Blog Archives - Page 9 of 15 - Brain over Binge

Look Behind the Scenes to Ease Your Mind

I had a conversation with my daughter a couple of weeks ago that immediately inspired an idea for this blog post. It all started when my oldest son, who is 11 and not scared of much at all, wanted to watch a trailer of a movie about aliens. The trailer wasn’t too scary in my opinion, and he watched it a couple of times before my 9-year-old daughter became interested. I figured it would be okay for her to see it as well, and she seemed fine at the time; but later, she told me that a certain image of an alien scared her and she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

After some initial “mom guilt” for letting her watch it in the first place, and telling her no more scary movie previews, I told her simply that it wasn’t real and there was nothing to be afraid of. Later, she brought it up again, and I said that her fearful thoughts about it would pass, and to try to focus on other things. After she brought it up for a third time, I started thinking of how I could do a better job of easing her mind.

Then, I remembered something my father used to say when I was scared of movies. He used to tell me to picture the camera operators recording the action, and to imagine the director, sound equipment, lighting…etc. behind the scenes. He told me to imagine the actors messing up while filming the scene and having to redo it over and over. He basically told me to turn my attention from the events happening on the screen and think about the events that created that scary scene in the first place.

I explained all of that to her, and also told her to see the people working to produce the amazing special effects that make it look so realistic. As we talked, I could see something shift in her. It seemed to really resonate and ease her fear, and she even laughed a little bit at imagining the movie from a new perspective.

As soon as the conversation was over, I immediately thought about how this “behind the scenes” view of a scary movie is related to binge eating recovery.

When you are looking at any of your harmful eating-disorder thoughts (including binge urges) from one angle, they can look real and powerful and can create feelings of fear. But, when you shift your perspective and look at those same thoughts and urges from another angle, they can look and feel completely different.

For example, if you look at your urges to binge as an indication of something you truly want or need, you’ll likely experience strong feelings of desire, and you’ll feel compelled to act on them. Viewing the urges as meaningful and powerful signals can make binge eating feel almost inevitable. But if you can instead look at where the binge urges are coming from – from a primal, instinctual system in your lower brain that is designed to maintain your habits – they will feel less intimidating. If you can see that the binge urges are automatic, faulty signals that have no real meaning to you, you can simply move on with your life without being affected. It’s the same with urges to engage in restrictive dieting. If you can view those urges to restrict as devoid of any truth or value, you may even find yourself laughing off thoughts about going on another diet.

You should know that, even with a new perspective, you may still experience some uncomfortable feelings, and I suspect this was the case with my daughter as well, in regard to the movie trailer. She likely still had some fearful thoughts, but the new “behind the scenes” perspective made it much more manageable, and gave her something to turn to, to ease her mind. It’s the same in binge eating recovery. Even though some feelings of discomfort, anxiety, fear, or frustration may arise, you can tolerate those feelings as you move toward lasting change.

Being that it’s Halloween in the US when I’m posting this, there is another analogy I’d like to use to illustrate how looking behind the scenes allows you to manage uncomfortable feelings…

Let’s say you go in one of those “haunted houses” on Halloween where people dress up in costumes to intentionally scare you. Even though you know it isn’t real, you probably still have some fear (of course you do, that’s what you pay for in a haunted house!). But, your fear is tolerable, because you know what’s behind the scenes. You can visualize the people behind the masks, just having fun trying to act as scary as possible. You know it’s harmless, and you can even laugh at yourself when you jump with fright or when you scream. If you thought it was real, the experience of an haunted house would be too terrifying for anyone.

Whether it’s a haunted house, a scary movie, or an eating disorder thought or urge, when you know how it all works, it allows you to experience it without feeling so threatened. You no longer feel like you have to run and hide, fight back, or do whatever you have to do to make the thoughts and uncomfortable feelings go away. You stop feeling like you have to jump into action and perform harmful behaviors. You can simply step back, look behind the scenes, and realize that you are safe.

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More help:

If you want extra guidance as you end binge eating, here are some resources for additional support:

Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 120 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

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

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

What Makes Recovery “Work”? Part III (You Don’t Need to Work so Hard)

by Kathryn Hansen

This is the 3rd and final post in my blog series, “What Makes Recovery Work?”. In Part I, I talked about expectations surrounding what it means for a recovery method to work. In Part II, I discussed the work you personally need to do in recovery, which is to dismiss each urge to binge (and also eat enough food). Now in Part III, I want to talk about eliminating unnecessary work in recovery.

