Can Treats Coexist with Binge Eating Recovery?
I wrote this blog post back in 2012, and I wanted to update it after an experience I had a few days ago while preparing for Halloween…
2012 post:
I eat Halloween candy. I also eat many other types of sweets and desserts in moderation. I don’t think continued recovery requires this, although it is extremely helpful to learn you aren’t powerless around any food. You may find that avoiding certain foods temporarily or even altogether works for you (and if you have a health condition, then elimination of specific foods may be a necessity). Even people without eating disorders sometimes choose to avoid a food because of the effect it has on them, or because it feels too difficult to stop eating it once they start. It’s up to you to decide the amount and frequency of treats and sweets in your life, and holidays can be an opportunity to determine how binge eating recovery and treats can coexist.
Halloween definitely got the best of me when I was bulimic. During my last year of college, I was struggling with frequent binges as Halloween approached, and I remember hesitantly buying a large bag of peanut butter cups for trick-or-treaters. I lived alone in a small duplex at the time, and I knew it was a possibility for me to get some kids knocking on my door on Halloween night. I didn’t have any other plans for Halloween, because at the time, my binge eating was causing so much shame and weight gain that I didn’t have much of a desire to be social.
When I bought the peanut butter cups, I knew it was a risk that I’d eat them all before Halloween. Sweets were dangerous to me. I was trying to recover at the time, and I went back and forth between trying to avoid sweets altogether and trying to learn to eat them in moderation—but neither strategy seemed to help. Sure enough, the day before Halloween, temptation took over and I ate all of the peanut butter cups during a binge. So, on Halloween night, I turned off my outside light, and didn’t answer the door.
Fast forward to today (2012), we often have candy or junk food in the house, and I don’t view it as dangerous at all, or even think much about it. Since I recovered in 2005, we’ve celebrated Halloween every year and kept candy in the house days beforehand for the trick-or-treaters. Then, after Halloween, my own kids’ trick-or-treating buckets have sat on the kitchen table—often for weeks—and I have a few pieces of candy here and there, but I don’t feel drawn to it like in the past.
I believe there are a few reasons for this change:
- I haven’t dieted or restricted calories in many years. A food-deprived body and brain make food the top priority. When you aren’t eating enough, cravings increase, and the reward value of food skyrockets. Pleasurable food is much more tempting and gives you more of a “hit”. This is a survival response designed to encourage you to eat more, and this response can continue for a while after dieting stops—until the body/brain fully senses safety from deprivation. Then, it gradually turns the volume down on cravings, even in the presence of highly pleasurable food.
- I learned to stop acting on urges to binge and problematic cravings, and therefore deconditioned the habit of overeating treats. I didn’t understand my cravings in college while bulimic. I thought my urges represented my true physical or emotional needs. When I recovered, I learned that urges to binge were a glitch in the primitive part of my brain, and I did not have to act on them. Once I ate candy or other treats in moderation many times, and experienced the urges to binge that followed—without acting on them—my brain changed and those urges went away.
- I didn’t make the treats “forbidden” or think I was a failure for eating them. When I would eat candy as a bulimic, I would often tell myself it was the “last time” I would eat that particular food, and therefore I needed to eat all I could now and then “start over tomorrow” with a clean slate of eating perfection. I didn’t realize that thinking I would “never have the candy again” made me eat so much more of it than if I just believed what I believe now—that I can have more later, or tomorrow, or another day, if I want.
It’s not that I never experience a desire for more pleasurable food, but that desire has become so much more mild after recovery, and that desire is never for massive quantities or binges—which now seems like the opposite of pleasure. Sometimes eating a sweet like Halloween candy creates a craving for a few more bites, but that is just a natural part of being human with the pleasure-seeking brain that we have, and especially in the food environment that we live in. When faced with an inclination for a little more candy, I have a choice—to have a little extra or not—but no matter what choice I make, it never has to lead to harmful behaviors like bingeing or restricting.
Recovery doesn’t mean giving up on the pleasure and enjoyment of food, it means redefining your relationship with it.
2024 update:
Just a few days ago, nearly 20 years after my recovery from binge eating and about 12 years since I wrote the blog post above, my youngest son and I went shopping together. Halloween was approaching, so we bought a bag of peanut butter cups for trick-or-treaters. Just like in college, I likely chose that particular candy for the trick-or-treaters because peanut butter cups have always been my favorite Halloween candy. Unlike in college, I know I can eat some now without it being an issue at all, so buying them didn’t create any anxiety.
