems not to be leading you in a good direction. If you find yourself only eating highly processed, highly stimulating food, every time you’re hungry, it may be time to insert some rational, higher brain choices as well. Highly processed, modern food doesn’t quite interact with our body in a way that always leads to completely clear and reliable hunger and fullness signals or completely reliable cravings, and people with or without eating disorders have to deal with the effects that modern foods can sometimes have on us. It’s important to know that your higher brain always has the ability to veto harmful cravings and exert self-control to guide your choices. Using your higher brain and your intuition in conjunction can provide you with the balance that you need.”

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“Thoughts that encourage purging will often give you the message that a purge or some form of compensation for the binge will undo the damage of a binge. But when you’re not feeling tempted to binge, you can see how false this thought is, because of course a purge does not undo any damage. It actually does the opposite. It causes severe damage to your health and to your life. A purge does not rectify a wrong. A purge is an additional wrong. It’s an additional source of suffering. During binge urges, thoughts about purging can make it seem like repeating this binge-purge cycle one more time will be harmless, but you know that it’s not harmless. You know it’s causing damage in your life, and you know it’s not what you truly want to be doing. Like any thought that makes binge eating seem appealing, thoughts that use purging as a reason to binge need to be dismissed.”

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“We’re experiencing life through our moment to moment thinking, and that moment to moment thinking, it comes up and it looks so real to us. So again, if you’re a binge eater and you’re having an urge, or you’re just really caught up in “should I eat this, should I not eat this,” you know, you’re in that. You are in it, and it is absolutely real, and it feels true, and it feels important to you, but that’s just the nature of thought. That’s the same if you’re considering like, “should I buy this house or that house,” you know, “should I wear these shoes or those shoes.” Now, those might feel like they have a different level of urgency to them or a different level of importance, but it’s all the exact same when we look level deeper. It’s all thought coming to life within us. And it’s not who we are and it’s not permanent, and it’s nothing we need to try to fix and figure out and sort through because it does that on its own. It moves through us. So I’ll pause, but I’ll just say that’s sort of the cornerstone of it—helping people see how all human experience works—because when we aren’t afraid of our experience, when we aren’t afraid of feeling fat or an urge or the next diet or whatever, when we aren’t caught up in our heads, we’re kind of back to life being really easy (like before we found ourselves in this issue).” –Dr. Amy Johnson

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“If binge eating has been clouding your life for a long time, you may not be able to fully see what your life could be like after recovery. But no matter what life brings, that opportunity to have the freedom from food issues is so worth it. You’ll be free from the shame, the physical discomfort, and the feeling of being out of control of your own life. If you can experience even a moment of that freedom from the consequences of bingeing, and you can get excited about that, it can solidify your desire to keep going and to keep moving toward recovery, despite any uncertainty about what your life might be like afterward. I encourage you to keep focusing on all of your motivations to recover, but remember that underneath those reasons lies a desire to be free to live all of your life—the good and the bad—without the pain of binge eating”

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“Behavior happens through action, and the actions taken consistently time and time again—small actions—not only do they build up new behaviors, but they actually create optimism, and they actually generate motivation. And so if somebody’s not feeling motivated, a lot of times they want inspiration, they want motivation. I remember feeling this way all the time…where’s it going to come from? What new book can I download? What new piece of wisdom can I find? And all of that can be useful, but until you start taking constructive action, the motivation’s going to hit a ceiling. It’s the general building up of behaviors that creates energy, that creates momentum, and that helps a person’s self-esteem.” –Katherine Thomson, Ph.D.

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“Learning to deal with emotions better is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that. I’m just saying you don’t need to solve all your emotional problems to stop bingeing. I’m not saying you have to learn to deal with emotions perfectly before you can quit—because if that were true, recovery would be elusive because no one deals with emotions well all the time. You know, all of us get overwhelmed sometimes, but bingeing just needs to become something that’s not an option, and when bingeing is not an option, then you have so many options available to you for helping you get through tough emotions, and these options don’t lead to consequences. You need to realize that bingeing never actually helped you cope with any of these emotions. If it provided the secondary benefit of distraction, you know now that it’s not worth it, that it’s much better to dismiss that urge. And then, if you continue to have distressing emotions, and you aren’t able to kind of learn to see them in a new way, you’re not able to let them pass or find ways to deal with them, then it’s something you can address in a more healthy way once the bingeing is done. If you have emotions that feel unmanageable, bingeing is never the solution.”