When I was in therapy for binge eating, it felt like I had a lifelong journey of work ahead of me in order to stop the harmful behavior and then to maintain my recovery. But, since then, I’ve seen that it’s not necessary to work so hard to put aside the binge eating habit.

I know you aren’t afraid of doing work; I know you aren’t expecting recovery to be effortless; and I know you are willing to do what it takes to stop your binge eating. Working hard is certainly not a bad thing, but if right now, you feel that your hard work hasn’t gotten you closer to freedom from binge eating, you may be doing work that isn’t actually targeting the binge eating problem.

Commonly, in traditional eating disorder therapy, the work that is required has to do with managing emotions, healing pain from your past, and learning to cope better with daily stress. This is meaningful work that can help improve your life, but if it isn’t helping you avoid acting on the binge urges, it’s not helping with the binge eating specifically.

It can be baffling when you feel you are doing all of the hard work that therapy requires and you are still binge eating. If you find yourself in this situation, you may understandably start to look for something else to work on, and then something else after that. This can lead to a constant state of trying to find another problem to solve, or something else within yourself to fix, hoping it will eventually put an end to your binge eating.

You may also be working on improving and fixing the way you are eating, thinking that will get rid of the binge episodes. You may be trying to create the perfect meal plan, or trying to adhere to strict eating guidelines, so you may be working hard every day measuring, counting, and weighing your food intake. Additionally, you could be going through a lot of trouble to avoid certain foods that you believe are problematic or addicting, or you may be trying to research nutrition and take all of the right supplements.

Although improving your eating in ways that feel good to you is a positive thing, and although it’s certainly important to make sure you eat adequately, it’s possible you are putting a lot of unnecessary time and energy into your eating plan, without it making much of a difference in your binge eating. It can feel like a never-ending quest when you are always looking for something else to fix or change about your diet, hoping that will put a stop to the binges.

If you think a lot of hard work is required for recovery, it only makes sense that you would keep looking for something else to solve or fix, whether that’s in your life, your relationships, your personality, your emotions, or the way you are eating. It’s admirable, and shows determination and resilience. But, I know how frustrating it feels when it seems like no matter what you work on, you still end up binge eating.

What if working harder in recovery is not the answer?

It is my belief that no matter how much you improve your life, your emotional state, your relationships, your ability to cope, or the way you are eating, binge urges will still inevitably come up. Even if you work very hard in all of those areas, you’ll still be left with the fundamental work of recovery: not acting on the binge urges.

To stop acting on the binge urges, what if less work is actually more effective?

I had a conversation with Dr. Amy Johnson on my podcast last week, and part of what we talked about was how just seeing your binge eating habit differently can allow change to occur without the struggle or without needing to work so hard. When you have a fundamental shift in the way you view your urges and respond to them, it suddenly seems unnecessary to sort out and deal with all of your other problems or have a perfect eating plan in order to stop binge eating.

So, instead of thinking “what other problems and difficult emotions can I work on in recovery?”, you can change your mindset and think, “how can I work on developing a new perspective about the urges and respond to them differently?”

Ending binge eating doesn’t need to feel like intense, complicated, or tedious work. The work can simply be you deeply seeing that the urges do not express your true wants and needs, and then learning to connect with your own power to avoid acting on them.

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Do you need more help as you stop binge eating?

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 Hansen. 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 – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn. You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and 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.

Tips to Help You Stop Purging

by Kathryn Hansen

If you’ve read my books or blog, you’ll know that I did not purge through self-induced vomiting (instead, I purged with excessive exercise and also with restrictive eating). I fully realize that those of you who purge through self-induced vomiting face a different set of challenges in recovery.

Many of you have told me that the physical effects of stopping purging (such as bloating and other uncomfortable symptoms) make you want to binge and purge just to get “relief.” Even though you know rationally that binge eating and purging is not a real solution for those symptoms and that it causes further damage to your health, when you feel so uncomfortable, it may seem tempting to get that temporary reprieve from bloating or other physical symptoms. You may even be someone who has developed the habit of purging normal meals, and you are finding it difficult to stop, or you are concerned with what may happen to your weight if you stop.

To address this issue I’ve reached out to Ali Kerr of Binge Code Coaching, who has personal experience with overcoming self-induced vomiting, and who has guided many others to do the same. Below is a guest post from Ali!

Are you ready to stop purging your food but find yourself worried about what will happen to your body when you do? Perhaps you’ve recently stopped or reduced purging episodes only to find that your body is swelling up, bloating, and gaining weight as a result?

As the founder of Binge Code Coaching, author of the bestselling books The Bulimia Help Method and The Binge Code, and a qualified Nutritional Therapist, I have coached hundreds of clients over the years who have experienced this same fear and resistance when it comes to giving up purging. Not only that, I have experienced this challenge first hand myself.

