Questions in Binge Eating Recovery (Course Q&A’s)
If you are like most people struggling with binge eating, you probably have questions. The women and men I’ve spoken with over the years—who have read my books or been in my course, or who are new to the brain over binge approach—find it comforting to know that they aren’t the only ones with a certain issue or concern. I’ve noticed common themes in what people have asked me, and I decided that it would be practical and useful to compile and record detailed answers to all of these questions.
This task took me over a year, but when it was complete, I had created 85 Q&A tracks that are now a central part of the newest version of my course, which you can start anytime. I’m adding a new track monthly to continue answering questions, but the course currently has 117 total tracks – plus other resources – to help you stop bingeing. (In total, there is over 1,000 minutes of guidance, tips, information, suggestions, and ideas).
I wanted course users to be able to simply click on a question they have, at any time of day or night, and listen to a thorough response from me. I’ve received extremely positive feedback about these Q&A recordings, but people who are struggling with binge eating disorder or bulimia—and aren’t sure whether or not to sign up for the course—have frequently asked me questions about the questions, wanting to know which topics are discussed.
So, in this blog post, I want to share the entire list of questions that are in the Brain over Binge course (see below). But first, I want to tell you a little more about why I took the time to create the Q&A’ tracks…
I was previously answering these questions frequently in group coaching for binge eating or one-on-one coaching, but I saw room for improvement. I found that I would sometimes inadvertently leave out something I wanted to say, or I found it difficult to give a detailed answer in a short message on a forum or on a time-limited group call when there were many more questions to address. I also realized that a coach’s, counselor’s, or mentor’s time is extremely valuable, and because of that, it’s not financially feasible for everyone to have a personal coach.
I decided that answering these questions in a recorded format could be the next best thing to having a personal coach, and could be much more affordable for people who need guidance.
You definitely can’t put a price on freedom from bulimia and binge eating disorder because it’s worth any amount of money; but the reality is that binge eaters are often also students, parents, or caregivers, and recovery shouldn’t have to be expensive. I wanted to make coaching more accessible in the new version of my course. (The course also includes 15 coaching tracks for encouragement, reinforcement, and motivation. You can listen to a free coaching track at the bottom of the course information page.)
With that being said, here is a list of the questions you’ll receive detailed answers to in the course. Each Q&A track is about 7 or 8 minutes long on average (some are longer, some are shorter).
You can also listen to a free Q&A track (that answers the following question) at the bottom of the course information page:
*Food is constantly in my thoughts. Even if I’m not having urges to binge, I’m incessantly thinking about eating*
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How much focus should I put on recovery?
Can you explain more about the word “dismiss”? Is it the same as willpower?
What does “don’t diet” mean?
Should I exercise during recovery?
What if I’m taking medication to try to help me stop binge eating?
I’m having a hard time defining my binges. How can I decide what is a binge and what is not?
I don’t feel like I get urges. My binges feel automatic. How can I dismiss urges if I don’t experience them?
I feel like there are deeper emotional reasons for my urges. What does that mean for recovery?
What do I do about all or nothing thoughts that seem to lead to binge eating?
What if I’m unhappy with my weight during recovery?
What is the purpose of journaling in the Brain over Binge approach?
What is the role of alcohol in binge eating? Should I drink alcohol while trying to recover?
Should I continue therapy?
How do I deal with others who are dieting?
Can you talk more about the lower brain and why it’s not really me, and how to separate from it?
I don’t seem to be able to eat sugar in moderation. Should I give up sugar?
I’m overeating in a way that feels very similar to binge eating. I feel like my overeating is almost as problematic as my binge eating, and it makes me feel out of control.
How can others that I’ve confided in about my binge eating best help me?
How long will it take for my binge urges to go away once I stop acting on them?
Is it okay to do something else during urges or should I avoid distracting myself?
Is it okay to eat or drink while I’m having an urge to binge?
My urge thoughts are compelling and I often end up believing them and acting on them.
What do I do if my urges keep coming back after I dismiss them?
I feel like I can’t allow myself to get excited about dismissing an urge or having another success in recovery.
I’m planning binges in my mind long before I’ll have an opportunity to binge. What do I do about thoughts that come well in advance of a binge?
I’m still reacting strongly to binge urges. The urges make me feel panicked and stressed, and it seems like a binge is the only thing that will calm me down.
Should incorporate mindfulness or meditation into recovery?
I’m having trouble getting past the idea that my binges are enjoyable. Even if I did not have urges, I think I would still choose to binge, if there were no consequences.