My son (well, actually, both of us:-)) decided to open the bag in the car on the way home to have one. We each unwrapped a peanut butter cup and took a bite, but to my surprise, my reaction was, “it’s not even that good.” It wasn’t awful, it just wasn’t anything special. I finished the one peanut butter cup, and I didn’t have any desire for another one, which I found odd because I usually want at least one more. As I type this, the bowl of leftover peanut butter cups is sitting on my kitchen table in front of me. It’s not due to a strong will that I’m not having any, it’s a genuine lack of desire. I’ve definitely had other pleasurable foods over the past few days, but not the peanut butter cups.
I’m sharing this blog post update to tell you the following insights that I hope will help with your own recovery and relationship to treats:
- Your relationship to even your most challenging foods can change dramatically over time. You may think a food will always have power over you but stay open to the idea that this likely will not be the case. You can learn to incorporate these foods in a way that makes sense to you, and also take comfort in the fact that time naturally changes some of your preferences.
- When you allow foods and allow yourself to truly listen to your taste and your body, you may discover some formerly tempting foods aren’t even that good. I’m sure if I would have eaten that same peanut butter cup a few days ago with the “forbidden food” mentality or the idea that I would “never have a peanut butter cup again,” I would have craved and wanted much more. An allowing mindset surrounding treats lets you tune into how you feel about them—before you eat them, while you are eating them, and after you’re done.
- When you set aside the dieting mentality and approach sweets with a body that is well nourished, you gain the freedom to make genuine choices, instead of being driven by the survival instincts. When you are deprived of calories, you will feel such a strong pull from the primitive brain to eat excessive amounts, and you will have heightened cravings, which makes reasonable decisions around treats nearly impossible.
Related to these points, I read a social media post last week from Dr. Mark Hyman, in which he talked about how the ingredients in Halloween candy have changed over time to include more artificial additives and preservatives. It’s definitely possible that these chemical changes truly have made the peanut butter cups taste worse over time, which lead to my “it’s not even that good” reaction a few days ago. But, even if that is the case now, when I was a binge eater, I would have eaten the candy so quickly, mindlessly, and with so much guilt that I wouldn’t have even given myself the chance to notice if I was actually enjoying it or not.
Everyone’s experience and reaction to foods is different, and your journey will not be exactly like mine, but I’ve talked to enough recovered individuals over the years to know that my story surrounding treats is not unique. So many people have transformed their relationships with sweets and have had the experience of their most-craved desserts simply losing their allure. I hope this will give you some encouragement as we approach the holiday season so that you can find a balance that works as far as treats coexisting with your recovery.
Brain over Binge resources for more help:
Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.
One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.
Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.
Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.
Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.
Should I Keep Trigger Foods at Home During Recovery?
I want to address the question of whether or not to keep trigger foods at home while you are trying to stop binge eating. Trigger food is a popular term in eating disorder recovery conversations that usually refers to the foods that tend to make binge eaters feel out of control and binge. If you’ve read Brain over Binge or listened to my podcast, you know that I don’t believe any food can cause binge eating—because the urges to binge are the only direct cause. So, when I refer to trigger foods in this blog post, I mean foods that commonly to lead to your urges to binge, or foods that you typically eat large amounts of when you follow the urges, or foods that are simply linked to binge eating in your mind.
Distancing yourself from trigger foods doesn’t cure binge eating
If keeping trigger foods out of the house was the cure for bingeing, then that would make recovery pretty straightforward—but if you’re anything like I was as a binge eater, you just find a way to get the food anyway or find something else to eat too much of. Home isn’t the only place to binge, and trigger foods aren’t the only foods that you binge on. Also, it’s not realistic to expect to be able to control all of the food that comes through your door—because roommates, children, parents, partners, relatives, or friends who share or visit your home also need to eat, and they may have different ideas about what food to have on hand.
Even though keeping trigger foods out of the home is not a cure for binge eating, it’s still one factor to consider when approaching recovery. I believe that it is an individual decision, and there isn’t one right or wrong way. If you think about it, the decision of what foods to have at home is one that all people need to make, even if they don’t have a history of an eating disorder. When you look at this choice as just a basic part of living—something you’ll need to do for the rest of your life—it can take off some of the pressure you may be feeling right now.
Will the trigger foods make me binge more?
I realize that the additional consideration during recovery is that you may be worried that certain foods will lead to increased binges, but if you remember that all the trigger foods can do is lead to increased urges, you take your power back. You give yourself the freedom to choose what foods to have or not have at home, and you can learn to dismiss the urges that are linked to those foods. (If you are new to the concept of dismissing urges, you can get my free eBook, the Brain over Binge Basics to help you get started).
