Healing Your Relationship with Food, Yourself, and Others (Part II)

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This is part two of a blog series that addresses healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others (I’m recording this as a podcast series as well!). If you’re having issues in relationships while also struggling with an eating disorder or even after recovery, know that you’re not alone. In Part I of this blog series, I talked about some of the ways that eating disorders can affect our capacity to engage in relationships with others and can also prevent us from developing a healthier relationship with ourselves. I talked about this using the framework of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, explaining that when your basic physiological and safety needs are not being met—which is often the case when an eating disorder is present—you can’t fully pursue other needs for connection, and your relationship with yourself suffers as well.

In this blog post, I’m going to address 3 main areas. First, I want to help you discover some of the unique ways that your eating disorder has affected your own relationships, and this applies even after recovery. Second, I want to help you learn to separate the relationship issues (as much as possible) from your ability to recover, so that you can overcome your struggle with food regardless of what is going on in your relationships. Last, I want to talk about how recovery gives you the brain space, the energy, and the time to start building skills and healing relationships—or reevaluating relationships and possibly adjusting or walking away from ones that are no longer healthy for you. The last topic is something I’ll address in much more detail in Part III of this series. But, before I get started with any of this, we need to discuss something very important in terms of your safety…

Address your safety before addressing any connections between your eating disorder and relationships

If you’re currently in any sort of abusive or traumatic situation in your relationships, it’s not the time to explore the issues I’m talking about in this blog post. Regardless of what factors may be at play, there’s never a reason for abuse, and it serves no purpose right now to try to determine the factors that may have led up to you being in that situation. Never blame your eating disorder for any abuse you’re experiencing, either physical or emotional. There’s simply never a reason for that, and the priority in any abusive situation is getting yourself to safety as quickly as possible, with professional help if necessary. Find a community, find support, and don’t spend time trying to analyze the dynamics involved or think that recovery will somehow magically make it better, and never blame yourself or your eating disorder.

Even if your safety isn’t currently at risk, relationships can be a fraught space for anyone with a history of abuse or trauma in relationships. If that’s the case for you, I recommend proceeding with awareness as you read this, and know that you may want some additional support as you explore this topic, depending on your situation or where you are in your healing. I believe we’re all capable of building up resilience and learning to overcome relationship challenges in our lives, even really difficult ones, but I want to make sure you prioritize your safety and get more help when necessary because I do not specialize in abuse or trauma, and this episode will not address those issues.

Also know that eating disorders themselves can be traumatic experiences. They’re harmful and dangerous to the body and having an eating disorder is, in many ways, like being in an abusive relationship—the eating disorder continues to hurt you over and over. In this situation where you feel that the eating disorder is severely compromising your physical health, remember that safety is your number one priority. The priority is not analyzing your relationships or how the eating disorder has affected them. Like I mentioned in Part I of this blog post, healing the relationship with food usually needs to come first (or at least it needs to be strongly prioritized alongside of any other issues), and if health is in danger, addressing the food issues has to be the absolute priority.

Before you can have the brain space to look at your relationship with yourself and with others, you need to stabilize your eating habits and stop any extreme and dangerous behaviors like restricting, bingeing, and purging. We offer a lot of support in that area, through my books, the online course, one-on-one coaching, or group coaching; or you can use whatever resources are available to you and that you find helpful. This discussion on relationships is mainly for those who are not in immediate danger from the eating disorder. It’s for those of you who have made some progress in recovery and who feel ready to look at some other issues, or for those who are fully recovered and want to become the best version of yourself—and that can include exploring some of the ways the eating disorder interfered with your life, and learning how you can move forward from here.

Explore the ways your eating disorder has affected your relationships

To get started in thinking about the ways the eating disorder affected you and your relationships, I’m going to pose several questions to guide you. You can journal about the questions or just reflect on them and allow ideas to flow. Avoid judging yourself for anything that comes up—simply try to observe your thoughts with an open mind and see where it leads.

I’ve developed these questions based on my own experience and the experience of others that I’ve talked to over the years, especially in coaching. If you have any of these issues, please know that you’re not broken and please have as much compassion for yourself as possible because you’ve simply been doing the best that you can.

What were your friendships and your family relationships like when you first started dieting or when you first started fixating on food or bingeing?

Once dieting or bingeing started, what effect did that have on your friendships? What effect did it have on your family relationships, and if applicable, what effect did it have on your romantic relationships?

Did you start isolating yourself to spend more time calculating calories or planning meals? Did you spend less time out in the world socializing and connecting with others?

Did your initial eating disorder behaviors get you compliments from others, setting you up to think that your appearance and your ability to be fit or thin determined your worth in relationships?

Did you think your ability to make friends or to date was determined by your body’s shape or size?

If you felt you weren’t the right weight, did you avoid interactions?

Did shame about your body affect any romantic or sexual relationships?

Did being distracted with bingeing, secretive eating, or dieting take you away from connecting with family or friends?

When you were with people, did you feel like you weren’t really present because you felt like all you could think about was food, or your weight, or what everyone else was eating, or other people’s weight, or what you should or shouldn’t be eating, or what you wanted to eat when you left the gathering?

Did the physical effects of bingeing make you avoid friends, miss work, cancel plans, avoid romantic partners, or avoid trying to form new connections?

Did your eating issues influence relationship decisions like who to date, or the decision to continue or end a relationship, or the decision to get married or even have children?

Did purging behaviors or overexercising make you too exhausted to socialize and connect with others?

Did you hide from people because you had gained weight and didn’t believe you would be accepted?

Did you share your eating disorder struggles with people who did not react well and made you feel even worse about yourself?

Did you start struggling with food as a young child and did food start to feel like your only friend at some point?

Did you give up on even trying to form bonds with others because you felt so connected to food?

Did eating feel safer in some ways than putting yourself out there and risk getting hurt?

Did you feel like you were disappointing others along the way because of your struggle with food? How did that affect your relationship with those people?

As far as your relationship with yourself…

Did you lack confidence to go after your own goals because of your eating disorder?

Are there ways in which you stopped taking care of yourself because you didn’t think you were worthy of self-care?

Were there things that you’ve wanted to do just for yourself, but you’ve let your weight or your body shape stop you?

These questions so far are primarily directed at helping you see where the eating disorder is negatively impacting your ability to put energy and time into relationships, including the relationship with yourself. But there’s another connection to think about and that’s the possibility that relationship issues contributed to why you started dieting in the first place and why it got out of control. Ask yourself these questions…

Did anyone in your life make you feel like you needed to diet or look a certain way to be loved and accepted?

Did someone put you on a diet when you were a child so that you didn’t even have a choice in the matter? What effect did this have on you and your relationship with that person and your relationship with yourself?

Did someone in your life give you the message that you had to be perfect, including with your eating and exercise?

Did you feel like you would lose love or affection from someone or from many people if you were not perfect?

(The impact others have on your feelings about your body and your desire to diet is something I talked about with Dr. Ramani in Episode 144: Eating Disorders and Narcissistic Relationships).

There’s also the issue of developing a connection between bingeing and relationship stress over time so that the relationship stress starts to automatically lead to urges to binge. In this case, you end up with the experience of bingeing getting worse when relationship problems get worse. This connection can go in another direction as well in that a good relationship might have a positive effect on your recovery. I’ve had more than a few people tell me about time periods when they were in new, exciting relationships or living with someone for the first time and that temporarily quieted their urges to binge—or even if their urges did not decrease, they simply did not follow them because that person was always around, which led to quitting the habit for a period of time.

This is not to say that good relationships are a cure for bingeing, but different factors can affect our patterns, and everyone has different patterns. To explore these unique connections in your own life, ask yourself…

Have relationships ever had a positive effect as far as my eating disorder? How did that play out? (It doesn’t have to be a new, exciting romantic relationship, it can be any relationship).

Do you tend to have less urges to binge when you’re connected with good friends or people you care about?

Do you have less urges to diet or focus on weight when you’re with people who have healthy attitudes about food?

These questions are certainly not exhaustive of every possible connection of eating issues and relationships, but I hope they give you a place to start as far as exploring this area.

You can avoid binge eating regardless of relationship dynamics

The next topic I want to address is separating the relationship issues (as much as possible) from your ability to stop bingeing, stop harmful restrictive behaviors, and develop a healthy relationship with food. Relationship challenges will be present throughout your life, and you want to put yourself in a position to be binge free regardless of what is going on in those relationships. To do this, it’s vital to recognize any thought you have that uses a relationship struggle as a reason to binge. As examples, I’m going to give you a few of my own former lower brain thoughts that encouraged bingeing in response to relationship-related issues.

For a year during my bingeing, I lived with my sister and another room mate and they both had boyfriends at the time. It felt like they were always out with their boyfriends, or their boyfriends were hanging out at our apartment, and I was always alone, and my thoughts told me that “I was lonely, unwanted, unlovable, and needed the bingeing for comfort.”

Another example was a time that my father came to visit me in college during some of my worst bingeing days. He hadn’t seen me in a while and when he did, he said, “you don’t even look like yourself anymore” (because of all the weight I’d gained). In my thoughts, looking like myself meant when I was a successful distance runner and athlete—the time when he seemingly was the most proud of me. His comment made me feel like I’d never be able to get back to that version of myself or be able to make him proud of me again. My thoughts said “it was hopeless, all was lost, and I should just give up and keep bingeing.”

Another lower brain thought would occur when I would try to be social (which is not my strong suit). I would go out with friends and while out, I’d feel super insecure and awkward, mostly because I’m simply an introvert. I always had (and often still have) a feeling of not quite fitting in when I am with groups of people. When I was a binge eater, the longer I stayed around people, the more I found myself thinking about food and what I would eat when I got home. My brain would justify it by saying that “I would never fit in, and bingeing was therefore more pleasurable and more fun than being out with friends, and I deserved some enjoyment just for myself.”  It’s important to point out here that to stop bingeing, I didn’t need to learn how to be more social and less awkward. I’m still an introvert, and I would still prefer to eat a good meal than go out with a big group of people, but bingeing is the last thing that I would want to do. I say this to make sure you know that nothing is wrong with you if you sometimes think food is more appealing than people—because it certainly can be in certain situations, but it’s about taking bingeing completely out of this equation. Bingeing is never a form of pleasure, always leads to pain, and is never a solution to social anxiety.