My urges get worse when I’m stressed. I know the urges cause the binge eating, but the stress seems to make it so much harder.
I binge more at night more than I do during the day. How do I deal with nighttime urges to binge?
How are binge urges different from the binge triggers that I learned about in traditional therapy?
I only feel good when I’m a certain weight or when I look a certain way.
I’m grazing throughout the day and that’s leading to guilt, and binges.
How can I avoid a fear of relapse?
I do well on days that my life is relatively calm, but when I have a demanding work and family schedule, I find it so hard to dismiss urges.
How do I know if I’m having an urge to binge or if I’m just hungry?
I am working on ending the binge eating habit, but I need to lose weight. How can I lose weight without triggering my survival instincts?
My desire to restrict food feels very strong. How can I overcome this so that I can eat adequately?
I’ll eat dinner or another meal and then I just keep getting more and more food and I often end up bingeing. How do I find a stopping point when I eat?
Is it okay to eat healthy and avoid junk foods during recovery?
I’m having trouble stopping my purging behaviors. How do I deal with urges to purge?
Thoughts of compensating for the binge (by restricting or purging) are encouraging me to binge. How can I deal with these thoughts?
I’ll have a few good days, but then I seem to automatically slip back into restriction and binge eating. How can I have continued success?
How can I handle events where there is a lot of food?
I’m having a lot of trouble recognizing and deciphering my body’s signals of hunger and fullness. What should I do about this?
Fullness makes me feel anxiety and it also seems to triggers urges to binge, or binge and purge. How can I learn to deal with feelings of fullness?
I want to eat based on my hunger, but it often does not fit with my schedule or when my family is eating.
I don’t go into binges with the intention of bingeing. I tell myself I’m just going to have one bite, but then I find myself bingeing.
I fear my hunger. I worry that when I’m hungry, I’ll binge.
Should I incorporate former binge foods into my diet, and how do I go about doing this?
Late in the day, I want the immediate gratification of a binge, and I don’t even care about the consequences. How do I stay motivated at the end of the day?
Can I use a diet like keto, weight watchers, paleo, or intermittent fasting to guide my eating?
I’m bingeing or just eating in the middle of the night. How do I dismiss urges at this time?
I have a lot of anxiety about my weight.
I have a lot of black and white thinking, so I feel like when I don’t restrict, I binge.
I’m mindlessly overeating. How do I stop myself? Should I consider this behavior a type of binge?
I resist the work of recovery. Is it possible that I don’t actually want to quit binge eating?
Should I dismiss my desires to eat emotionally? How does emotional eating affect recovery from binge eating?
I feel like as I try to quit bingeing, my urges get stronger. What can I do about this?
I’ve heard that food addictions can stem from problems with my neurotransmitters. How can I overcome this?
How do I quickly overcome a setback?
How do highly processed foods affect binge eating and recovery?
What if I’m gaining weight during recovery?
How can I learn to accept my body?
I feel like my rational self wants to binge. What do I do when I feel like I’m choosing to binge?
Should I make a big resolution to never binge again? Or, should I just aim to reduce or delay binges and accept that slips are part of recovery?
I get more urges during PMS or when I’m feeling off hormonally or physically. What can I do about this?
My most convincing thought says it won’t hurt to binge “one last time.” How can I get past this thought?
Can I dismiss any thought that’s harmful to my recovery?
After stopping the binge eating habit, I’m having other obsessive thoughts and also regrets about the time I lost to binge eating problems.
I clear my plate every time, even if I feel full. How do I learn to put the fork down when I’m full?
I’m eating less than the calorie recommendation of the Brain over Binge approach. Is this okay provided I’m not feeling restricted? Also, if I’m counting my calories to make sure I’m eating adequately, how long do I need to do this?
I stopped bingeing and purging (in the form of vomiting). I thought I would feel great and healthy, but I feel less energetic, fuzzy, and bloated. Will I feel better over time, or is this the new normal I should expect?
I feel in control and successful when I restrict, and I feel guilty and fat when I try to eat adequately, which usually leads me to just giving up and bingeing.
Will there be a point when I can consider myself healed, or do I need to constantly work on recovery? What are my chances of relapsing?
When I binge, I feel like I might be subconsciously self-sabotaging my recovery. Is it possible that I’m continuing to binge because I think I don’t deserve recovery?
Can I do a gentle diet for health reasons? For example, a weight loss eating plan crafted by a nutritionist to make sure I’m not hungry.