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“Mindfulness points you towards your inner power. It really, really shows you who you truly are and that you are not your thoughts, that you were never your thoughts, that you are the one who is observing your thoughts.”

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“The first tip I have for you is to ask yourself: Is my exercise an unhealthy compulsion? Or is it a healthy habit? It’s important to make this distinction because healthy habits, you can also feel compelled to do them. For example, you’ll feel compelled to brush your teeth at night, and it’s a compulsion (you could call it a compulsion) because you feel that drive to do it, but it’s healthy. So that’s a healthy habit. So even though there could be some compulsion and you feel driven towards something, it can still be a healthy habit. So I think it’s useful to look at your exercise like that and think, “okay, yes, I do feel driven toward it, but is my brain driving me towards something healthy? Or is this something unhealthy?”

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“What I teach is specifically for binge eating, and it can be applied I think also to other problematic eating habits that feel really compulsive—like excessive overeating, or compulsive overeating, or whatever you want to call it. But what I really want to get across today is that the intent of my approach is not to use it as a strategy to try to stick to strict diets or to use it as a strategy to try to follow really rigid weight loss plans, or to try to get yourself to eat less than you physically need. In fact, a big part of my approach is about making sure that you are eating enough—that you’re allowing yourself all types of foods…and I realize that not everyone can eat all types of foods, so another way of saying that might be to learn to eat in the least restrictive way that’s possible for you personally. And then also in addition to eating enough comes the dismissing urges piece—learning to not act on those thoughts that encourage you to binge. The only way that dismissing binge urges works to get rid of the binge eating for good is if you’re also eating enough—if you’re eating adequately as I call it in my approach. Now I realize that some creators of diet plans or weight loss strategies could argue that the plans are adequate and they’re not overly restrictive, and I completely understand that point of view, and some of these plans may certainly be adequate, but that’s not the issue I’m raising today. What I’m talking about today is clarifying the intention of the brain over binge approach, which is to dismiss the urges to binge. My approach is not meant to be used to dismiss every urge to veer from your diet or your eating plan, whatever that may be—even if you could argue that your eating plan is technically adequate.”

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“I’ve seen research that if you’re in that food deprived state and you are, you know, starving yourself trying to lose weight that it does make you feel like you’re addicted to food. It’s kind of a natural survival instinct. And once you start nourishing yourself, once you start eating enough, I think a lot of that can rebalance. What are your thoughts on that?
I think that’s very true. When you’re starved, you are seeking food, you’re needing it, and you’re also going to be more sensitive to the effect. So if you’ve been under eating for a period of time, or maybe haven’t eaten in several hours, whatever you do eat is going to hit you harder. So I think that it does kind of create this increased sensitivity to certain foods, and it does perpetuate the whole cycle.” – Katherine Thomson, Ph.D.

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“It’s not so much that you care about your weight or you want to be kind of your best version of yourself, it’s when you try to be a version of yourself that’s not possible, that’s unrealistic, that’s a weight that your body cannot physically be unless you do harmful things. So, you know, if you’re wanting to, like I said, kind of make the most of your own body and to feel good in it, it’s not a problem, as long as you’re not obsessed. But when you try to sort of go outside of your natural range (which you might not quite know what that is yet, and that’s okay), but when you try to go outside of that, that’s when things become harmful.”

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“Okay, I want to dive deeper into one thing you said—you mentioned the fact that purging is not a form of weight control, it’s a very ineffective form of weight control. And I find that talking to people, you know, they know the health risks of purging, they know that it’s ruining their life, but they have this fear that if they stop, they’re going to gain all this weight. So can you kind of speak to that, maybe from your own experience of what happened to your weight in recovery and also your clients as well—just to kind of alleviate that fear that people have that stopping purging means that their weight will skyrocket.
Sure, absolutely. This is something that terrified me as well, you know—thinking, oh, I’m going to have to recover and recovery was going to be gaining lots of weight. Because in my eyes, at that time, to me normal eating was chaotic eating, and my body wanted to eat a lot. So I thought in general, that was what had to be done—I was going to eat lots and lots of food all the time and to take away the purging was scary. However, that’s not the case. So yes, purging is not an effective form of weight loss, not at all. Purging, you know, there is science behind it as well, there are experiments where they show that through self-induced vomiting, I think the body retains around 50% of the calories, depending on whatever the measurement of that binge during that experiment was. And, you know, because digestion starts in the mouth. Also as well, I think your body is really highly, highly, so clever. When you’re doing all these self-destructive habits, your body’s like really getting clever at retaining more calories as well—it’s trying to save your life.” –Ali Kerr