Some other justifications I had for bingeing in terms of my relationships were encouraged by therapy. As I’ve talked about frequently, therapy taught me to try to find deeper meaning in my binges and to discover what I was trying to use food to “cope with”—and a lot of these things became the reasons my lower brain used to get me to binge. Some of the relationship-related justifications were: because my parents didn’t give my feelings enough validation and support as a child, so I needed to binge to stuff down those feelings; because I feared intimacy and sex due to the messages I received growing up, and therefore I binged to protect myself; because I always felt like I needed to be the “good child,” and I therefore got caught up in a lot of people-pleasing even at a young age, so I needed to binge for relief from this pressure; because romantic relationships made me anxious, so I needed to binge to soothe myself. This list could go on and on, but my brain—which was hooked on bingeing—was all too quick to give me reasons why I should binge, and because relationships are a big part of life, my binge-encouraging thoughts could easily center on relationship struggles. However, thinking that I binged because of relationship issues just served to encourage more binge eating.

There is a difference between noticing some patterns and connections you have between binge eating and relationships, and then on the other hand, using relationship issues as reasons to binge. Like I mentioned earlier, you may indeed get more urges when relationship stress is high, and it’s good to notice and acknowledge that so you can be prepared to dismiss urges during those times. What’s not helpful is to believe that you’re powerless not to binge in the face of relationship stress. Yes, it may take more effort and support to avoid a binge during those times, but relationship stress doesn’t make binge eating inevitable. It may make an urge to binge inevitable because of the habit, but you always get to choose what to do when you have an urge.

When you know the urges are the only direct cause, you have the freedom to have a wide variety of experiences in relationships without ever fearing bingeing. That never means you have to accept poor treatment or that you should do nothing about relationship conflict. It’s always helpful to try to make relationship improvements or even make decisions to leave unhealthy relationships, but your ability to avoid binge eating cannot hinge on that. In relationships, you’re only in control of half of the equation—you can’t always predict what the other person will do, and that’s why it’s so empowering to know that no matter what, you can avoid a binge. Some of the relationship problems I blamed my bingeing on in the past still come up today, but have completely disconnected binge eating from those issues.

Many of the relationship issues I’ve faced since recovery have been much more serious and difficult than what I dealt with during my binge eating years, and not once did binge eating feel like an option. To help you make this separation in your own life, I want to circle back to talking about the questions I asked you earlier in this post about the connections between your relationships and bingeing. As you think about these questions, it can be a great opportunity to notice and become aware of your lower brain’s messages. Your lower brain’s tendency will be to point to a connection or a pattern and say, “yep, that’s why you binge,” “bingeing makes total sense,” or “because of this issue, you should just keep bingeing.” Because this is never the purpose of the questions, anytime you notice these type of thoughts, start to label them as faulty brain messages or as neurological junk from the lower brain.

The questions are also never to suggest that you have to fix the relationship issues before you can stop bingeing, but that’s what the lower brain will often suggest. You may have thoughts like, “well, I’m stuck in this particular relationship situation or with this particular parent, so I can’t possibly stop binge eating until I figure out how to solve that relationship issue.” You can learn to dismiss those thoughts and realize that again, there’s a big difference between acknowledging that there are some connections between bingeing and relationships, and on the other hand, justifying bingeing with relationship problems.

Acknowledging connections allows you to learn and grow from what’s happened in the past, and justifying keeps you stuck in a harmful, habitual cycle. As you explore any connections that you have between bingeing and relationships, you can counteract any of your lower brain’s messages with a mantra like “relationship issues are never a reason to binge,” or “bingeing is never a solution to relationships issues.”

Another great way to be on to your brain when it comes to this topic is to notice that it will even suggest a binge to cope with a relationship issue that is directly caused from binge eating. When you’re aware of this, it’s easy to see the faulty logic of the lower brain. For example, if you isolate yourself because of the bingeing, your lower brain will encourage you to binge because of the isolation. Once you start to see that these issues don’t need to ever cause binge eating, it opens you up to start finding real solutions, which is the third and final topic of this post.

Freedom from binge eating gives you the capacity to focus on the relationship with yourself and with others

When you take bingeing (and other harmful eating behaviors like restriction and purging) out of the equation, you give yourself the brain space, energy and time to start learning new relationship skills—especially some that you feel like maybe you never truly developed because the eating disorder got in the way during your formative years. It opens you up to reevaluating relationships and possibly even walking away from ones that are no longer healthy for you. It opens you up to learning coping and communication skills for difficult relationships that you can’t or don’t want to leave. When you disconnect binge eating from this endeavor of improving relationships, it gives you so much freedom because you don’t have to worry about doing all of this “right” to avoid a binge. You can get curious about the ways you want to show up in relationships, or the type of people you want to connect with, or the ways you want to improve your relationship with yourself; and you can know that no matter what happens, you can continue dismissing urges to binge and you can continue eating adequately.

Doing this gave me freedom that I never thought possible. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost 20 years since I recovered and through these 20 years, I’ve never believed that my continued freedom depended on fixing anything within myself or within my relationships. I believe this has made such a huge difference.

However, as I’ll talk about more in Part III (coming soon) of this series, there were things to improve and there were things to heal within myself and within my relationships—some of those things related to the past eating disorder, and some of those things unrelated. I’m thankful that I’ve had a chance to work on other goals within myself and with others, even though I have not always done that perfectly. If you’re anything like I was, you’ve probably been in “fixing mode” in relation to your eating disorder for a very long time, and I want you to start to get excited about turning attention toward some other things in your life and addressing those things—even if some of those things are very difficult. It’s refreshing to start to look at your life as a binge-free person, and see what you want to make of it, and think about who you want to be on this journey with, and how you want to relate to the people around you, and how you want to take care of yourself along the way.

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The topic of relationships comes up so much in coaching that in order to help people more effectively, I recently got certified as a relationship coach (in addition to my certification in health coaching from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition). So, if you are having issues in relationships as you recover from binge eating, it’s definitely something I understand and something I can help guide you through in one-on-one coaching.

Additionally, I have a lot of personal experience in this area ranging from the issues related to the eating disorder, and then later through a challenging marriage, parenting, divorce, co-parenting, dating, difficult relationships, breakups, and healthy relationships as well. Just like I frequently remind you that I do not eat perfectly, I also do not do relationships perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but I have overcome some challenges in this area, and I have a capacity to listen without judgment and to help you work through your own unique issues. This goes for Brain over Binge Coach Julie as well, who is certified in life coaching and can help you with so many other issues that may come up in your life or in your relationships.

Learn more about 1:1 coaching and book your 45 minute or 20 minute session  

 

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

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I am continuing my blog series to provide quick inspiration and practical advice about a variety of issues that may come up for you in binge eating recovery. (You can read additional advice in Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV)

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Showing up for yourself

On days that feel hard, read this…

“All progress is made when people who don’t feel like showing up for themselves show up anyway. Your power is wielded in your ability to act despite conflicting emotions. Feel your feelings, then get moving.”  -J. Mike Fields

This is not to say that you always need to push through and exhaust yourself. Sometimes rest and downtime is what you need. But it’s vital to realize that you can’t wait to feel good to take positive action, and you especially can’t wait to feel good to avoid the harmful action of a binge.

When you show up for yourself and say no to binges no matter how you feel, you will start to feel better and better!

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What if I eat emotionally?

Recovery from binge eating does not mean you will never eat emotionally again.

It’s simply not realistic to expect yourself to avoid every form of emotional eating that may come up. Emotions are always running through us, and pretty much every time you eat, you may be able to point to an emotion that could be theoretically linked to that eating. It’s sometimes hard to sort out what is actually emotional eating and what is just normal eating in times that you’re emotional.

It can become a little confusing and I think that’s why it’s important to realize that—even if you do eat something that seems to be driven by emotions—you can still stop after a reasonable amount and you can dismiss any urges to binge that may arise. In other words, emotional eating never needs to lead to binge eating.

I talk extensively about the relationship between emotional eating and binge eating in the Brain over Binge course, especially in Lesson 7. (The course is only $18.99 per month with no commitment.) 

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Stay binge-free even with persistent urges

It can feel frustrating to dismiss an urge only to have it come back not long after it settled down…

But when you start thinking things like “I can’t believe this is happening again!” or “why can’t these urges just leave me alone!” it puts your nervous system in a fight-or-flight state that makes it more difficult to dismiss the urge again.

Try not to be surprised that the urges keep coming back. After all, the lower brain thinks you need this habit, and producing urges is what it’s been conditioned to do. The less you are upset about the recurrence of the urges, the more accepting your mindset will be, and you can even welcome each urge as an opportunity to make the changes you want.

I’m not saying you’re going to like having the urges! But, to decondition the brain, you have to learn to be okay with having unmet desire to binge (no matter how often that desire shows up) until that desire fades away.

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What do you need to allow in recovery?

Do you fight against binge urges instead of letting them come and go?

Do you automatically start eating when you feel certain emotions?

Do you go into a full binge after feeling some discomfort from overeating?

Do you attempt to keep tight control over your weight?

While all of these issues may seem different, you can improve any of them by learning about the concept of allowing what is. When you develop an allowing mindset surrounding urges, food, weight, emotions, and more, you actually step into a much more powerful position to make positive changes.

Allowing what is is not being passive…it is letting the things you can’t control simply be. When you do this, you get your energy and focus back to use it on what you can control.

Coach Julie and I have a podcast episode about this topic, and I know you’ll find it helpful in many aspects of binge eating recovery:
Listen to Episode 142: Allowing What Is (with Coach Julie)

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Not eating mindfully?

You’re not alone if you find yourself not eating in a mindful way. Life is busy and challenging, and thankfully, mindfulness during meals is not a requirement for recovery.

You may have received the idea somewhere that you “should” be present while you are eating, and chew slowly, and pay close attention to the sensations of your body. All of this can certainly be helpful, especially if you are re-learning normal eating and re-establishing your hunger and fullness cues.