It takes an incredible amount of bravery to stop purging your food and to trust your body to adapt through this process. When we first stop purging we tend to experience overwhelming and intense “side-effects” which include:

Bloating of the stomach

Swollen hands and feet

An uncomfortable feeling of heaviness right through the body, and

A temporary increase in weight

These changes often leave us feeling defeated, confused and convinced that we will never recover without our weight rapidly spiraling out of control.

I remember believing that my body could not handle food anymore. I was also certain that I would end up becoming very overweight and regularly thought about purging again just to gain some relief. Yet despite these impulses to purge “just one last time,” I persevered with recovery, I stayed strong, and I did not purge. I found that within a month the bloating and other symptoms had significantly reduced. The same is true for my clients today, with most them noticing a significant reduction in bloating and other associated symptoms within the first 4-6 weeks of stopping purging.

Through my research I came to discover that the bloating and other challenging “side-effects” that we associate with the cessation of purging largely occur due to our bodies being in a state of chronic dehydration at the start of recovery. This means it’s important to give your body time (and permission) to go through these healing changes.

Here are my top five tips to help you through the initial stages of quitting purging:

1. Keep your body well hydrated

As strange as it sounds, ensuring that you drink at least 2-3 litres of fluid each day will help to reduce water retention. So, get into the habit of sipping water regularly through the day, take a bottle of water with you wherever you go, drink soothing herbal teas to aid digestion after meals, and try to incorporate lots of fresh fruits and vegetables into your meal plans as they are naturally hydrating.

2. Stop checking your weight

The majority of weight fluctuations that occur when we stop purging are the result of water weight and this can equate to rapid weight fluctuations. Seeing big changes on your scale early on in recovery may derail your recovery efforts. It would be such a shame for you to give up all hope because of a little temporary water weight, wouldn’t it?! So, see if you can make a pact with yourself to avoid stepping on the scale for the time being. It can help to move it out of your bathroom completely or to take out the batteries. If this feels intimidating, challenge yourself to go without checking the number one week at a time.

3. Commit to stopping purging no matter what

To overcome bloating and the other associated symptoms you may be experiencing right now you absolutely, 100%, must learn to stop purging completely. Tell yourself that even if you overeat, binge, or feel incredibly bloated, purging is no longer an option.

4. Avoid seeking out quick fixes for your bloating

There is tons of advice out there on how to reduce bloating. Generally, it involves imposing new strict food rules or trying diets that eliminate whole food groups at a time. Not only is this not recovery-friendly but it simply will not work. Understand that your body is bloating because you are beginning to heal from the effects of purging, you must give it the time it needs to do this. There are no quick fixes. It’s important to understand that while this bloating may feel uncomfortable or even painful, it’s not dangerous because all you are doing is re-learning how to do something that is completely natural and safe, which is eating and digesting food. However if you do experience intense, prolonged pain, discomfort or bloating that becomes worrying you should always consult your doctor.

5. Let go of any misconceptions you hold about “the benefits” of purging (hint: there aren’t any!)

While purging your food may have caused some temporary initial weight loss when you first developed your eating disorder, purging does not help you to lose weight in the long run. In fact, prolonged periods of purging cause metabolic changes that prompt your body to store more fat. Purging also increases the likelihood that you will binge and research proves the number of calories absorbed from a binge, even after purging, is greater than the number that would have been absorbed on a binge-free day. If anything, purging contributes to weight gain NOT weight loss!

Really, this boils down to trust. You need to trust that your body can handle the food, you need to trust that the bloating will not turn to fat, you need to trust that the discomfort will pass. Give your body time to heal (at least 4-6 weeks). Please, please, please be patient with your body and give it time to heal. A lifetime free from bulimia far outweighs a couple of weeks worth of feeling bloated.

If you would like some extra support and guidance on stopping purging, you can read our step-by-step guide to stopping purging.

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BIO

Alison Kerr (BA, Nutritional Therapist) is at the forefront of a groundbreaking revolution in eating disorder recovery. She is the founder and CEO of Binge Code Coaching (formerly called HealED), a wellness company that specializes in coaching people to break free from their food issues.