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“One of my main goals is to empower you to believe that you absolutely can stop this habit and move on with your life, and that it does not have to be overly complicated, but I want to be clear that I’m not telling you to “just stop the habit and move on with your life.” I think that’s where some people misinterpret the simplicity of my approach. They think I’m saying the solution to binge eating is to “just stop the binge eating.” And of course, in any approach to stopping binge eating, the goal is ultimately to stop the binge eating, but it understandably makes people upset if they think someone is telling them “well, if you’re having a problem with bingeing, just stop bingeing.” I would’ve been upset too—when I was in the depths of my problem—if someone would have said to “just stop.” That would’ve made me very angry because I was of course trying to stop, of course I did not want to be binging. If I could have just stopped, I would have. So, when you hear me say in these episodes or in my books that you have the power to stop binging, I fully realize that there’s much more to this than “just stopping.” I do believe that in many approaches, recovery is too overcomplicated, especially if you’ve learned through other approaches that you’re flawed or broken or diseased, or you need to fundamentally transform yourself in order to recover. I strongly believe you should keep your recovery from binge eating as simple as possible. I don’t think you need to change so many parts of your life or change your personality or your relationships, or think you need to eat perfectly, or love your body all the time, or have amazing self-esteem in order to stop this habit. In the brain over binge approach, recovery is fundamentally about stopping a harmful habit that you’ve inadvertently developed. But if I believed that the solution to stopping the binge eating habit was to tell yourself to “just stop” or to have someone else tell you to stop, then my books would not be over 600 pages in total. I believe that you definitely can stop your habit, and like I say, at the end of every show, “you have the power to change your brain and live a binge free life.” But this approach is not just about telling yourself to quit. I’m sure you’ve already done that a thousand times. To use the concepts that I teach, it may take letting go of some old ideas that are no longer serving you, it may take realizing that the binge eating is not doing anything positive for you, it may take a new understanding of how your brain is working to get you to binge. It may take learning to consistently nourish your body, and it will likely take some practice to learn to recognize your binge urges and then to dismiss them. I hope that the brain over binge approach does give you a much more efficient path to ending this habit—by cutting out any unnecessary confusion—but I definitely do not want you to feel like a failure or to feel like you’re doing something wrong if you can’t “just stop.” You’re learning and you will improve, and you will overcome this habit.”

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“You will have moments when you feel like a binge is what you want, but that’s the key—you’ll only “feel” like a binge is what you want, in certain moments. Feelings are sensations that rise and fall and change and are constantly in flux. Your feelings of wanting to binge have nothing to do with what you actually want—which is to be free of this habit.”

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“…something that brings up just a lot of anxiety, so an important starting point when it comes to making peace with your hunger is realizing that the sensations of hunger are not the problem. The problem is these negative associations that you’ve developed surrounding hunger. And you can start trying to separate that out and starting to dismiss some of those negative thoughts you have around hunger and dismiss some of those self-judgments, and start gravitating back toward feeling hunger as a more pure experience—as you probably did when you were a child. And to decondition any of the fear you have around hunger—as it relates to fearing that you’ll binge in response to hunger—as you get more and more confident that you won’t, then this fear naturally subsides. So in order to break this association, it’s going to take many times of being hungry and satisfying that hunger, but then dismissing the urges to go on to binge. Once you’re confident that you can eat in response to hunger, and that it won’t spiral into a binge, then hunger is going to feel like much less of a threat. Eating adequately will also help make hunger feel like less of a threat, because remember some of your anxiety about hunger came from the fact that hunger seemed like the enemy when you were dieting. As you give up dieting, and as you learn to nourish your body, you start viewing hunger simply as a signal that you need to eat, and you stop viewing it as an enemy.”