However, not eating mindfully does not make you destined to binge.

Your lower brain might produce a thought like, “you weren’t present enough and you didn’t really enjoy your food, so now you need the ‘pleasure’ of a binge.” This is neurological junk. The reality is that sometimes you just have to eat and move on, and you simply don’t have time to sit down and savor your food.

You’ll find the level of mindfulness that you want (depending on each situation), but always remember that you can dismiss binge urges no matter what.

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Eating outside of meals/snacks is not a binge

In Episode 147: Redefining Restriction, I mentioned that I generally like to eat 3 meals a day plus some snacks in between. Someone then reached out to ask: If you eat outside of these meals/snacks, do you consider that a binge? The answer is absolutely not.

Life is often challenging and unpredictable, and having meals and snacks is just a general framework, definitely not a rule. On extremely busy days, I sometimes just eat something whenever I feel hunger or when it seems like I need some energy, and this ends up looking like maybe 7-8 snacks. I sometimes eat a few large meals and no snacks, or sometimes only one actual meal and the rest just quick convenience food because it’s easy and I don’t have the bandwidth to put any effort into food.

The point here is that life doesn’t always line up with how I’d ideally like to be eating, and when I eat in a way that doesn’t fit that “ideal,” I never consider it a binge. My past binges were large and unmistakable, and after recovery, I told myself that if I had to ask if it was a binge or not, then it was not a binge.

This allowed me to confidently choose to eat in whatever reasonable way I wanted to, based on my available time and resources, without thinking I was wrong or broken. This also kept me from creating strict rules around my eating that could have led me back down the path of dieting.

I realize that for some, binges are less clearly defined, and that’s why there are significant sections of my course and 2nd book devoted to helping you define your binges. You can also find guidance in this blog post: Subjectivity in Binge Eating.

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Are low moods making food more appealing?

Feeling down or feeling negative emotions absolutely makes rewarding behaviors more enticing. This, combined with the reality that food is the easiest form of reward that most of us have access to, creates a scenario that sets us up to feel driven toward food during low moods.

Even people who never struggle with binge eating can develop some emotional eating habits over time. Everyone probably “uses” food for reasons other than true hunger to some extent. To keep this in balance, it’s about learning to consciously choose instead of feeling like food has control over you.

For more help with this (especially if negative emotions are connected to your binge eating), listen to Episode 39: Q&A: Emotional Attachment to Binge Eating

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Would you tell a friend to binge?

We often tell ourselves that a binge “makes sense” for one reason or another, and one common reason you may come up with is that you’ve already eaten something unhealthy, or you’ve already broken a resolution to avoid a certain food, so you might as well binge.

It can be helpful to take a step back and think about what you’d tell a friend who broke a resolution or ate something unhealthy…

Would you tell them all is lost and that they might as well eat all of the junk food?

Of course not!

However, you may believe this same logic when it comes from your own thoughts. A big part of binge eating recovery is learning to recognize these faulty, lower-brain thoughts and realize they don’t represent your truth.

Instead, you’d tell a friend that whether or not they stick to their other resolutions, a binge never makes sense and always leads to more pain. You’d tell them that regardless of their food choices, a binge does not bring them any closer to improving their eating habits.

You can treat yourself the same way you’d treat a friend—knowing that whether or not you are “successful” with your eating, you never have to binge… and that is a huge success!!

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This advice is taken from weekly emails I send to encourage recovery. If you’d like to receive my emails (and monthly newsletter) going forward, all you need to do is enter your email address on this page.

When you sign up, you also get the free “Brain over Binge Inspiration Booklet” and the 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:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute or 20-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.

eating disorder relationships

Healing Your Relationship with Food, Yourself, and Others (Part 1)

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Having a difficult relationship with food affects nearly every other relationship in your life, including your relationship with yourself—because it tends to erode self-confidence and usually brings high levels of shame. Eating disorders are extremely isolating, causing you to turn away from other people, even people you love the most and who love you the most. Because of the shame associated with your behaviors, you may find yourself lying to those you love about your eating, or hiding food, or hiding the evidence of food, or hiding your purging or exercise behaviors.

Your drive to binge and your obsessive food thoughts can drive you away from connection and can distract you from being present with the most important people in your life. The way you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally after engaging in harmful food behaviors can make you not want to reach out to friends, and shy away from social events or dating or any sort of intimate or romantic relationship.

The connection between eating disorders and relationships is multifaceted, and as I was reflecting on this topic and coming up with points to address, I realize there’s so much more than I can tackle in one post (this post is also a podcast episode). So, this post is going to be the first part of a series of posts to address healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others. As you read this (and the posts that will follow), know that each person and each relationship is different, so please take what is useful to you and what resonates with you and leave the rest. I’ll share some of my own experience in the area of relationships along the way—to help you see that you’re not alone, and to hopefully give you insight into some of the issues that you are personally dealing with now or that may arise in the future.

Eating disorders interfere with basic physiological and safety needs and our ability to connect in relationships

An important initial point I want to make as I embark on discussing healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others is that it mostly likely needs to go in that order—or at least healing your relationship with food has to be the priority in eating disorder recovery. You can, of course, work on your issues with food while you also work on yourself and your relationship with others if you want, but it’s so hard to resolve issues in those other relationships (and with yourself) when you’re in the midst of what can feel like an all-consuming survival battle with food.

To explain why this is the case, I’m going to briefly talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which provides a framework for why food issues interfere with your relationship with yourself and others. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a well-known psychological concept that explains our human motivations. Maslow said that there are five tiers or levels of human needs, and in Maslow’s hierarchy, these levels are usually depicted one on top of the other within a pyramid.

At the base of the pyramid—the biggest part—are our basic physiological needs like breathing, food, water, shelter, warmth, and sleep. These needs form the foundation that must be relatively stable in order for us to pursue our other motivations and higher needs. The next level is safety needs, which are the needs for security, stability, and protection from danger or harm. The third level is social needs, which includes the need for love, affection, belonging, and social interaction. The fourth level is esteem needs, including the need for self-esteem, achievement, recognition and respect from others. The last level is self-actualization, which is the need for personal growth, fulfillment and the realization of one’s full potential.

These levels–beyond the basic physical needs—aren’t completely fixed and they can operate simultaneously at times, but the basic premise is that we can’t focus on more meaningful things in life (like improving our relationship with ourselves and others) until our basic physiological and safety needs are met. When an eating disorder is part of your life, it strongly interferes with physiological and safety needs and makes it so difficult to move up to the higher levels of Maslow’s pyramid.

When you’re restricting food, your body and brain are operating from a primal, survival-driven state and you don’t have the mental, emotional, or physical bandwidth to pursue more meaningful things in your life. Additionally, when you’re hooked on the terrible habit of binge eating, your brain becomes conditioned to operate as if binge eating is a basic survival need—so that when the binge urges are operating, it’s hard to focus on anything else because you feel like one of your basic needs isn’t being met. Of course, binge eating is not a real need (like a need for normal amounts of food), but the point is that—in the moment that you’re feeling that drive to binge—it can feel like a real need.

The feeling of having an “unmet survival need” during binge urges is a big part of why it can feel so tempting to just binge to make the urges go away. There is an illusion that if you can get the urge to stop (by bingeing), you can get back to the rest of your life and focus on what’s important. But when you look at what happens after you act on the urge to binge, you see that the opposite is true. The binge gives you a whole new set of problems which are worse than the urge itself and further prevent you from focusing on other areas of your life.

Acting on an urge to binge is not like acting on an urge to drink water when you’re very thirsty. When you have a need for water and you’re therefore unable to focus on anything else in your life, then drinking a big glass of water will make you feel so much better. You will feel like you can function normally again and focus on what’s important to you. However, with binge eating or another bad habit or addiction, instead of feeling better after following the urge, you feel absolutely terrible and you’re usually much less able to put your attention on what matters to you.

Eating disorders also interfere with that second level of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Restricting food, bingeing on food, and having other obsessive or compulsive behaviors around food affect our basic needs for safety and security. When you have an eating disorder, there can be a great deal of fear—including a fear of food and a fear of the binge eating itself. Also, there can be dangerous health issues, and a lot of unpredictability in your day-to-day life based on whether or not you binge. It’s also common to lack self-trust when it comes to eating, and this creates a lack of stable and safe feelings within yourself. All of this is to say that when your relationship with food is off, it creates a situation where your fundamental physiological and safety needs are not being met, and it becomes so incredibly challenging to focus on your relationship with yourself and others.

Fixing relationships issues doesn’t cure eating disorders, and it’s difficult to improve relationships when struggling with food  

In Brain over Binge, I talk a lot about why I disagree with the advice to try to fix other issues in your life as a remedy for binge eating. You may think you have to heal your self-esteem and your relationships, as well as find fulfillment, in order to stop binge eating—but I believe this advice has it backwards in most cases. How can you possibly focus on your higher needs for fulfillment, connection, love, belonging, and meaning when your basic needs aren’t being met because of the eating disorder?

I often share my experience in eating disorder therapy, which involved trying to address deeper issues within myself, with my emotions, and in my relationships. For me and so many people that I’ve worked with over the years, this was an ineffective path to stopping binge eating. One of the main issues was that, much of the time, I felt completely unable to actually focus on things like relationships or self-esteem, because my eating disorder interfered with me following my therapist’s advice. Looking back, this only made sense because the issues with eating were consuming my mind and body’s resources, and Maslow’s hierarchy explains why that was the case.

With all of that being said, people with eating disorders don’t just completely shut off from the rest of the world and from relationships with others and with themselves. People with eating disorders do manage to have friends, romantic partners, successful careers, creative pursuits, and fulfillment in other areas. But, if you have or you’ve had an eating disorder, you know how challenging this can be, and you know you sometimes feel like you’re leading a double life. It can be like going in and out of feeling like you’re in basic survival mode—consumed by your desire to restrict, binge, purge, overexercise, or obsess about food—and then in other moments, feeling relatively normal and being able to pursue your higher needs and goals.

When I had binge-free days, I would feel like I was going up Maslow’s pyramid of needs. I was able to spend quality time with the people I cared about, I was able to pursue romantic relationships, and I could engage in some personal growth—only to be thrown back down to that lower level again when the urge is to binge arose.