Alison is a best selling author of several books on overcoming binge eating and bulimia. A native of Scotland, her first book The Bulimia Help Method was published in 2014 and has become a best seller in its field. Her latest book The Binge Code is the culmination of ten years working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. Alison’s approach is unorthodox, engaging, fun and most importantly, effective. Learn more and get one-on-one support

What Makes Recovery “Work”? Part II (The Work You Need to Do)

by Kathryn Hansen

In last month’s blog post What Makes Recovery “Work?”, I talked about how an effective recovery method or strategy is not defined by its ability to take away your binge urges, but by its ability to help you stop acting on them. So, when you try an approach to recovery and hope that it will “work,” try not to have the expectation that it will take away your binge urges, but instead that it will help you better manage them and better avoid acting on them.

Last month’s post got me thinking more deeply about this topic, and I decided to write a Part II and a Part III post, addressing different angles of the idea of recovery “working,” as well as the “work” you do in recovery. Today, in Part II, I want to talk about the work that you personally put in to overcoming binge eating.

If you expect that talking to a therapist or coach, or reading a book, or joining a support group or online program will “work” by taking the urges away, then it can automatically put you in a more passive role, where you may be expecting recovery to just happen–ie: the urges to disappear. When the urges don’t disappear, it’s possible for you to assume that the therapist, support group, book…etc. didn’t work, without fully considering the work you need to put in to have success.

That’s not to say when recovery doesn’t work, it’s your fault. Not at all. There are many factors at play, and different approaches are better suited for different people. But, once you know that no recovery method will make your urges suddenly disappear, you can see clearly that there is work for you to do.

I’m not talking about work in a “nose to the grindstone” or “tough it out” sort of way. But, when you use recovery methods and resources as ways to help you stop acting on your urges, it automatically puts you in a more empowered, active role in recovery. You fully realize the work you need to do: avoid acting on every binge urge, until the binge urges stop coming. When you deeply know that is the work of recovery, your focus can shift to finding and applying what works to help you do that.

No matter what strategy for recovery you are using, you are the only one who can choose (or learn to choose) not to act on binge urges. Even if you have a lot of support, there will be moments when it’s just you and the urge. Recovery strategies and support can certainly help prepare you for those moments, but during binge urges is when you do the brain-changing work of recovery.

To think of having to avoid acting on every urge to binge may feel overwhelming to you right now, but once you can shift your perspective and achieve some separation from your urges, it will start to feel more natural to avoid acting on them. It won’t always feel comfortable, but even the most meaningful work can be unpleasant at times.

While writing this, I looked up the definition of work, which is this: An activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. Not acting on your binge urges day after day definitely fits that description. It does require mental effort and requires you to stay connected to your higher brain, and it is certainly aimed at a result that you absolutely want: to be free of binge eating.

At times, it may feel easier not to do the work of dismissing urges. It sometimes may feel easier to slip back into old habits, just as it often feels easier to get back in bed in the morning instead of going to work at your job or care for your family. But, I’m sure that you rarely get back in bed, because your sense of responsibility is too strong. The work of your recovery deserves the same sense of responsibility from you. That doesn’t mean you will do it perfectly, and never slip, but if you keep trying day after day, you will find what works for you.

Go to What Makes Recovery “Work”? Part III

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Do you need more help as you stop binge eating?

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.

Group Coaching – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn. You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and course access.

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

What Makes Recovery “Work”?

by Kathryn Hansen

I know a life free of binge eating is completely possible for you, but if you are like many binge eaters who I’ve spoken to over the years, you may have a hard time believing that right now. You may have searched for years for a cure, for something to “work,” for it all to just click so that you will no longer binge. You may feel exhausted and frustrated by the search.

You may be someone who has already read my books, and you could be thinking that the method I used “worked” for me rather quickly, so it should be the same for you. You may believe that if the concepts from my books do not work right away, then you need to look for a new approach that will work. It is certainly possible that another approach may be a better fit, but if you are someone who has jumped around from one approach to another, I want you to take a minute to think about what you believe makes a recovery method “work.”

If you are holding the common belief that a recovery method only works if it gets rid of your binge urges right away, or at least very quickly, this could create some problems for you in recovery. If ‘getting rid of the urges right away’ was the measure of a successful recovery method, then the Brain over Binge approach actually didn’t work for me either.

Seeing my binge urges as meaningless, powerless, and harmless neurological junk from my lower brain didn’t make those urges go away right away, or even all that quickly. The new mindset I had changed how I perceived my urges, and it rather dramatically made me feel my own ability not to act on them. But, the urges were still there for a while.

I had to avoid acting on every binge urge until they did completely go away – about 9 months from the time I adopted my new approach. Not once during those 9 months did I think “this isn’t working.” The reason for this was that I defined success not by whether or not I had urges, but by my ability not to act on them.