It’s okay if you don’t feel ready to have any and all types of food at home right now, but with time and practice, you can gain confidence that you can be around any food and eat any food—without binge eating. On Episode 76 of the podcast, my guest shared her own experience of reintroducing trigger foods into her life, and I think you will find it helpful.
Food temptation is a universal experience
It also helps to realize that feeling tempted by certain foods at home is common, and although the urges to binge will fade, feeling drawn toward food pleasure will never go away completely. Normal eaters often say that they don’t like to have, for example, a dessert item in the house because they believe they’ll eat too much of it, or they ate too much of it last time it was in the house. The reality is that sometimes it’s just easier for anyone—with or without a binge eating issue—to simply not have something tempting in close proximity, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
In the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide, I explained that these choices extend beyond food, and I drew a comparison to my choice at the time to not buy paper towels, because when I did, I used too many of them. My kids were very young at the time, and made so many messes, and paper towels were way too convenient. If I didn’t have paper towels in the house, I put myself in a situation where I had to take the time to wash rags and keep them ready for use. Now that my kids are older and there aren’t as many spills, I do buy paper towels again, but I don’t overuse them.
Giving up binge eating and dieting makes foods less “triggering”
The paper towel example could also help you see that your decisions about what to keep in the house can change over time, and if you decide to avoid buying a certain trigger food right now, you don’t have to avoid buying it forever. One day, you may decide you want that food in your house again, and you’ll learn to overcome the temptation, or it simply won’t be as appealing to you once your binge eating habit has stopped. Foods that seem so tempting today could become foods you don’t even think about in the future—this is a wonderful benefit of giving up the dieting mindset and learning to eat everything in moderation.
I wrote a detailed post to share how this happened for me regarding my biggest trigger food—sugary cereal—and how I can now have boxes of it in my house and not even want any (read the post: How I Stopped Binge Eating Cereal and Craving it Too). It’s an amazing experience when you first realize your trigger foods are no longer triggering, and that they hold no power over you. It gives you so much freedom to be able to be around any type of food and know it won’t lead to a binge. But, everyone gets there in their own way and on their own timeline, and it’s okay if you’re not there yet.
Just make the best decisions that you can right now as far as what to keep in the house to support yourself in recovery, knowing that you can make adjustments, and add new foods over time. Eventually your urges to binge will fade and go away completely, and all of the things that once triggered them—including certain foods—will no longer lead to urges. You’ll be left with some standard temptation and cravings like all normal eaters, but it will be so much more manageable. You’ll find yourself doing things that you never thought were possible—like forgetting you have leftover cake from a birthday party in your house, or throwing out half of a batch of cookies you baked last week with your kids because you never ate them.
Dismissing urges to buy the binge foods
I want to take a step back and also talk about buying the foods at the store, because that’s ultimately how they get to your home. Even if you make a firm decision about what foods you want to have in your house, and that doesn’t include many of your trigger foods, your lower brain might try to change your mind at the grocery. You might feel urges to buy a lot of binge foods—just in case. This is all part of the habit—you’re simply used to buying them, so habitually, you feel like you need to keep buying them. An example I thought of, which I’ve experienced myself, is a parent whose child gets older and out-grows the baby items that they used to need frequently; but the parent still finds herself automatically going down the baby food or diaper aisle.
You can think of urges you have in the store as just your lower brain telling you what it thinks you need—based on your past shopping and eating behaviors—but now that you have changed, you don’t need to follow those messages anymore. Dismissing urges to buy the binge food is good practice for dismissing urges to actually binge. You don’t have to get upset with your brain for encouraging you to buy certain things, just try to observe your thoughts and gently remind yourself that you no longer binge. You don’t have to tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have certain foods—because you can learn to buy and eat anything you want in moderation, provided there are no allergies or other health issues. However, if you only want to get the food to binge on it, then you can react to the urge to buy it like the parent of an older child would react to an urge to buy baby food—you can just shrug it off, maybe smile a little, and say, “Oh, I don’t actually need that anymore.”
In your case, it might not be that you don’t need any amount of a certain food, but you may simply need much less now that you are eating in a normal way. You don’t want to create a situation where you’re saying no to yourself too often for food you actually like and want in your house. You ultimately want to find a balance of foods that are going to nourish you, and foods that you buy purely for pleasure. Again, this is something you’ll need to do for the rest of your life as part of taking care of yourself and the people who share your home and food.
If you can keep a grateful mindset for all of the food you have the ability to buy and keep in your house, it can help the food feel like a gift instead of something to fear—and this can help your decisions surrounding food feel easier.
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