A story from my own life: A relationship meets the struggle with food

To bring this into real life, I want to share a story from when I was in college and dealing with bulimia. The story involves dating, and it was something I briefly wrote about in Brain over Binge regarding a guy I was dating in my last year of college who I ended up confiding in about my eating disorder. At the time, my therapist was encouraging me to share my struggle with people in my life, to get support; and looking back, I realize he probably wasn’t the right person to confide in. He was great in many ways, but I don’t think he necessarily wanted a deep emotional connection with me. I think he was just trying to have fun and to be honest, probably wanted things to progress to a sexual relationship as well. As an aside to this story, this was definitely the opposite of my own motivation for dating at this time. Sex and physical intimacy was something I very much tried to avoid during my eating disorder—primarily because of the deep shame and disgust I felt toward my body from all the bingeing (well, that sprinkled in with some guilt from my Catholic upbringing which is a story for another day).

I will talk more about the relationship between sex and eating disorders in one of the upcoming posts in this blog series, but the point of telling this story here is that by dating this guy in college, I was trying to meet some of those higher needs for connection, belonging, and even love. Yet, all too often, I got sucked right back into the world of bingeing and stalled any progress toward those relationships needs. The guy I’m referring to here—I gave him the name David in the book (not his real name)—was a source of some good times for the four or five months that we dated. We did some fun outdoor things that I love, like hiking, canoeing, and water skiing. We also went to restaurants, a few concerts, the movies, and we hung out at each other’s apartments. It was mostly good in those moments, but there was another side to it too.

If I was bingeing, or feeling sick from bingeing, or exercising all day to try to purge, I would make up excuses not to see him. This happened a lot. I do remember one time, I reluctantly agreed to see David anyway after a binge. We went shopping, and I can remember wearing really baggy clothes to hide my bloating, and I can also remember not wanting to look at him in the eyes because my face was so swollen from all the food and water retention (this was something that happened after most of my binges). I can still remember walking around the store in my baggy clothes, looking down, trying to make awkward conversation through my shame, and I remember feeling so relieved when I got back in my car and drove away.

Shortly before we broke up, he took me to his family home for the night, which was a bit of a drive from our college. That night, an urge to binge overtook me and I snuck out of the room where I was staying, and I ate a large number of cookies from a big tub of them that was in his kitchen. I did manage some semblance of self-control, and I ate an amount that I didn’t think anyone would notice—or at least that’s what I told myself. But the next day, we were in the living room and his mom was in the kitchen, which was adjacent to the living room, and she definitely noticed. My mind is a little fuzzy as far as exactly what she said, but I remember her opening it and expressing some frustration and confusion about who ate them. I just sat there feeling frozen and so ashamed, and I didn’t say anything to David or his mom. I was embarrassed and bloated and so uncomfortable on the drive back to college later that evening, and I broke up with him not long after that.

The relationships with David likely would not have worked out anyway because of some differences, but I definitely blamed the eating disorder for the breakup at the time. I did not say that directly to him, but in my mind, I told myself that I could not be with someone if I was going to have to hide my shame from them, or not be able to be intimate, or cancel fun activities, or not be able to look them in the eyes because of face swelling, or eat all of their family’s cookies in the middle of the night. I do laugh a little now about the cookie story so many years later because I think of what an odd first (and last) impression I must have made on his family. But it certainly wasn’t funny at the time, and I know many of you reading this can relate to doing things you’re not proud of when you’re under the influence of an urge to binge.

I had told David about my eating disorder about a month before we broke up, and he was not very sensitive about it—likely due to a lack of understanding and being a college guy just wanting to have fun. When I tried explaining the binge eating to him and told him that’s why I had canceled some dates and plans, he asked me sarcastically, “so you’d rather eat chocolate cake than be with me?” I remember feeling so foolish in that moment, but—as I shared in Brain over Binge—even though his comment was very insensitive, there was some truth in it. Yes, when the urges to binge hit, I definitely would have chosen to eat cake (or a tub of cookies) over being with him. Those were the times that I was not able to focus on any of my higher needs or have the capacity to be present with another person.

The years of my eating disorder felt like swinging back and forth between trying to live a normal life and falling into the nightmare of binge eating. It was so frustrating to have my relationship with food interfere with any relationship I tried to develop, including a relationship with myself. There wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with me in the area of relationships, even though—like the rest of the population—I had so much to learn then and I still do so many years later. But at the time, I definitely thought something was wrong with me. Now that I look back, I can see that I was just temporarily distracted and consumed by the food and therefore unable to expand my life much beyond that.

This is where I’m going end Part 1 of this blog series. I hope it’s helped you understand more about how your eating disorder can interfere with your ability to connect with others and pursue higher needs. I also hoped it has helped you feel less alone and less like you’re broken in the area of relationships.

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The topic of relationships comes up so much in coaching that in order to help people more effectively, I recently got certified as a relationship coach (in addition to my certification in health coaching from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition). So, if you are having issues in relationships as you recover from binge eating, it’s definitely something I understand and something I can help guide you through in one-on-one coaching.

Additionally, I have a lot of personal experience in this area ranging from the issues related to the eating disorder, and then later through a challenging marriage, parenting, divorce, co-parenting, dating, difficult relationships, breakups, and healthy relationships as well. Just like I frequently remind you that I do not eat perfectly, I also do not do relationships perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but I have overcome some challenges in this area, and I have a capacity to listen without judgment and to help you work through your own unique issues. This goes for Brain over Binge Coach Julie as well, who is certified in life coaching and can help you with so many other issues that may come up in your life or in your relationships.

Learn more about 1:1 coaching and book your 45 minute or 20 minute session.  

 

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

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I am continuing my blog series to provide quick inspiration and practical advice about a variety of issues that may come up for you in binge eating recovery. (You can read additional advice in Part I, Part II, Part III)

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Not binge eating is a gift to yourself

The binge urges will make you feel like binge eating is a gift—that it’s what you “want, need, and deserve.” Your thoughts will tell you that the binge will provide “excitement, pleasure, escape, relief”…

But you know by now that the binge doesn’t deliver on what the urge promises. Not only does it bring pain, shame, stress, and isolation, it takes you away from yourself, your life, and the people and causes you care about. In the moment of an urge, you may think that what’s you want, but when you step back and think about who you are and who you want to be, you realize that dismissing the urge is the true gift to yourself.

When you don’t binge, you open yourself up to truly experiencing life, even the most challenging parts, and connecting with everything that matters to you.

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Separate from the dieting voice

It’s usually easier for a binge eater to see that the binge urges are not from their higher self, but they hold on to the belief that the voice encouraging restrictive dieting is their true voice.” – Brain over Binge Recovery Guide, pg. 96. 

In order to quit binge eating, it’s vital to stop depriving yourself of necessary nourishment. If you are having trouble eating enough food, it could be because the harmful dieting mindset has become as much of a habit as the binge eating. Once you spend enough time on restrictive diets, or engaging in excessive exercise, the voice encouraging those behaviors can be intrusive and incessant as well.

It’s important to start to separate from that dieting voice—knowing that depriving yourself of necessary food is not an effective way to lose weight and will prevent recovery from binge eating. Even if dieting feels like what you truly want to do, you can unlearn the harmful restrictive behaviors and give yourself the nourishment you need to end the eating disorder and thrive

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Using success to justify a binge

Do you experience this common binge-encouraging thought?
I’ve done so well, one binge isn’t a big deal, it will be easy to get back on track.

Although success breeds success, your lower brain may sometimes try to use your success to justify a binge. You may notice that after a certain number of binge-free days, your lower brain starts producing thoughts telling you that you should take a “break” from recovering.

Not acting on these thoughts is vital to your success. Remind yourself that your success doesn’t mean you deserve a binge; it means you are one step closer to solidifying new neural pathways that no longer support binge eating, and that is what you truly deserve

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Wanting to not binge

When you feel like you are forcing yourself to avoid a binge, it feels hard. It feels like you’re denying yourself something you actually want.
When you feel this way, think about this…

What if by bingeing, you are actually denying yourself something you truly want—which is to not binge.

You wouldn’t be reading this blog post if binge eating was something you really wanted in your life. If it was your true desire, you would be enjoying it, not experiencing any consequences, and definitely not seeking recovery resources.

Even though you may be able to see this rationally, the problem is—in the moments when urges are present—you forget, and you believe the lower brain.

The remedy for this is to develop a mindset of wanting to dismiss the binge urges. Channel the belief that you are choosing to accept any discomfort the urge brings because you want to avoid the binge. When your lower brain tries to make you feel sorry for yourself that you can’t binge, remind yourself that it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you want to make this change.

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Lack of motivation during urges?

I want to share something that came up in 1:1 coaching last week that I believe would benefit everyone to hear:

It’s okay to feel unmotivated during urges. 

It’s normal to feel like you don’t want to dismiss the urge, it’s expected that you’ll feel like a binge is appealing in that moment, it’s a given that you’ll temporary not care about your reasons for recovery. This does not actually mean that you lack motivation, it just means the urges are passing through. When that primitive, pleasure-seeking, lower-brain state is in charge, you are in a different mindset than when you are feeling rational and inspired to recover.

The goal during urges is not motivation, it’s acceptance of whatever feelings, thoughts, sensations, and desires arise, while knowing you aren’t going to act on them. For example, you may feel sad or depressed that you can’t binge, but that’s okay. Try to stay as detached as possible from those feelings, knowing that the sadness will lift and you’ll be so happy you didn’t binge.

When the urges pass, you’ll again connect with your motivation and your desire to be free of this habit!

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What about distracting yourself?

Distraction can have a place. You can do countless things during an urge, and there is no right or wrong here.

But when it comes to distraction, know that no alternate activity can satisfy the urge to binge.

This is something you’ve probably experienced and it’s completely normal. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you or the activities you are choosing. It’s just that those primal, habitual brain pathways are calling for a binge, not any other option.

The important thing to remember about doing something else during an urge is that the goal of doing something else is not to make the urge go away. The urge has to naturally go away on its own, and you can do whatever uniquely helps you allow the urge to pass.