In the beginning of recovery, the binge urges came frequently…and I wasn’t perfect. There were two times when I did act on the urge. The first time, I heard those familiar, lower brain reasons why I should binge, I felt the familiar craving, and I mistakenly thought it was the real “me” who wanted to binge, and I acted on it. The second time I binged, I had much more awareness of what I was doing, but ultimately, I did still act on the urge.

When I acted on those two urges, I didn’t proceed to throw out the principles that I’d learned, because they didn’t “work.” I realized that in those specific instances, I had not applied what I’d learned, and I had simply followed the urges. I did not think that I’d failed or that I needed a new approach. I recognized that I had the power to avoid acting on the very next urge and to keep my recovery going.

During those 9 months of having urges but not acting on them, I never wished the urges away or took their presence to mean something was wrong. I believe this was a big component of what allowed the approach to be effective.

My own recovery and my experience helping others has led me to believe this:

What makes recovery “work” is not what works to take your urges away. It’s what works to help you not act on them.

No matter what approach you use, the crux of recovery comes when you have a thought, feeling, or impulse encouraging you to binge, but you don’t.

When you are able to do that over and over, your brain changes, the urges gradually do go away, and your binge eating habit is erased.

Go to What Makes Recovery Work, Part II

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Do you need more help as you stop binge eating?

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.

Group Coaching – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn. You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and course access.

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

You are Never Destined to Binge

by Kathryn Hansen

Do you ever have thoughts that say, “you know you’re going to binge eventually, so you might as well just do it now”?

If you do, you are not alone. I had a client refer to these type of thoughts collectively as the binge inevitability mindset, and I think it’s an accurate way to describe this form of neurological junk.

Your lower brain’s job is to drive you to binge now; it has no conception of the future and is not involved in your long term plans. The lower brain just produces its programming–including the automatic thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that drive you toward a binge.

Lower Brain “Predictions” are Not Truth

The lower brain doesn’t actually know that you’ll binge in the future, so this binge inevitability mindset is, of course, faulty logic. There is no wise entity in the primitive part of your brain, especially not one that can predict your future actions. In fact, the lower brain has no actual control of what actions you take in the future. You, in your higher brain, have ultimate control of whether or not you binge. You can choose to act or not act on lower brain thoughts and urges, so the thought saying “you will inevitably binge” has absolutely no basis in fact.

Where Binge Inevitability Thoughts Come From

You likely had binge inevitability thoughts for the first time during your early days of binge eating. The binge urges made you feel out of control, so that it didn’t actually feel like you had a choice and it did feel like you were destined to binge. If you did not understand your binge urges, and how to detach from them, then it made sense that you thought future binges were inevitable.

Because binge inevitability thoughts got you to take action and binge (which is what the lower brain sensed that you needed), the lower brain learned, and those thoughts became conditioned as part of the habit. Now, your lower brain keeps mindlessly and automatically producing those thoughts. If you believe those thoughts and follow them, the thoughts will keep coming indefinitely; and then the idea that you are “destined” to binge becomes self-fulfilling.

A Binge is Never Inevitable

If you can recognize this binge inevitably mindset when it comes up, you can learn to separate from it. You know now that you are never destined to binge. You were not born binge eating, and you don’t binge in every moment and in every situation. You binge when you follow your urges to binge, and if you know how to avoid following your urges to binge, you won’t binge.

An urge does not represent an unavoidable force. It’s only the product of temporarily faulty brain wiring, which you have the capacity to change–in a real, physical way using neuroplasticity.

Fighting Urges Makes Binges Seem Inevitable

The binge inevitably mindset may come up more often when you are trying to fight urges to binge. If you are trying to argue with the urge, or trying to will the urge away, that urge can feel so bothersome that you think you will eventually tire out and just give in.

If you are in that habit of fighting urges, then even as soon as the urge appears, you may have a thought like this: “you might as well binge now to avoid the struggle, because you’re going to give in later anyway.” Although the thought is certainly neurological junk, it is more likely to seem true if you are engaged in a fight with the urges, or you are trying to avoid an exhausting fight.

Fighting the urges is not an effective strategy and actually strengthens the urges. The goal is to be aware of the urges and the habitual way they show up, and not fight them. When you allow the urges to be present without arguing or turning attention toward them, it no longer feels like a tiresome battle. And then you can more clearly recognize any thoughts saying that “you’ll eventually binge” as false.

When it feels easier to experience the urges without acting on them, it’s easier to see that you aren’t destined to binge. Try to simply notice the urge, acknowledge it, not be upset that it is coming up, and then gently–without the struggle or fight–go on with you life.