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“At what point am I going to accept this reality, and just realize I can accept me for where I’m at. So, it’s kind of owning your suffering. It’s going “okay I didn’t cause it, but I own it,” and this sort of idea I think really helps to free you because you can now move forward in your life. You’re able to accept your suffering, but at the same time, you can still work on changing it. And I think the most powerful thing about that is rather than putting all your attention and focus on, you know, “what’s happened? what’s wrong with me? I’ve been dealt a bad hand,” instead, you can just think to yourself, “well, what can I do about it?” – Richard Kerr

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“What I want to talk about today is the fact that an eating disorder takes so much from you. And one of the things that it seems to take is the ability to be truly present in your life, and I think this becomes most evident during hard times in your own life, or in the life of your family, or your community, or your country, or the world. Feeling so compelled to binge, and purge, and restrict, and obsess about your weight takes away from you focusing on what’s truly important to you. I know you don’t want this. I know that you’re not intentionally taking your focus away from meaningful matters in order to focus on food. I know this because I’ve been there. I remember when I was stuck in a cycle of binging and purging having really bad things happen in my life and in the world… just as some examples, my best friend passed away, other family members that I was close to also passed away. Natural disasters affected the world. September 11th caused so much suffering, and through these events and many more, I continued to binge and continued to purge and focus on food and weight. I remember feeling like such a bad person, I remember feeling selfish because I so wanted to turn my energy outward to help others and I so wanted to be with others in their suffering and be present with them, and to even just be present with my own suffering with an open heart, but I felt so closed down. I felt stuck, and I really beat myself up over this. I would ask myself, “what kind of person continued to binge when I knew there were people in this world who were in need?” I would ask myself, “what kind of person would continue to spend hours and hours in the gym to try to compensate for binges when I could be using that time to make a difference in a meaningful way.” Looking back, I see that the kind of person who does that is a person that simply stuck in a vicious brain-based habit.”

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“I have to just say it—like there’s some really harmful rhetoric out there on social media about, people, you know—with good intentions, for sure—but it damages people who are looking on and trying to learn about intuitive eating. The message is often: when you’re doing this right, you’ll know exactly what you feel like eating, and you’ll know exactly when you’re hungry, and you’ll know what you’re craving…and it just makes it feel like—first of all, it feels really inaccessible even to me to approach food that way. I’m not able to just run out and grab whatever food I want whenever I think about it—like financially, schedule wise, like that’s just “no.” –Paige Smathers, RDN

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“What you also have to understand is like, it’s not because you recover from your eating disorder, that you will not have cravings anymore, but you will learn to trust your body. When you have an eating disorder, the cravings are often, as you mentioned, spiraling out of control—binging and purging. But here you start learning that your body is your friend, and because it sends some kind of message, you have to listen to that. And in a way, you have to understand why you have that, but you can also learn to honor the cravings because they are not, you know, spiraling down into a full binge. So sometimes you will want an ice cream and that’s totally fine, but you will eat it with love, you know, and not, “oh, I shouldn’t do that, and I’ve done that, and I failed, and I better binge and purge, right?” It’s like the relationship with your own body and the cravings that it sends to you is totally different.”

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“I want to tell you that once you stop acting on these urges, and once you stop following that desire to binge, you’re going to realize that it was never any form of pleasure. Binge eating is going to start to look like the exact opposite of pleasure the further and further you get from that behavior. You’ll wonder why you ever had a desire for that fleeting, primal pleasure. That desire is simply conditioned in your brain right now. But once you extinguish that habit, you’re no longer going to view it as pleasurable. So, it’s not like you’re going to stop the habit and then you’re going to go the rest of your life having this desire inside of you for something that you are no longer doing. You’ll stop having that desire. You’ll start to think that binge eating would be the last thing you would do if you wanted pleasure.”

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“Maybe there’s a little bit of time, “oh boy, oh boy, I get to do this thing, I get to have these foods,” but that stops right away when we can’t taste anymore, when we can’t stop, when we’re feeling sick, when we’re disgusted—we can’t seem to break away until we’re just totally worn out. I now hold onto that image so tightly (it’s not even now, it was back then)—when I was able to more strongly hold on to how difficult that really was, how uncomfortable, how unappealing that really was, as opposed to glorifying that binge as “oh boy, oh boy.” That picture and then the end result—how it was going to feel afterwards, and the reality of how it felt afterwards, and the downward spiral, and the physical discomfort—not just immediately afterwards, but the next day—the memories, the physical destruction that happens when we fill ourselves with stuff that is not good for us, and then in any way we happen to purge it, we purge it. It leaves us empty on all levels. That’s what I hold onto.”