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Did you “fail” or just eat?

You may have “I failed” or “I’ve blown it” thoughts after eating treats or other delicious foods. It’s important to step back and realize that these are thoughts and not objective indicators, and it’s possible to have different thoughts.

Someone else might eat in the exact same way that you do, and they think it was “delicious” or “amazing” or “wonderfully filling,” or just “okay” or maybe even “a bit too much.” Then, they move on with their life, focusing on other things, while you are thinking that you did something awful by eating in that same way.

If you have subjective food rules for yourself, and you don’t follow one of the food rules—then you simply did not follow one of your subjective food rules. That’s all that’s happened. You can move on from it, realizing that there is no one right way to eat anyway. It doesn’t mean you’ve “failed,” and it especially doesn’t mean you should go on and do something more harmful (like continue overeating or bingeing). The thoughts that want to use “imperfect” eating as a justification to binge are neurological junk.

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Self-respect over feelings

I recently shared the following quote on Instagram and I want to explain how you can use it as you end harmful habits:

“Your self-respect has to be stronger than your feelings.” 

The quote is in reference to relationships (from Jimmy Knowles), but overcoming urges to binge is—in many ways—like pulling yourself away from an unhealthy or toxic relationship. You are going to feel like you want to engage in the habit at times (that’s just how the brain’s reward center works), just like you are going to sometimes feel attached to a person who you know is not right for you. But your self-respect can still win out.

Even when the habit seems appealing, you can know deeply that binge eating is not in line with who you are or who you want to be, just like you can know that a person you have feelings for is not aligned with what you truly need or want. It’s okay to feel a temporary sense of loss for the harmful habit or relationship, but always remember to put self-respect over feelings!

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This advice is taken from weekly emails I send to encourage recovery. If you’d like to receive my emails (and monthly newsletter) going forward, all you need to do is enter your email address on this page.

When you sign up, you also get the free “Brain over Binge Inspiration Booklet” and the 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:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.

treats in binge eating recovery

Can Treats Coexist with Binge Eating Recovery?

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I wrote this blog post back in 2012, and I wanted to update it after an experience I had a few days ago while preparing for Halloween…

2012 post:

I eat Halloween candy. I also eat many other types of sweets and desserts in moderation. I don’t think continued recovery requires this, although it is extremely helpful to learn you aren’t powerless around any food. You may find that avoiding certain foods temporarily or even altogether works for you (and if you have a health condition, then elimination of specific foods may be a necessity). Even people without eating disorders sometimes choose to avoid a food because of the effect it has on them, or because it feels too difficult to stop eating it once they start. It’s up to you to decide the amount and frequency of treats and sweets in your life, and holidays can be an opportunity to determine how binge eating recovery and treats can coexist.

Halloween definitely got the best of me when I was bulimic. During my last year of college, I was struggling with frequent binges as Halloween approached, and I remember hesitantly buying a large bag of peanut butter cups for trick-or-treaters. I lived alone in a small duplex at the time, and I knew it was a possibility for me to get some kids knocking on my door on Halloween night. I didn’t have any other plans for Halloween, because at the time, my binge eating was causing so much shame and weight gain that I didn’t have much of a desire to be social.

When I bought the peanut butter cups, I knew it was a risk that I’d eat them all before Halloween. Sweets were dangerous to me. I was trying to recover at the time, and I went back and forth between trying to avoid sweets altogether and trying to learn to eat them in moderation—but neither strategy seemed to help. Sure enough, the day before Halloween, temptation took over and I ate all of the peanut butter cups during a binge. So, on Halloween night, I turned off my outside light, and didn’t answer the door.

Fast forward to today (2012), we often have candy or junk food in the house, and I don’t view it as dangerous at all, or even think much about it. Since I recovered in 2005, we’ve celebrated Halloween every year and kept candy in the house days beforehand for the trick-or-treaters. Then, after Halloween, my own kids’ trick-or-treating buckets have sat on the kitchen table—often for weeks—and I have a few pieces of candy here and there, but I don’t feel drawn to it like in the past.

I believe there are a few reasons for this change:

  • I haven’t dieted or restricted calories in many years. A food-deprived body and brain make food the top priority. When you aren’t eating enough, cravings increase, and the reward value of food skyrockets. Pleasurable food is much more tempting and gives you more of a “hit”. This is a survival response designed to encourage you to eat more, and this response can continue for a while after dieting stops—until the body/brain fully senses safety from deprivation. Then, it gradually turns the volume down on cravings, even in the presence of highly pleasurable food.
  • I learned to stop acting on urges to binge and problematic cravings, and therefore deconditioned the habit of overeating treats. I didn’t understand my cravings in college while bulimic. I thought my urges represented my true physical or emotional needs. When I recovered, I learned that urges to binge were a glitch in the primitive part of my brain, and I did not have to act on them. Once I ate candy or other treats in moderation many times, and experienced the urges to binge that followed—without acting on them—my brain changed and those urges went away.
  • I didn’t make the treats “forbidden” or think I was a failure for eating them. When I would eat candy as a bulimic, I would often tell myself it was the “last time” I would eat that particular food, and therefore I needed to eat all I could now and then “start over tomorrow” with a clean slate of eating perfection. I didn’t realize that thinking I would “never have the candy again” made me eat so much more of it than if I just believed what I believe now—that I can have more later, or tomorrow, or another day, if I want.

It’s not that I never experience a desire for more pleasurable food, but that desire has become so much more mild after recovery, and that desire is never for massive quantities or binges—which now seems like the opposite of pleasure. Sometimes eating a sweet like Halloween candy creates a craving for a few more bites, but that is just a natural part of being human with the pleasure-seeking brain that we have, and especially in the food environment that we live in. When faced with an inclination for a little more candy, I have a choice—to have a little extra or not—but no matter what choice I make, it never has to lead to harmful behaviors like bingeing or restricting.

Recovery doesn’t mean giving up on the pleasure and enjoyment of food, it means redefining your relationship with it.

2024 update:

Just a few days ago, nearly 20 years after my recovery from binge eating and about 12 years since I wrote the blog post above, my youngest son and I went shopping together. Halloween was approaching, so we bought a bag of peanut butter cups for trick-or-treaters. Just like in college, I likely chose that particular candy for the trick-or-treaters because peanut butter cups have always been my favorite Halloween candy. Unlike in college, I know I can eat some now without it being an issue at all, so buying them didn’t create any anxiety.

My son (well, actually, both of us:-)) decided to open the bag in the car on the way home to have one. We each unwrapped a peanut butter cup and took a bite, but to my surprise, my reaction was, “it’s not even that good.” It wasn’t awful, it just wasn’t anything special. I finished the one peanut butter cup, and I didn’t have any desire for another one, which I found odd because I usually want at least one more. As I type this, the bowl of leftover peanut butter cups is sitting on my kitchen table in front of me. It’s not due to a strong will that I’m not having any, it’s a genuine lack of desire. I’ve definitely had other pleasurable foods over the past few days, but not the peanut butter cups.

I’m sharing this blog post update to tell you the following insights that I hope will help with your own recovery and relationship to treats:

  • Your relationship to even your most challenging foods can change dramatically over time. You may think a food will always have power over you but stay open to the idea that this likely will not be the case. You can learn to incorporate these foods in a way that makes sense to you, and also take comfort in the fact that time naturally changes some of your preferences.
  • When you allow foods and allow yourself to truly listen to your taste and your body, you may discover some formerly tempting foods aren’t even that good. I’m sure if I would have eaten that same peanut butter cup a few days ago with the “forbidden food” mentality or the idea that I would “never have a peanut butter cup again,” I would have craved and wanted much more. An allowing mindset surrounding treats lets you tune into how you feel about them—before you eat them, while you are eating them, and after you’re done.
  • When you set aside the dieting mentality and approach sweets with a body that is well nourished, you gain the freedom to make genuine choices, instead of being driven by the survival instincts. When you are deprived of calories, you will feel such a strong pull from the primitive brain to eat excessive amounts, and you will have heightened cravings, which makes reasonable decisions around treats nearly impossible.

Related to these points, I read a social media post last week from Dr. Mark Hyman, in which he talked about how the ingredients in Halloween candy have changed over time to include more artificial additives and preservatives. It’s definitely possible that these chemical changes truly have made the peanut butter cups taste worse over time, which lead to my “it’s not even that good” reaction a few days ago. But, even if that is the case now, when I was a binge eater, I would have eaten the candy so quickly, mindlessly, and with so much guilt that I wouldn’t have even given myself the chance to notice if I was actually enjoying it or not.

Everyone’s experience and reaction to foods is different, and your journey will not be exactly like mine, but I’ve talked to enough recovered individuals over the years to know that my story surrounding treats is not unique. So many people have transformed their relationships with sweets and have had the experience of their most-craved desserts simply losing their allure. I hope this will give you some encouragement as we approach the holiday season so that you can find a balance that works as far as treats coexisting with your recovery.

Brain over Binge resources for more help:

Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.

Is Grazing a Problem in Binge Eating Recovery?

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In this post, I’ll share some insights surrounding the topic of grazing in binge eating recovery, with the hope that it helps you understand grazing behavior better and any connection it may have to your binge eating. Grazing isn’t an inherently harmful behavior—it can be a way of eating that works for certain people in certain circumstances, but you can learn to reduce any grazing behaviors that you deem harmful in your life.

Sometimes grazing makes sense, sometimes it feels wrong

First, I want to share a little about my own experience with grazing, because I can be a bit of a grazer from time to time. Grazing has come and gone in different periods of my life, and I’m currently in more of a grazing pattern now, which I’ll explain. In an ideal world when I have the time and energy, I like to eat three larger meals per day and usually a few smaller snacks as well, but the busier I am, the more my eating can look like grazing. This was especially true when my four children were younger, and I was involved in the demands of raising four kids very close in age. I just grabbed what I could every couple of hours to try to keep my energy up. Even now that they are teens and preteens, there are still days when I’m on the go so much that I simply eat whatever I can, whenever I can fit it in.