You Get to Choose

Believing thoughts that say “a binge is inevitable” creates a feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, and defeat, and that state of mind is not conducive to dismissing urges. Remember that you always have the power of choice when binge urges arise. If you choose to follow the urge, you will inevitably binge. If you choose not to follow the urge, you inevitably won’t binge. Empowering yourself in this way puts you on a path to create your own destiny.

To learn more about creating an empowered mindset when facing urges, and how to stop acting on them, you can download my free eBook The Brain over Binge Basics.

More help:

If you want extra guidance as you work on the recovery goals of the Brain over Binge approach, here are some resources for additional support:

What is Your Motivation for Dieting?

by Kathryn Hansen

The first urges to binge commonly appear after a period of restrictive dieting. The binge urges are a primal survival response—when you restrict food, the primitive part of your brain starts to encourage you to eat as much as possible. (You can learn more about this in Episode 2: The Cause of Binge Eating: Urges to Binge). To get rid of the binge urges, it’s necessary not only to stop acting on them, but also to get your body out of that “survival” state by eating enough food. You cannot continue to restrict food and expect to fully recover. That doesn’t mean you have to eat the exact, perfect amount at each and every meal; it just means that overall, you need to give your body what it needs.

You may have some hesitations about letting go of dieting, or you may think that you actually want to continue dieting, even though you certainly want to stop binge eating. It’s easier to see that binge eating is something you don’t (rationally) want in your life, but dieting can sometimes feel like a deliberate choice that is in line with your true desires. To stop dieting, it’s important to start to change your mindset and see that dieting is not actually what you want, and that it’s harming you and making recovery impossible. It’s important to explore your motivation for dieting and challenge the reasoning behind it, so that you can move toward freedom from binge eating.

Below, I’ve listed 4 common factors that may serve as your motivation for dieting. Know that more than one might apply to you, and that it’s possible to let go of all of these reasons.

Motivation for Dieting #1: None—It’s an Habit

It’s highly possible that your reason for dieting is devoid of any real, thoughtful motivation. It’s possibly you are just following the force of a habit you’ve created. You may have had some original motivation to diet at the outset, but then it simply stuck. Dieting became your norm, so you just keep doing it, without stopping to think if it is the right course of action.

Your thoughts about weight loss or perfect eating plans, or your desire to restrict calories may appear at predictable times and in predictable situations. For example, you may finish eating a nice meal at a restaurant and you may automatically have thoughts saying, “I need to work out extra and eat very little tomorrow to make up for this,” or “I need to start over with my diet tomorrow.”

Instead of considering if these thoughts are serving you, you automatically take them as truth, and don’t see that you actually do have other, healthier options. In this example, you don’t stop to rationalize that resuming normal eating at the next meal or the next time you are hungry will help you in your efforts to stop binge eating, and be much better for healthy weight maintenance in the long run. (For questions and issues surrounding weight, you can see my post: Addressing Weight Issues in Binge Eating Recovery.)

Treating the habitual dieting thoughts and urges to restrict food as neurological junk is a helpful way to overcome them and start eating adequately. At any point, you are capable of turning attention away from the faulty thoughts that say you should be dieting.

Motivation for Dieting #2: Positive Feelings

If you achieved a weight-loss goal in the past, it may have given you a temporary good feeling—a feeling of achievement, or pride, or confidence. This feeling is fleeting, but it can temporarily lift your mood and make you feel good about yourself. The problem is: if the weight-loss goal you achieved in the past or the weight-loss goal you are chasing now is outside of your natural weight range, it’s impossible to maintain that weight—or the good feelings that came along with it (or the good feelings you imagine will come along with a certain number on the scale). So, what this can lead to is a yo-yo effect where you are perpetually seeking that weight in an attempt to experience the fleeting moments of positive feelings.

But chasing those good feelings while you are making yourself miserable with strict diet rules, self-criticism, and binge eating, just isn’t worth it.

If you can see that the positive feeling (of happiness, pride, achievement, confidence) is what you actually want, you can see that you don’t need a certain number on a scale to get that feeling. You don’t need the self-sabotage of a diet to achieve a positive feeling, and you certainly don’t need to be a specific weight to experience happiness, pride, achievement, and confidence.

All of those same feelings can be achieved in a non-diet way—in a way that’s sustainable, doesn’t harm you, and doesn’t lead to binge eating. If you want a feeling of achievement, you can work toward that in other parts of your life. If you want happiness, you can find that feeling being with people you love—without your mind caught up in thinking about food. If you want confidence, you can learn a new skill that has nothing to do with weight loss. Good feelings don’t always have to be connected to accomplishments either, good feelings are available to you in simple ways.