When I want a dessert or sweets or to snack when I’m not hungry, I don’t know if it’s me or my lower brain that wants it. How can I tell which cravings to follow and which ones not to follow?
How do I deal with others who are giving me bad advice, eating in front of me in ways that are not helpful, or constantly offering me food?
During the urge to binge, I’m telling myself “No, I don’t want to binge, “ or I’m telling myself “This is just an urge from my lower brain,” or “A binge is not an option,” or “The urge has no power to make me act.” Is it wrong to do this? When I tell myself things like this, does it mean I’m fighting the urge?
I’m having trouble finding things to do instead of binge. What are some ideas of alternative activities?
I know that dieting can lead to the initial development of binge eating, but can problematic cravings also lead to the development of bingeing?
What if I need to gain weight after stopping the habit?
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If you are ready to stop binge eating, you can check out the new course subscription, which gives you access to the entire course for only $18.99 per month.
The Brain over Binge Blog: Tips to Help You Achieve Recovery
I created the Brain over Binge blog to give you a variety of tips, ideas, information, and insights to go along with my two books. Even if you haven’t read the books, you can benefit from my posts, especially if you’ve learned the basics of the Brain over Binge approach in my free PDF or by listening to my podcast. I hope what I have written so far on the blog, and what I will write in the future, will help you toward freedom from binge eating.
This post and the next (Tips to Help You Achieve Recovery, Part 2) will be a central part of the Brain over Binge blog, because I’m writing it for people who need extra help in recovery. This two-part blog series will give you additional ideas if you are struggling to stop binge eating, and if you are having a difficult time letting the binge urges pass rather than acting on them. I’ve heard from many women and men who understand the Brain over Binge approach and know they have the ability to avoid binges, but they still find themselves following the binge urges. (For more about the urges, listen to Episode 2: The Cause of Binge Eating: Urges to Binge).
Are You Having Trouble Avoiding Binges?
The first thing I want to tell you is that not everyone stops acting on binge urges immediately. Even if you develop a new and empowering perspective about your binge eating, and even if you know that you are capable of overcoming the harmful habit without needing to solve other problems first, that doesn’t mean your recovery will be automatic. You are on your own path, and different ideas work for different people in different ways. That’s not to give you excuses, because you have the ability to end binge eating for good, but you always want to have self-compassion along the way. Being self-critical is not an effective way to move toward change.
To help you create the change you want, I’m going to list some common obstacles that may be getting in the way of you successfully avoiding binges, and I’ll explain how you can move past these obstacles. I’ll also share and link to other useful posts and resources on the Brain over Binge blog and website so that you can get more information to support your recovery.
Recovery Obstacle #1: You Are Arguing With the Binge Urges
Several people have asked if there was anything specific I did or told myself to detach from the urges to binge. Besides briefly reminding myself of the brain-based information I’d learned and the fact that those urge thoughts and feelings weren’t truly me, there wasn’t any specific mental dialogue or action that helped me separate from my lower brain—the primitive part of the brain that created my urges. (You can listen to Episode 3 and Episode 5 for more information about the lower and higher brain). I simply accepted the experience of the urges, without letting those urges affect me and lead me into a binge.
I think trying to have any sort of mental dialogue with the urges to binge is counterproductive, because it engages the lower brain. The lower brain sends automatic messages to try to get you to maintain a habit it senses you need, and there’s nothing you can say to yourself to make those messages go away. Actually, the more you try to say things to yourself, the more you end up arguing with the urges; and you therefore give the urges more attention and significance, which makes them stronger.
I’m going to use an analogy to try to explain this:
Let’s say you are in an argument with someone, and you are listening, getting upset, and arguing back. Your words and actions are helping to fuel the disagreement. Whatever you say, the person has a counterargument, and emotions run high. But, if you eventually realize that arguing is futile and not worth your time, you will just quit listening and letting the person’s words affect you. You will still hear what they are saying, and you will still have the experience of being in an argument, but that experience will suddenly feel very different. The person’s words will no longer make any difference to you, and you’ll no longer feel so emotionally charged. That’s detachment. That’s how you can experience the urges to binge.
You don’t need to announce that the urges aren’t worth your time. You don’t need to say “I’m not listening anymore.” Detachment is a mental shift that you can make without any dialogue with the urge thoughts. You can just let the lower brain do what it’s been conditioned to do, without reacting to it, and it will eventually fall silent.