Grazing just makes sense and fits my life at times, but when things slow down, I usually do gravitate back to those three meals and snacks when I can. At this point in time as I’m writing this, what’s going on for me as far as grazing isn’t necessarily busyness, even though that’s still a factor as well. I shared in a recent podcast episode (Episode 151: Emotional Not Eating) that I went through an emotional and stressful time a few months ago, and my appetite really decreased. When my appetite was so low, I found it so much easier to eat smaller meals rather than bigger ones, but in order to give my body the nourishment it needed throughout the day, I needed to eat more often. So my eating ended up looking a little more like grazing.

This way of eating felt good to me at the time because the idea of eating a big meal wasn’t appealing at all due to my low appetite. Even though my appetite is back for the most part now, I find myself continuing to eat the smaller meals more often. It feels intuitive at this point in time, and it feels like what my body needs. I just follow my body when I feel some hunger, I have a snack or a small meal, I get right back to whatever I’m doing, and I really don’t think too much of it. I have been starting to eat some bigger meals again, and I’ll probably get back to the three meals with some snacks on a more consistent basis at some point soon.

I’m using myself as an example here, but the larger point that I want to make is that sometimes grazing simply works. It feels normal and natural to graze for whatever reason, or it can fit your lifestyle, or it can feel like what your body intuitively needs. When grazing is done in this way, it doesn’t cause any distress and there’s not a thought that something is “wrong.”

I often hear from people who tell me that their grazing does in fact feel “wrong” and is a problem. I talk to one-on-one coaching clients or I get emails from people saying that eating too frequently is causing them distress and is actually not feeling like what their body needs. So for the rest of this post, I want address when grazing might be a problem and how it can sometimes get connected to bingeing. I also want to give you some ideas that may help you curb any grazing that feels problematic to you.

Grazing and bingeing are different, but can be linked

It’s important to know up front that grazing is not the same as bingeing. A good definition of grazing is: “eating small quantities of food at frequent but irregular intervals.” In contrast, the definition of binge eating involves eating large quantities. The official definition is: “eating, in a discreet period of time (for example, within a two-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most people would eat during a similar period of time and under similar circumstances.” Binge eating is also characterized by a sense of lack of control over the eating during the episode—a feeling that you cannot stop eating or control how much you’re eating. I’m going to come back to the lack of control part, but for now, looking at these definitions, you can see that there’s a big difference between grazing and bingeing just in the sheer amount of food consumed.

That being said, there isn’t a calorie limit where anything over a certain number of calories is a binge, and likewise, there is not a calorie rule that defines grazing. The definitions of bingeing and grazing leave room for interpretation, but the majority of the time grazing does not fall under the category of binge eating. However, there is some nuance there and grazing can sometimes fit the definition of bingeing if the grazing is very frequent and sustained throughout a long period of time. For example, if someone is grazing every few minutes through a whole day, they may end up eating much more than a normal person would eat in a day. If you add in that feeling of being out of control, then yes, this type of grazing behavior can fit the definition of a binge.

Another way that grazing and bingeing are related is that grazing behaviors can be included in binge eating episodes. In my own experience, I would typically have specific binge episodes where I would eat massive quantities of food in maybe a couple of hours, but then after that time period of bingeing to the extreme, I would sometimes just keep eating for the rest of the day in a more graze-like way. It definitely wasn’t normal grazing, it was me feeling driven to keep the binge going in some way, but I felt so sick and full that I simply couldn’t keep eating with the same speed and in the same quantities. I considered this post-binge grazing to be a continuation of the binge itself.

A different way that grazing felt like bingeing was when I would wake up feeling hopeless about my eating and give up on trying to eat normally at all. I would start eating from the moment I woke up, and although I wouldn’t eat with the same desperation as a typical binge, I would graze from one food item to another for most of the day. I think if anyone would have seen me at any one particular time during that type of day, they may have thought I was eating relatively normally, but if you looked at the entire day of me feeling hopeless and eating so frequently, it was not normal at all. I ate huge amounts of food even though it wasn’t contained to one specific episode. I certainly considered those days to be “binge days” because my eating was so far away from what my regular eating looked like and because I felt so out of control.

These “grazing binges,” as I could call them, gave me a similar awful feeling of shame and similar physical effects as my shorter, more contained binges. The grazing binges felt nothing like my grazing now—which feels like a healthy way to take care of myself sometimes and a way of eating that fits my life during certain circumstances and allows me to get nourishment. If I graze now and look at my whole day, the amount of food I consume is normal and it’s the amount that my body needs.

You can dismiss urges to graze in binge-like ways

So far I’ve said that bingeing is different than grazing, but also that grazing can fit the category of a binge if it’s very frequent and out of control, and also that grazing can be included in binges. If your grazing appears in these ways, it’s important to learn to dismiss urges to engage in this problematic grazing behavior—just like you would dismiss any other urges to binge. If you look at your behavior and the problem that it’s causing in your life, you can usually tell the difference between urges to graze in a way that’s normal and natural and urges to graze in this more binge-like way. It may take some practice and self-observation to know the difference, but you can absolutely learn to recognize and stop these graze-like binges.

It’s important to remember that when you dismiss urges to graze in a harmful way, you need to make sure that you’re not dismissing all urges to eat. You have to replace the harmful grazing with a way of eating that feels normal for you, nourishes you, and gives you the food that you need.

Grazing can spiral into binge eating

Now I’m going to shift my focus to another way that grazing is connected with bingeing, and that is a common pattern of grazing leading to bingeing. This pattern shows up often in the people I work with, and it showed up for me as well. In this case, what happens is that you start snacking or grazing and then you find yourself wanting more and more. The grazing increases in the amount of food you’re eating and the speed at which you’re eating it, and then urges to binge start appearing and what started as grazing spirals in a binge.

When this happens, there are typically two things going on. The first thing is that the grazing activates a pleasure process in the brain, and the brain naturally wants more pleasure, so you have urges to eat more and more of the food. If you don’t recognize this is going on and if you have a bingeing habit, this natural drive for pleasure can activate urges for that excessive, temporary, and ultimately harmful pleasure of a binge. You may not be consciously thinking this—your experience simply may be that when you start grazing, you feel unable to stop until you’re in a full-blown binge.

The second thing that’s typically happening when grazing transitions to bingeing is that the “I’ve blown it” thoughts appear. This is especially common if you are trying to restrict your food or be on a diet. If you start grazing on foods you think you “shouldn’t” be eating, you may start having thoughts that say, “you’re bad for eating this way,” or that “you’ve already ruined your eating for the day.” When you have the binge eating habit, the lower brain’s next thought is usually, “you might as well keep going.”  You’ll likely also have thoughts that say “this is the last time,” and “you’ll start over tomorrow.” In effect, the grazing makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, and then instead of trying to contain it, your brain encourages you to do the opposite and abandon all control.

If you can relate to this, it’s really important to increase your awareness surrounding any grazing that you do. It’s important to try to pause and notice what’s going on in your brain and learn to view those “I’ve blown it” thoughts as neurological junk and learn to dismiss them. Stopping at any point during grazing—even if you’ve already eaten more than you think you should have—is so much better than going into a binge. It’s so much less harmful to your health and your mental health, and it’s not going to cause those physical and emotional consequences that bingeing does. Just be on to your brain and know that grazing is never a justification for a binge. Even if you’ve already grazed on this or that, it does not mean you’ve failed, and it does not mean a binge is inevitable. It’s ok if you have some negative thoughts about what you’ve eaten—that’s much better than the negative thoughts and feelings that follow a binge. Remind yourself that no one is perfect and this is a great opportunity to disconnect grazing from bingeing.

Everyone grazes from time to time—you don’t want to ever feel like you have to avoid grazing in order to avoid bingeing. However, if right now grazing is always a problem for you and it always spirals into a binge, there’s nothing wrong with deciding not to go into that behavior in the first place. Some people who have a strong connection between grazing and bingeing find it really helpful to have some structure in their meals and snacks so that they’re eating at more specific times and they’re dismissing urges between those times. If you’re using this strategy and your brain encourages you to graze, you can remind yourself that you’ll be having a meal or a snack very soon.

If the idea of this structured approach (that does not include grazing) feels too restrictive and you don’t want to give up grazing altogether, another strategy that can help is to use a pause before you start to graze—or even after you’ve already started grazing—with the goal of learning to set some gentle boundaries for yourself. When you pause, you can decide on an amount you will eat, knowing that your brain will likely encourage you to keep going beyond that amount. You can accept that it’s okay for your brain to react that way and still stick to your self-caring limits around your grazing behaviors. What this could look like is—as you start to reach for some food—you take a few deep breaths, and you consciously choose how much you’re going to have. You can visualize it in your mind, or you can actually take the food and put it on a plate and maybe even move away from the rest of the food. Then, you can eat the food you’ve chosen and enjoy it. When your brain urges you to keep going, that’s your opportunity to dismiss urges to graze in that more harmful way.

Deciding what’s right for you as far as how grazing fits into your life, and when it fits into your life, and how to best avoid binges can involve a lot of personalized decisions, and this is something that we help people with frequently in one-on-one coaching and also in group coaching. Coach Julie and I would love to help guide you through some of these decisions so that you can find a way of eating that works for you.

Food quantity and quality affect desires to graze

I want to give two more final tips as I end this discussion on grazing. The first is that—if you find yourself grazing very frequently—really take a look at your eating and make sure that you’re getting enough food overall. If you’re eating too restrictively and not giving yourself sufficient calories, your urges to graze could be appearing out of genuine hunger. If you’re in a state of physical food deprivation, of course your mind is going to keep you focused on food, and it’s going to keep encouraging you to go back for more food. In this case, instead of focusing on reducing the grazing, you would be better off turning your attention toward adding some satisfying meals and satisfying snacks to your day, and that can significantly reduce those desires to graze.