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“I do not believe that it’s helpful for me to tell you the one right way that you should eat, because that way is going to be different for everyone. I think it’s very important for you to discover how you should eat on your own, because your own personal way of eating that comes from experimentation and seeing what feels good in your body and what works for you—that will be much more powerful and more lasting than any meal plan than I could give you. So, I’m definitely not going to come out here and say that you absolutely must be eating three meals a day, and you must be eating a certain amount of snacks, and it has to be structured, or you need an exact amount of calories. You certainly can have a structured approach to eating, and you can count your calories to make sure you’re getting enough. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. It can be helpful just to ensure that you’re meeting your physical needs, but I do not believe that handing you a way of eating is what will be most helpful to you right now. If you’re like the majority of binge eaters, you may have gone from diet to diet, from meal plan to meal plan, or different eating program to eating program, thinking that would be the cure only to end up binge eating again. I want you to try to take a new approach to this: make your primary focus to be on learning to stop binging, and then just do the best you can to eat enough and eat in a way that works for you. Start to let go of dieting, in whatever form that takes in your life, and in doing that, you’ll already be on a path to discovering your own authentic eating habits.”

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“Binge eating disorder, dieting, food and body obsession is what I think of as a life thief. I lost the majority of 40 years of my life and so much of my daughter’s life that I can never get back. It’s really unfathomable when I think about this. It makes me think of a line from a Mary Oliver poem that I love: “are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” And to everyone listening, who can relate to the years lost to this, I want to add that it’s never too late to heal, and that on the other side, you’re going to see that all that matters is now.” –Julie Mann (Brain over Binge coach)

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“I encourage you to start dropping the pressure that you’re putting on yourself and to start thinking that you should be eating in exactly the way that you are eating, or in exactly the way that you just ate. And here I’m talking about eating habits that are not binging. It gives you a ton of freedom to think, “maybe I ate exactly as I should have, and this is not about tricking yourself into thinking that you ate healthy when you clearly didn’t, or that you ate the perfect amount when you feel like you’ve overeaten a little, but it is about accepting the way that you ate in that moment, and maybe there’s something to learn from that; but either way, you can simply move on without all of the overthinking. Consider that you can just eat and let it be what it is, consider that you can make a decision about food in the moment that you think is best for you—for whatever reason—and eat the food, and then let go of all of the overthinking afterward, and simply go on with your life.”

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“I love to teach my clients that a huge and fun part of recovery is to generate desire for life. It’s time to start daydreaming about all the things that you really enjoy in life, as in things that give you true pleasure—while you’re thinking about it, while you do it, and after it’s done. I’d also love for everyone listening to think right now about what those true pleasures are for you. For me, it’s hugs from my daughter and conversations with her about what’s going on in her life, it’s also about reading great novels, looking at the view of Manhattan from my apartment window as the sun sets. I also love taking photos of flowers up close, and then sharing them with people I love. And what’s amazing about these things is that even talking about them now gives me a hit of pleasure—not the numbing out kind of hit from a binge, but the kind of gentle and heart-nourishing pleasure that leaves no net negative consequence. So again, to everyone listening, here are some great questions to consider: “If this moment isn’t about food, what do you want it to be about? What areas of your life would you like to generate desire on purpose for? What do you desire way more than food? What is your bigger and truer want? I think it’s so exciting to know that you can create desire for life and what you want for yourself on purpose.” –Julie Mann

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“In the same way that dealing with stage fright as a pro musician helped me to understand the principles of moving through urges to binge, the skillset that we develop (I think you’ve mentioned this before and I was like, yes, absolutely!) …the skillset that we develop from learning to manage these urges and kind of move through them is something that we can then use moving forward when we want to look at other things.” –Marcus Kain

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“So what are some ways people can say focused on those non-weight motivations, because I think the brain will habitually pull (and I’ve seen that the brain habitually pulls) people back to focusing on weight simply because that’s what it’s used to. So how do we change that pathway?
Yeah. I mean, it is a practice. So first of all, you start to engage in ways to remind yourself of it. So for me, it was journaling every single day—because I kept my promises to myself, because I didn’t binge today, I get these benefits immediately and I would write them down every single day. And I would tell them to people, and I would celebrate them because that was solidifying that new pathway for me. And, you know, another thing is: every time you find yourself going to weight, you can remind yourself, “and I’m feeling so much better in these ways.” – Julie Mann