An important thing to remember is that you won’t always feel great about yourself or reside in positive feelings all of the time; it’s normal to have ups and downs in your state of mind. The point is not to chase unrealistic goals or perform harmful behaviors in order to try to experience the ups, because the overall impact will be to bring you down.

Motivation for Dieting #3: Affection and Attention

The previous motivation was all about how dieting and weight loss makes you feel internally, but related to that is the external attention you may get for achieving a weight loss goal (which can also lead to the internal feelings). It’s possible that dieting and temporary weight loss has attracted positive attention toward you in the past, whether that was through admiration or romantic attraction, and you want that attention again. Maybe you’ve never had that type of attention, but you believe that if you can only look a certain way, you will receive it.

With this motivation for dieting, it’s important not only to see that you can get attention and affection in other ways, but that the attention and affection you receive as a result of dieting is mostly superficial. If you are only using your body to attract attention, is that truly the kind of attention you want? If you let your authentic self shine through, and let your personality and heart attract the attention, you’ll naturally get better quality attention.

Giving up dieting does not mean giving up on being a healthy, strong, well-presented person; it does not mean you’ll stop taking pride in yourself. It just means you will take pride in yourself at your natural size and not try to control your body in an effort to gain more attention. Think about how you could gain good-quality attention in your life—the kind that feels fulfilling—such as the attention you receive from helping others or giving of yourself, or from being a loyal friend/mother/father/sister/son…etc., or from being hard-working, intelligent, funny, and being appreciated for who you are.

Motivation for Dieting #4: Control

Your motivation for dieting could be that you like to feel in control. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a predictable schedule, or manage your life, or even have a plan for your eating, feeling like you need to perfectly control everything you put in your mouth can backfire (for more on this, you can read my post about not overdoing self-control). Eating is a natural, fundamental biological drive and it doesn’t lend itself well to being perfectly controlled, especially when that “control” means deprivation.

When you over-control your eating by not giving yourself enough food, your lower brain gets the message that you are starving and heightens your desire and drive to eat. So, the “control” actually leads to the opposite effect of you feeling more out of control.

If you feel like your life is unstable (everyone does to some extent just by the fragile nature of our existence), and over-controlling your eating seems appealing, try to focus on taking some control elsewhere. Try to see if there is an area of your life that you can put energy into managing better, which won’t backfire and lead you to feeling more out of control. Maybe that means seeking more career stability, or improving a relationship, or organizing your home, or developing a more consistent schedule. Doing those things doesn’t cure an eating disorder, but anything that will take your focus away from restrictive dieting helps break the habit.

Also, changing how you think about the concept of control can be helpful as well. We truly aren’t in control of everything, even most things, in our lives, and trying to pretend that we are often leads to frustration and exhaustion. There is freedom in getting comfortable with knowing you are not in control, and that may even lead you toward spirituality, or a deeper perspective of the universe.

Don’t Get Caught Up In Analysis

Keep in mind that your motivation for dieting may not be very “deep” at all. You may have simply wanted to lose some weight, and it seemed innocent enough at the time. This was similar to my experience, which I detailed in Brain over Binge. Maybe your friends or family members were dieting, and that gave you motivation to restrict your food too, and you didn’t think too much about it. You just tried it without knowledge of what would happen, and it turned out to be a bad experience that led to binge eating. You can now learn from that experience and not repeat it in the future—no further analysis necessary.

Even if you feel there are deeper and stronger motivations for why you started dieting and why you continued, that doesn’t mean you should spend too much time dwelling on those motivations, or trying to solve everything before moving forward with giving up the harmful dieting behavior. Just take an honest look at what your biggest motivation for dieting might be and then try to find a new, healthier perspective. (You can also listen to podcast Episode 48: How Do I Get Rid of the Dieting Mentality in Binge Eating Recovery?)

Dieting is ultimately a choice—one that brings consequences, and one that is detrimental for your recovery from binge eating. For whatever reason, it made sense for you at one point in time to begin dieting, and until now, it may have seemed to make sense to continue dieting. But, at any point, you can make a new choice that is more beneficial to your recovery and to your life as a whole.

I hope that this blog post helps support you in choosing to eat adequately and nourishing your body. When you eat enough food, it makes dismissing the binge urges possible and takes you a long way toward complete freedom from disordered eating.

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If you need more guidance in eating adequately, the Brain over Binge Course is a powerful resource. 4 out of the 8 lessons of the course focus on adequate eating, and many of the course’s Q&A audios address giving up dieting and learning to eat in a way that works for you. The course is only $18.99 per month with no commitment.

