Dieting Archives - Brain over Binge

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

in Abuse, Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, binge free life, Blog, Body Image, Dieting, eating disorder recovery, relationships, self-confidence, self-esteem, urge to binge, Weight/by Kathryn Hansen

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)

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

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.

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

in Binge Eating, binge eating disorder, binge eating recovery, Blog, Body Image, Coaching, Dieting, eating disorder recovery, relationships, urge to binge/by Kathryn Hansen

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

Ep. 170: Veganism, Ethics, and Loving Food (with Jenné Claiborne)

in Binge Eating, Cooking, Dieting, Health, Healthy eating, Podcast, Processed foods, vegan, veganism/by Kathryn Hansen

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

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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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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.

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