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“What’s your mission for Brain over Binge?
I just want to keep sharing my story as long as I can…I mean, part of me is like, “nobody wants to hear this story again,” but I think there is power in hearing someone’s story rather than just, “okay, this is what you have to do.” There’s a difference in just getting a bunch of advice, or really reading about someone’s journey and being there with them, and then sort of adjusting it to apply to your own life. So I just want to keep sharing my story, and then keep providing the additional help people may need to, you know, create their own story.”

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I hope you enjoyed that compilation, and I hope it gave you some useful insights and information that you can use going forward as you end the binge eating habit. Thank you again for your support over the years, and thank you for being here for the 100th episode. If a lot of the clips in this episode resonated with you and you want to learn more, you can head over to BrainoverBinge.com and there you can get started with a free ebook (The Brain over Binge Basics) that I have available. When you get that free ebook, you also get a free track from the Brain over Binge Course called Manage Your Mindset After a Binge, and this is a track that will guide you in overcoming any slips that you may have during recovery. If you need more personalized support and accountability during recovery, you can learn more about coaching. One of the voices you heard toward the end of this episode was our wonderful Brain over Binge coach, Julie Mann, who offers one-on-one coaching and also group coaching.

I look forward to many more episodes and I hope you’ll join me. And as always, I want to encourage you and remind you that you have the power to change your brain and live a binge free life.

Quick and Practical Advice to Help You Stop Binge Eating (Part III)

in Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, Body Image, bulimia, Calories, Dieting, dieting weight gain, eating disorder recovery, Fear, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

Below is more quick inspiration and practical advice about a variety of issues that may come up for you in binge eating recovery. (You can also read additional advice in Part I, Part II)

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Fear of junk food

Are you afraid to eat any “junk” food as part of your normal daily eating? Are you bingeing on large amounts of those very same foods?

Something to consider is that your fear of unhealthy foods could be a reaction to the binge eating itself. If you’re eating junk foods excessively during binges, it makes sense that you would feel the need to avoid those foods at other times.

Considering this, it may not be that you truly fear unhealthy food in moderation. It may be that you fear eating unhealthy food in moderation AND binge eating on top of that.

A question you can ask yourself is: “If I knew I would never binge, how would I like to incorporate foods I believe are unhealthy?”

There’s no one right answer here, but if you start seeing yourself as a binge-free person, you can begin letting go of the fear, and realize there is a place in your life for many different types of food.

For more on this topic, you can read my post: Can I Recover & be Healthy if I Eat Everything in Moderation?

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Eat like you won’t binge later

If you are tempted to restrict food, consider that you could be trying to prepare for a potential binge. It’s not that you want a binge to happen, but because you’re worried that it will, you try to limit your calories…just in case.

But this restrictive behavior sets you up to binge. Something I like to say is: Eat like you won’t binge later. Meaning, don’t try to diet in preparation for a future binge.

This mindset helps with eating adequately, because you’re taking the fear of binge eating out of the equation when you decide what to eat. Then, in turn, eating adequately supports you in avoiding a future binge.

Gradually, you’ll become more confident that you are definitely not going to binge later, and that will help increase your feelings of freedom around food.

(If you struggle with thoughts of how you “should” eat, get more help in Episode 85: Drop the “Shoulds” Around Eating)

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Giving up dieting = Eating less

If a desire to diet and lose weight is getting in the way of your recovery, remind yourself that your previous attempts gave you the opposite result (binge eating and more weight gain).

The mindset needed to give up dieting starts with the realization that restriction > leads to binge eating > leads to eating a lot more than you would if you simply ate an adequate and nourishing amount of food each day.

In other words, not bingeing + not restricting is less food than restricting + bingeing. It’s helpful to remind yourself of this simple math, especially when your mind is focused on wanting to lose weight.

When you eat without dieting or bingeing, your body can start to find its natural and healthy size. For more help with weight questions, go to BrainoverBinge.com/Weight/

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Negativity bias?

As you are relearning how to eat in a way that works for you (without binge eating and without dieting), you will likely have thoughts saying you are doing it “wrong.”