You can also get personalized support in overcoming bingeing and weight issues with one-on-one coaching or group coaching.

Challenge Cultural Body Messages (with Ayurveda)

by Kathryn Hansen

I often speak out against restrictive dieting, because not only does it promote binge eating, it is a harmful practice that is not effective in helping you reach and maintain a healthy weight. Giving up restrictive dieting does not mean giving up health or fitness, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. When you stop restrictive dieting (and binge eating), you can focus on nourishing yourself – not starving yourself, and moving your body in a way that feels good – not punishing. You can learn to honor your physical signals of hunger and fullness, and you will start to realize that foods you truly enjoy are also the ones that fuel you in a good way. Your eating will never be perfect, nor should it be, but you will discover a balance that feels natural and authentic and works for you.

Typically, at this point in the discussion, I say something like this:

“…and your body will find its natural weight, that is effortless to maintain.”

And, that’s where some confusion and anxiety may set in for you. You may be thinking…What is my natural weight?…or…If I don’t control my weight, won’t it just keep increasing? You may desire to look a certain way and believe you must do specific things to achieve your body goals. You may believe that it’s your job to shape and sculpt your body into what you want it to be.

There is definitely a cultural message in the US (and likely a similar one in your own country) that we can make our bodies look the way we want them to look (and we are constantly presented with products or services to help with that endeavor). So, when you hear someone like me or another eating disorder recovery coach or therapist say to “honor your natural weight,” or “trust your own body to regulate your size/shape,” or that “your body is different and unique;” it stands in stark contrast to the overarching cultural message.

To be able to convince yourself to give up restrictive dieting and harmful weight “controlling” practices, it can be very important to challenge the cultural body messages you receive.

One helpful way to do that is to seek alternative perspectives, especially from other cultures; because in many other cultures, there is a vastly different “ideal” than in the US (or your own country), or it is simply a given that all of us are different – the shape of our bodies included – and there is no shame in that.

I learned about a useful and enlightening perspective on body size a few years ago, and I thought it would be helpful to share it here. You may have heard of this before because it is common, but even so, I hope you will find revisiting it to be refreshing and empowering.

This perspective is from Ayurveda, which is the ancient Indian science of life (Ayur = life, Veda = science or knowledge). This science developed 5,000-6,000 years ago and has been handed down through generations. Ayurveda is a holistic science of health, which focuses on maintaining a balanced state in the body and mind.

A key component of Ayurveda, which relates to the topic of this post, is the three Doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Doshas are the biological energies that make up the human body and mind (Vata=air/space, Pitta=fire/water, Kapha=earth/water). Each individual has all three Doshas present, but typically one or two dominate. The dominant Dosha(s) determine someone’s physiological traits, as well as his/her personality, likes, and dislikes.

Based on your dominant Dosha(s), it’s just a given that you will have a certain body type. Here are the basic body types for each Dosha in Ayurveda:

Vata: Thin build

Pitta: Athletic build

Kapha: Solid build

Other physiological and psychological traits are associated with these Doshas, beyond body type. For example, when the Dosha is balanced, Kapha is associated with love and compassion; Vata with creativity; Pitta with intelligence. Vatas tend to be more cold (in temperature), dry, and fast moving; Pittas are more warm, oily, and have a fiery personality; Kaphas are more smooth and soft and calm.

In Ayurveda, body and mind differences are embraced, and it’s inherently obvious that you can’t change your basic composition. A Vata type will never be a Kapha or Pitta and vice versa. By understanding your composition, you can make the best of it and live a healthy, balanced life; but you aren’t going to fundamentally change who you are, nor would you want to.

You are better off using your energy to make the most of your own unique set of traits.

There is no such framework in our culture. In the US, someone who is a balanced and healthy Kapha type might be labeled “lazy” or told they need to lose weight. Someone who is a balanced and healthy Vata type might be told they are not curvy (or muscular) or “sexy” enough. Wouldn’t it be better if we could embrace our differences, and not all try to fit into one mold of what our culture considers ideal?

Peering into other cultures and seeking alternative perspectives about your physical makeup is a powerful way to help yourself overcome body image issues.

You certainly do not have to have a great body image to stop binge eating, but it does help your overall quality of life to accept your own body. Furthermore, being accepting of your unique body and your own natural weight will help you give up the futile practice of restrictive dieting. When you honor your body and give it enough food, you stay out of that lower-brain-driven, “survival” state that fuels binge eating. Then, you can more easily dismiss any binge urges that remain, and the destructive habit can fade from your life.

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More help:

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