The last tip is to look at the quality of food you’re eating as well. If you’re familiar with the Brain over Binge approach, you know that I do want people to have the freedom to eat all types of foods. But if you’re frequently eating highly-processed foods—and especially eating those foods on an empty stomach—it could be causing spikes in your blood sugar which can lead to desires to graze. You could be getting blood sugar highs and then crashes, which can leave you wanting to reach for more food even if you didn’t eat that long ago. Similar to when there are deficiencies in food quantity, when there are food quality issues, the focus shouldn’t necessarily be on reducing the grazing. Instead, it’s much more helpful to focus on adding in some more satisfying and blood-sugar-stabilizing foods like fats, proteins, and slow digesting carbohydrates. That can help you stay more balanced overall as far as your cravings, which then naturally reduces that desire to keep getting more and more food and going into those problematic grazing behaviors. Looking at the way you’re eating also includes looking into any health conditions you may have that are leading to abnormal craving and getting nutritional and/or medical help when necessary.

If you’re doing well as far as eating enough, and also making sure you’re getting some quality foods as well, and you still have desires to graze that you think are harmful, then I do believe you need to look at habit as a strong factor as well. Your body and brain could simply be used to constantly reaching for food, and it is about learning to break that habitual behavior. You can start gradually adding some space between the times that you’re eating, starting with whatever interval feels comfortable for you right now—even if it’s as little as 30 minutes.  You can slowly increase the intervals so that you’re giving your body some time to digest and some time to start to notice your hunger and really get in touch with your appetite signals again. Another benefit of having some space between your eating times is so that you can focus on life. If you’re constantly grazing and focusing on food, you’re not giving attention to the things you truly want and need to be focusing on, which is an important motivation to end the problematic grazing.

You never have to be perfect surrounding grazing or create rigid rules—because like I’ve talked about, everyone grazes from time to time, and it can even be a behavior that works for people and fits their life. You’re simply trying to find a level of grazing that feels right to you and doesn’t create any consequences or negative effects. There’s no one right way, and there’s a lot of freedom in knowing that. I want you to empower yourself to make decisions about grazing that feel authentic to you, and we’re always here to help you in coaching if you need it.

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Brain over Binge resources:

Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.

hunger fullness stop go signals

Beyond Hunger and Fullness: Learning to Deal with “Stop and Go” Signals around Food

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Hunger and fullness signals are an often-discussed topic in the eating disorder space, but today, I’m going to go beyond that to discuss what I’m calling stop and go signals and to explain how these signals come into play in binge eating recovery.

Stop and go signals aren’t the same as our physical cues of hunger and fullness. The go signals are primarily thoughts, but also feelings and sensations, that drive us to eat (or keep eating), and they are independent of actual physical hunger. The reason I say go signals are primarily thoughts is because the physical feelings and sensations are usually more indicative of actual hunger, but you can definitely still have physical sensations encouraging eating when you’re not truly hungry.

For example, a go signal could occur when you’ve finished eating a meal, and you’ve had plenty of food and possibly even dessert, but then your thoughts keep telling you to eat more—even though you’re full. These go signals can also occur when you’re not hungry at all, but you see some delicious food or you’re offered something to eat, and your thoughts and cravings encourage you to have some. The most extreme go signals are the urges to binge, which drive you to eat so far past fullness that it’s painful.

The stop signals are primarily thoughts, but also feelings and sensations, that tell us to stop eating—which are also independent of actual hunger or fullness. The stop signals I’m talking about here primarily show up if you are restricting. I’m not talking about the stop signals that come up after you’ve had a reasonable, nourishing amount of food. Problematic stop signals come up when you’re actually hungry or you physically need more food, but you think and believe that you should stop eating in order to control your weight or because eating is somehow “wrong.” The stop signals tend to be very self-critical and come with a lot of guilt.

 It’s not just binge eaters—everyone has stop and go signals

What both the stop and go signals show us is that our thoughts and feelings encouraging eating (or eating more) are not always based on hunger, and on the other hand, our thoughts and feelings encouraging us to stop eating are not always based in fullness. This is something that people with or without a current or past eating disorder have to deal with, especially in the modern food environment that we live in. Highly processed, highly stimulating, highly pleasurable foods can turn up our food desires, promote more food thoughts, and rev up our cravings—in other words, increase the go signals around food. Additionally, those very same foods can also create some of the problematic stop signals in our minds as well. If we tell ourselves that certain foods are “bad,” or if we’re worried that certain foods will lead to weight gain, it can lead to restrictive thoughts telling us to stop eating (or avoid eating in the first place), even if we’re hungry.

Food is not just fuel, and you are not broken

There is a common analogy about eating being like filling the gas tank of your car, and that analogy makes sense if we’re strictly talking about hunger and fullness—you fill your stomach or your gas tank when it gets low and stop when it is full. But, when we’re talking about these stop and go signals, this analogy doesn’t hold up. There’s just so much more to human food decisions and consumption, especially with all of the modern foods that we have available.

Cars don’t face tempting food (fuel) on a daily basis, or social settings where there is pressure to overeat, or highly processed options that can make cravings and desires stronger. Basically, we’re facing a lot more challenges than a car that simply needs energy to run, and I think it’s important for everyone in recovery to come to terms with this. I encourage you to accept that hunger and fullness don’t tell the whole story, and that you’ll need to learn to make peace with the stop and go signals as well.

Having stop and go signals does not make you broken or mean that something is wrong with you, and this is something I frequently remind people of in my books, blog, and podcast. Everyone with or without an eating disorder has to deal with the effect that modern food has on the brain’s reward system, and everyone also has to deal with the messages telling us that certain foods are “bad,” so we should stop eating them. When you realize you are not alone and this is simply the way the brain works, it puts you in a more powerful place to start making choices that are best for you.

I want to say here that—even though everyone has some form of these stop and go signals—they are a lot stronger in people who struggle with bingeing and restricting. Furthermore, because restricting leads to bingeing, when the stop signals are strong and you follow the thoughts telling you not to eat, this has the effect of strengthening the go signals—which can lead to urges to binge. The result of strong and opposing stop and go signals is the dangerous restrict-binge cycle.

Why we have stop and go signals in addition to hunger and fullness signals

I want to dive a little deeper into why we have the stop and go signals. These are primal or primitive brain signals, which are part of the reward system in our brain that has helped humans survive by motivating us to perform behaviors that are necessary for our existence. Eating is basically at the top of that list of necessary (and pleasurable) behaviors.

Our primitive brain’s reward system has three basic goals: 1.) To survive, 2.) To seek pleasure, and 3.) To avoid pain. Some experts also add a fourth goal that is: To exert as little effort as possible.

When we’re talking about hunger and fullness signals, it’s more about that first goal of survival, but of course eating also brings pleasure and helps us avoid the pain of hunger. When it comes to stop and go signals, it’s no longer just about basic survival. The go signals are primarily about meeting that primitive goal of seeking pleasure and also avoiding any discomfort that comes with craving.

The stop signals are a little less clear as far as being a primitive drive, because often these messages arise from cultural conditioning and expectations surrounding how we should look or what we should eat. While it’s fine to want to eat well and take care of our bodies, when we make ourselves stop eating (or not eat in the first place) when we need food, this goes against our survival. However, it can feel like it’s helping us fulfill other needs like being accepted or connected with others or feeling safe, and that can seem like it’s meeting some of those primal needs for pleasure and pain avoidance. Plus, once repeated enough, the stop and go signals become habitual as well, and our habits are driven by the primal brain.

You are not powerless against stop and go signals

What is paramount to know is that your higher brain—your more rational, human brain—has the capacity to override any primitive, conditioned, and habitual thoughts and feelings—and that includes the stop and go signals. This is one of the fundamental principles of Brain over Binge, and you can learn more about the higher brain in Podcast Episode 3: The Lower and Higher Brain at Work in Binge Eating.

If you know you need to eat enough food to recover, but your thoughts keep telling you to stop so that you can restrict and lose weight, you can absolutely keep eating in spite of those signals. You can learn to be aware of your brain’s own patterns, you can notice the thoughts that arise, and you can know that these stop signals are faulty, and you can nourish yourself anyway. It’s the same for the go signals. You should allow for food enjoyment, but you can also recognize that when you eat certain foods, your brain may tell you to “go, go, go” and eat excessively, and even to binge. You can use your higher brain to control your actions and choosing a stopping point in spite of these go signals.

This is something that I think should be taught to us from a very young age, especially with the modern foods that we have available. People can be quick to blame the food manufacturers, and yes, there is some responsibility there, but this post is not about that. It’s about helping you take back your own power and realize that any go signals you have around these foods are not destiny. It’s necessary to accept that you will have these signals and not to be scared of them.

What often happens is that people are around tempting food, or they eat tempting food, and then they naturally have thoughts telling them to eat “more, more, more,” and they start having anxiety and negative thoughts about their desires. They might think, “oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me, why do I want so much of this food, why do I lack control?” These thoughts are not productive and having go signals never means you lack control.

It’s much more helpful to think, “oh, of course my brain is signaling me to eat more of this highly pleasurable, highly stimulating food because my brain is wired for pleasure. It’s only natural that I’m having these go signals, but these signals and feelings of desire are safe. I can learn to have feelings of wanting for food, and still be okay, and still have a choice about what I eat.”

Even after recovery, you’ll have something pleasurable like a cookie and your brain will probably want another one, but that doesn’t mean there’s a problem. You can feel those go signals, you can understand them, you can know that it doesn’t mean you’re broken, and then you can decide to have another cookie or not. The good news is that after you stop the binge eating habit, these go signals are so much less strong, and the idea of continuing to eat and eat—let’s say until you’ve had the whole pack of cookies—that just seems like the opposite of pleasure. But you will still have go signals—to a much lesser extent—so I want you to have the proper expectations so that you’re not surprised when you have desires for some extra food pleasure. Always remember that the go signals are normal, but they do not have to dictate what you choose to do.

We have stop and go signals in other parts of life, not just around food

I thought of an example recently regarding these signals and how we need to be more accepting of them, but also not let them lead us into harmful actions. The example that came to mind has to do with sports because I love sports, and I think there are so many life lessons to be learned from them. It’s also timely with the Olympics going on as I’m writing this.

If you read Brain over Binge, you know that I ran track and cross country in high school and college, and now my daughter is actually running track in high school. As an aside, my running got wrapped up in very unhealthy weight obsessions and eventually resulted in many injuries, stress fractures, and an inability to continue to compete. To my daughter’s credit, she’s participating in this sport in a vastly healthier way than I did, and I’m so thankful for that.