Before you make adjustments to “fix” your eating, consider that these thoughts could be due to the negativity bias of the brain. The brain is always looking for danger, giving us a natural tendency to find and dwell on what’s negative (more than what’s positive or neutral).

You may find your brain pointing out the negative in getting a little too full after meals…and not getting full enough, in choosing processed foods…and choosing healthy foods, in sticking to a meal plan…and eating in a flexible way. This makes it seem impossible to get it “right”!

When faced with “you’re eating wrong” thoughts, I want you to consider the possibility that nothing is wrong at all, and that the food choices you’re making are all simply part of normal eating.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make improvements or changes to how you’re eating, but understanding this tendency gives you the ability to decide for yourself, instead of always believing those automatic negative thoughts.

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What about tracking calories?

Keeping track of calories consumed is an extremely popular component of dieting, especially in the years since tracking apps appeared.

Even as you let go of dieting, you may be scared to stop the calorie counting—worried that if you don’t track, you’ll gain weight.

Calorie counting can have a place in binge eating recovery—if it’s used as a way to make sure you are getting enough food and nourishing your body. However, if you are counting to try to maintain a deficit, this will not support you in ending the binge eating habit.

Something that can help you let go of the tracking is to think about all of human history and how recent calorie counting is to our species. It simply can’t be true that we need this technology in order to keep our bodies at their natural, healthy weight.

Think of all of the people who have lived in the past or now—who have not tracked calories—and yet stayed generally the same size. Start trusting your own body’s innate wisdom to find the weight that’s right for you.

(Read more about weight issues in recovery at BrainoverBinge.com/Weight/)

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It’s always an option: Choosing how you think about your body

I took one of my daughters to paint pottery over the weekend, and she can be a perfectionist when it comes to her art. As she was trying to fix what she thought was “wrong” with her paint job, she said, “I just want to look at this when it’s done and not be mad about it.”

I responded, “That’s always an option, no matter how it looks.” That power is, of course, in how we choose to think about it.

You may have thoughts like my daughter’s when you look in the mirror, or when you think about your food choices or exercise routines. You may think that getting it just “right” is going to help you feel better. But the truth is, my daughter could have kept painting forever and not been totally satisfied with it.

When it comes to body image, it’s always an option to choose self-caring thoughts, knowing that you are doing your best and that your uniqueness makes you the beautiful person you are.

For more on body image, listen to Episode 40: Body image and Binge Eating

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Feel like you’re on a roller coaster?

Do you get hopeful about recovery, do well for a while, and then let yourself down? Does this happen over and over and seem like an awful roller coaster ride?

You are not destined to be on a never-ending roller coaster. What often leads to this experience is constantly telling yourself you are “starting over” in recovery. But you are never truly starting over. You are gaining insight along the way and learning what you need to learn to step out of this cycle for good.
Always tell yourself that you are moving forward, not in circles. Tell yourself that every renewed commitment is a continuation, not a new beginning. You are persevering in order to arrive at food freedom, even if there are some ups and downs and turns along the way.

For more help with this, read my post: “Making Commitments Last in Binge Eating Recovery”

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Discouraged by bingeing less?

You may feel frustrated that you’ve reduced your binge eating but haven’t fully eliminated it from your life. So, instead of celebrating your progress and making more improvements until the binge eating is gone, you may tell yourself that “improvement is not good enough,” and that you “might as well go back to bingeing more.”

It’s okay to acknowledge that you want binge eating fully gone…of course you do, because it creates pain in your life. However, less binge eating means less pain in your life, and that’s a step in the right direction. Going from binge eating daily, for example, to binge eating once per week leads to so much extra time, energy, money, and peace of mind.

Do not let a transition period of less frequent episodes make you want to return to full-scale bingeing. Instead, allow your experience of additional freedom make you even more motivated to fully recover.

For more on motivation, listen to Episode 95: Creating Motivation to Stop Binge Eating.

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This recovery advice is taken from weekly emails I’ve sent in the past several months. If you’d like to receive my emails going forward, all you need to do is enter your email address into this sign-up form.

When you sign up, you also get my free PDF (“The Brain over Binge Basics”) and a free course track (“Manage Your Mindset After a Binge”).
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More help:

If you want extra guidance as you learn to give up binge eating, here are some resources for additional support:

Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.