Recovery Obstacle #2: You Are Letting Binges Lead to More Binges
After learning information about the lower/higher brain, completely changing how I understood my bulimia, and realizing that I had the power to stop acting on urges—I still binged two more times. But, I didn’t see the binges as a sign of failure or as an indication that I couldn’t be successful with my new approach to recovery. I saw that I had simply acted on urges to binge, but that it was not inevitable for me to act on binge urges that would follow. After those two binges, I didn’t feel like I had to start over, or find a new approach. I just took a look at what happened, and saw how I could prevent it from happening again. I explained this in more detail in my first book: Brain over Binge: Why I Was Bulimic, Why Conventional Therapy Didn’t Work, and How I Recovered for Good.
If you have a binge while you are trying to recover, don’t make it mean more than it does. It doesn’t mean you won’t recover, it doesn’t mean you can’t utilize your higher brain more effectively next time. Something helpful you can do is to mentally go back to determine what led you to act on the urge. I’m not talking about figuring out what events or feelings “triggered” the binge, I’m talking about determining how the urge itself led you into the binge. How did your lower brain get what it wanted? What binge-encouraging thoughts did you believe? When did you lose that detachment and separation from the urges?
You might feel discouraged about a binge, and that’s okay, but by analyzing what happened, you can keep the binge in perspective. You may realize it was just one enticing thought that hooked you and made you decide to follow the urge. You’ll be prepared to experience the next urge without believing the lower brain’s faulty messages.
Recovery Obstacle #3: You Feel Like You Want to Binge
In Brain over Binge, I also talked about how learning to stop acting on binge urges wasn’t truly difficult for me, but it was tricky at first. My lower brain could be deceptive, and by far the most tempting and common reason it gave me to binge was because I simply wanted to. I had thoughts telling me that it didn’t matter what part of my brain generated my urges, because I wanted to binge nonetheless. I had thoughts telling me I should definitely follow my urges because a binge was my true desire. As long as I stayed detached from those thoughts and viewed them as meaningless, they could not affect me.
This topic of wanting to binge comes up a lot in those who are trying to recover, so I’ve addressed this issue in two other posts on the Brain over Binge blog: Is “Wanting to Binge” Holding You Back in Recovery? and Do You Want to Recover?: Why It Sometimes Feels Like You Want to Keep Binge Eating.
It’s so important to be able to dismiss ANY thought or feeling encouraging binge eating as the neurological junk that it is. This includes those messages that tell you binge eating is worth it, or that it is really you that wants to binge. You don’t need to disagree with those thoughts or try to argue them away, because like I talked about earlier, that doesn’t work; but you can remain unaffected by those thoughts and feelings until they pass.
Recovery Obstacle #4: You Are Not Eating Enough
I’ve brought this up a lot on the blog so far, but I believe it’s the most common reason for struggling in binge eating recovery. If you are not eating adequately, you are keeping your body and brain in survival mode, and I truly believe that urges that arise because of food restriction are harder to dismiss than urges that arise due to habit. Eating less than you need is not compatible with the Brain over Binge approach. If you think this may be a problem for you, these two blog posts will give you some useful information as you give up dieting: Weight Gain From Binge Eating Recovery? and What are Your Motivations for Dieting?
Recovery Obstacle #5: You Need Additional Guidance in Recovery
Some people can read a book or learn the basics of a new approach, and then apply it with consistency—without any additional help. But, this is not always the case. Most people need to have a way to reinforce what they’ve learned, or need some questions answered along the way, or need additional clarity about how this approach applies to their specific situation, or need some help staying focused as they put an end to binge eating.
There are many ways you can get additional guidance, clarity, and reinforcement—and that may be outside of the Brain over Binge blog and website—but if you resonate with my approach and would like extra help and additional recovery resources, I want to tell you that I’ve created the Brain over Binge Course to serve as a powerful way to keep you on track and moving toward freedom from binge eating. I’ve also made sure that it’s affordable for anyone who is committed to ending binge eating (you can get access to the course for only $18.99 per month)
As a part of this course, I’ve recorded detailed answers to nearly every question I’ve been asked over the years, so that you can get the information, ideas, and advice that you need to support yourself on your journey to freedom from binge eating.
Here is what one course member had to say:
This course is exactly what I needed to hear! I’ve read countless books on the BED-topic (including Brain over Binge) before, without any success. The course is full of deep insights and packed with valuable and practical information. I really appreciate the rational and organized form everything is presented. I’m exceedingly thankful for the course – it has really changed my life! THANK YOU!!!
Continue to Part 2 of this blog series.