The point of this story is that my daughter and I had a conversation recently about stop signals while running. We talked about the fact that—in every single race that we’ve ever run—our thoughts try to convince us to stop. I think this is extremely common, and I’m sure a lot of you can relate if you participate in sports. As I’ve talked about, the brain wants to survive, seek pleasure, and avoid pain, so exerting yourself strenuously in a race (for seemingly no reason at all to your brain—it’s not like there’s a lion chasing you!) is really the opposite of pleasure. It’s very painful, and it also goes against that fourth goal that I talked about of exerting as little effort as possible, so it only makes sense that the brain tells us to stop.

My daughter and I also talked about how we have a lot of justifications for stopping going through our minds too. It’s just something you learn to expect, but you still finish the race in spite of what is going on in your brain, and I know this is not just applicable to runners. Now, I’m sure there are some extremely mentally strong people out there who don’t have these stop signals when performing something strenuous. Maybe the Olympians don’t have them or can override them so well in order to get to such a high level in their sport. But I think all athletes learn to ignore these signals to some extent, and perform the physical endeavor anyway. The brain wants comfort and safety, but if you want to grow and improve, you have to push your own limits.

Of course, sometimes there are real reasons for needing to heed and follow stop signals in a race or any athletic event, but that’s in rare circumstances like when injury occurs. What I’m talking about here is what happens the majority of the time when you simply keep racing or keep performing in spite of the thoughts telling you to stop.

I’m going to bring this back to eating now to say that eating a delicious, highly stimulating food is basically the opposite of running a race. Instead of the brain saying stop in a race, it says go for more food because it wants that pleasure. The takeaway here is that those go signals never have to prevent you from stopping after a reasonable amount of food—just like those stop signals don’t have to prevent you from going on to finish the race.

When eating the pleasurable food or running the race, you simply have to understand that those signals will be there, but also that you have the ability to do what you need to do anyway—whether that’s crossing the finish line or putting away the bag of chips after a normal amount. When you aim to eat a food that’s challenging for you, you can know that you’re committed to eating a normal amount of it no matter what your brain says, just like you can be committed to finishing any race you start. The race may not look pretty, the eating may not be perfect, but you can commit to doing your best and not listening to the thoughts that try to distract you from your goal.

The last insight around this racing analogy that I’ll talk about here is that you absolutely can be selective about the races you choose to run or the foods you choose to eat. I would never tell my daughter—who primarily runs the mile—to sign up for a marathon and then to just ignore all of her thoughts telling her to stop. That would be foolish and dangerous. The takeaway when it comes to food is to go at your own pace with eating foods that bring up challenging go signals. You may not feel ready for certain foods right now, and that’s okay. You can be strategic until you get more practice.

You can also go at your own pace when it comes to stop signals around food as well. It’s possible that you’ve developed some food fears over time and your brain is telling you not to eat them at all. Or it’s possible that when you do choose to eat certain foods, you feel extreme guilt and your brain says to stop eating them. It can be a gradual process to learn that you can choose to eat any food and override the guilt and the stop signals, but you don’t have to start eating anything and everything right away.

The overall message in this post is that your stop and go signals are a normal function of the primitive part of your brain, but you can use your higher brain to overcome these signals to make the choices that you want to make. You can do this with self-awareness and self-compassion. I hope that this discussion will help you learn to eat a fear food that you want to add back into your life or learn to find a reasonable stopping point when eating a food that is challenging for you.

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If you want more help as you stop binge eating and learn to eating normally (in spite of the stop and go signals), you can check out the following Brain over Binge resources:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.

Eating the Way You “Should”

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Are you constantly telling yourself that your eating should be a certain way?

Do you believe you should never eat over a certain amount?

Do you think you should or should not be eating certain foods or at certain times?

When you have a lot of “shoulds” around eating, it creates pressure and stress each time you have a meal or snack.

I want to help you have more peace with food, and a big part of that is not getting caught up in thinking that there’s one right way that you should be eating at any given moment.

 Are Your “Shoulds” Leading to Binges?

It’s exhausting to think that there are exact rules to follow with food or that you’re supposed to eat “right” at each meal. You may have thoughts saying, “you’re eating too much, or not enough, or at the wrong times, or too fast, or too slow, or in the wrong place, or with the wrong mindset.” It may feel like you’re always thinking your eating should somehow be different than what it is.

This gets more complicated when you have a binge eating habit, because what tends to happen is that the “shoulds” end up triggering urges to binge. This is because bingeing behavior is often strongly connected to breaking a diet or eating what you think is too much of something, and then thinking “screw it, I’ve already failed, I might as well eat everything and start over tomorrow.” If this has been your diet-binge pattern, then your brain will automatically suggest binge eating at times when you feel you messed up with your eating (even if you’re not trying to diet anymore).

In effect, your brain offers binge eating as a “solution” to eating in a way you think you shouldn’t have eaten.

For example, if you tell yourself that you should avoid food before a certain time of day, and then you eat something before that time, you may have thoughts like, “you’re a failure, you’ll never get it right, so you should just give up and binge.”

You Know You Should Not Be Bingeing

It’s important to realize that the brain has formed a connection between thinking that you did not eat right and encouraging you to eat in a way that you absolutely know that you should not be eating.

Looking at this logically, you can see that it doesn’t make sense. You know binge eating is the furthest thing from a solution to breaking your “shoulds” around food, but if you have this habitual pattern, it can seem very real and convincing in the moment. Instead of learning to accept imperfection in your eating, you may end up in a cycle of trying to eat perfectly, and then not being able to do that (because no one can eat perfectly!), and then jumping right back into bingeing.

You can certainly dismiss any urge to binge regardless of the what the binge-encouraging thoughts say, but what can also help in this specific situation is to stop thinking that you should be eating in a certain way in the first place.

Questioning the “Shoulds” 

It’s difficult to go through life with rigid “shoulds” and a lot of self-criticism surrounding them. Even if you stop bingeing, you don’t want to continue this form of stress. Now, I realize there are certain people who need to eat in a certain way due to health issues/food allergies/sensitivities, and Brain over Binge Coach Julie and I recently discussed this in Episode 147: Redefining Restriction. However, most of the rules people create for themselves are not related to specific health problems, but instead, the rules are based on something they’ve heard or seen about the way they should be eating (and it’s usually aimed at weight-loss).

I want you to start questioning your “shoulds” surrounding food:

Where did these rules come from?

What if it’s not true that the way you think you should be eating is the way you really should be eating?

What if there are not any actual “shoulds” around food?

If we go back to the previous example of thinking you should not eat before a certain time in the day… What if that’s simply not true? Or what if that’s not true for you personally? Or what if it’s just not right for you right now? What if it’s totally optional to eat whenever you decide to?

A way you can recognize your should thoughts as just thoughts and not absolute truths is to consider that other people may have completely opposite should thoughts…

If you think that you should avoid eating in the morning, someone else might think they absolutely should eat breakfast because it’s the most important meal.

If you think you should not eat meat, there are people out there who think that they should be eating mostly or only meat.

If you think you should not eat carbohydrates, there are people out there who believe they should because the best diet is based primarily in carbohydrates.

I want you to start believing that you can make your own authentic decisions about food without all of the arbitrary rules. If there is truly something that you feel you need to change about your eating, there’s nothing wrong with making adjustments, but you can make those changes because you want to and from a place of self-care, not from a place of creating rigid “shoulds.”

Drop the “Shoulds,” Create More Peace with Food

You can learn to see that there are simply food choices—which are neutral–and then there is feedback from your body about what foods work best for you. Even if sometimes you choose to eat foods that don’t tend to make you feel good, you can just go on with your life without the self-criticism and without thinking that you “blew it and you might as well binge.”

I encourage you to start dropping the pressure that you’re putting on yourself and to consider that you should be eating in the way that you are eating in any given moment. (I’m of course talking about eating habits that are not bingeing).

It gives you so much freedom to think: “maybe I ate exactly as I should have in this situation.”

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 overate, but it is about accepting the way that you ate in that moment. Maybe there is something to learn from the way you ate, or maybe not, 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. 

You can make a decision about food that you think is best for you (for whatever reason), eat the food, let go of any negative thoughts about it, and redirect your focus back to living. And then the next time you eat, you can just repeat this process—all the while thinking this is the way it should be.

Deciding what and when to eat is a lifelong journey, and you may certainly take into account health information, or what foods are going to make you feel the best, or what time it is, or when you’ll be eating again, or where you are, or who you’re eating with, or what foods you have available, or what you can even afford. But a sound decision for any given moment does not have to involve harsh “shoulds.”

Keep Food Decisions Neutral or Positive

If you stop to think about it, you could find flaws in any food decision, and even if you can’t, someone else probably could. You already know you can avoid a binge when you eat imperfectly, but you don’t even have to focus on the imperfection. You don’t have to tell yourself, “I did not eat perfectly, but that’s okay, I can still avoid a binge.” Yes, that’s true, but instead, you can choose to keep it neutral and just say, “I ate,” and that can be the end of the story for that meal or snack.

As I’ve said, there certainly may be lessons to take away from any eating experience, but there’s no use dwelling on what you feel was not perfect. You can even spin it in a positive direction by saying, “I ate, and it was delicious, or it was just what I needed, or it hit the spot, or it will give me energy for living.”

Positive after-meal thoughts will help train your brain to associate eating with decisiveness, confidence, and satisfaction, and it will break the habit of constantly second guessing yourself.

Giving yourself the freedom to decide what to eat without all of the “shoulds” does not mean that you’re going to suddenly start choosing all unhealthy foods. In fact, it will probably greatly improve your eating because you’ll avoid the mindset of thinking that you “blew it so you might as well eat everything in sight.”

You can still make healthy choices, but you can do that without rigid “shoulds.” Any healthier choices you make can be from your own insights into what is most helpful for you, and you can be kind to yourself in the process. You’ll realize that eating does not have to be so hard, and you’ll see that you’re doing so much better than you think.

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If you want more help as you let go of the “shoulds” and create more peace with food, you can check out the following Brain over Binge resources:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

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.

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.