Recovery From Binge Eating
What it is and How to Recover
When most people think of eating disorders, they think of anorexia or bulimia, but binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder. Recovery from binge eating is possible with the right methods and treatment. Let’s first look at what binge eating disorder is and its symptoms.
Binge eating involves eating larger than normal quantities in one sitting or over a period of time.
Definition of BED
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a mental health condition marked by recurring episodes of consuming unusually large amounts of food in a short period, accompanied by a sense of loss of control during these episodes.
Key aspects of BED include:
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- Binge Eating: Eating significantly more than most people would in a similar timeframe, with a feeling of being unable to stop or control the eating.
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- Associated Behaviors: This can involve eating faster than usual, eating until uncomfortably full, eating when not hungry, and eating in secret due to embarrassment. Feelings of self-disgust, depression, or guilt often follow.
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- Frequency: These episodes occur at least once a week for three months.
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- No Compensatory Behaviors: Unlike bulimia, BED does not involve regular compensatory actions like purging or excessive exercise.
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- Distress and Impairment: The binge eating causes significant distress or problems in daily life.
In short, BED involves frequent episodes of excessive eating with a sense of being out of control, followed by negative emotions, but without compensatory behaviors.
In most people’s minds, people with eating disorders are thin, but binge eating often leads to significant weight gain and obesity.
Causes of Binge Eating Disorder
There are several causes of binge eating. One of them is restriction/dieting or even the thought of dieting. I’ve had people tell me, just thinking about going on a diet makes them binge. Or they start out dieting in the morning and by the afternoon they’re bingeing!
Bingeing is also a way to regulate or numb uncomfortable emotions. Excess food acts like a powerful tranquilizer and soothes anxiety and other emotions. While bingeing, many people dissociate. They leave their bodies and their thoughts completely behind for awhile. For people who are stressed out and overstimulated after a long days work or upsetting emotional event, this feels great. Unfortunately, they don’t enjoy the aftereffects of mental fogginess, lethargy, shame, guilt, feeling out of control, and unwanted pounds.
I myself binged on a regular basis from the time I was 17 until I was 30 years old. It has been over 30 years since my last binge. My bingeing was a response to my strict dieting and making foods off limits, and the fact I didn’t know how to manage my emotions or take care of my needs in a healthy manner. When I stopped dieting and learn to love and care for myself, my emotions and body in a healthy manner, the need to binge disappeared.
Recovery from Binge Eating
People who come to me for help with bingeing often don’t believe it is possible to recover from bingeing. They’ve done it so long they can’t imagine a life without bingeing. I’m living proof recovery from binge eating is possible but it is something that doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be ready to invest in yourself and your recovery. I tell people they can see improvement right away but to give themselves a full year to feel like the behavior is finally behind them.
8 Ways to Practice Recovery From Binge Eating
1. Don’t Cut Out Food Groups
Foods aren’t good or bad. There is a place for all types of foods in a healthy diet. Some foods are great every day, some at every meal, some once or twice a week, and some are good once in a while.
Recovery from binge eating requires making peace with food. It’s best not to try to cut out foods or entire food groups completely out of your diet, unless you have a medical condition or an allergy. Making food forbidden makes you want it more and sets you up to feel guilt and shame when you eat these foods, which often leads to bingeing on them and then even stricter dieting to undo the damage of the binge. This cycle can go on for years and cause great emotional and physical damage.
2. Practice the 80/20 Principle.
If you eat healthy most of the time (80%) then you can allow room (20%) for treats, birthdays, holidays, and other indulgences. This philosophy helped me to move away from the strict black and white diet thinking that helped cause my own binge eating problem many decades ago. I still practice this today.
3. Know Your Triggers.
Recovery from binge eating requires getting in touch with your emotional self. If you’re prone to bingeing, the first step is to become aware of what is triggering your binges. You need to keep a mood journal to track your emotions and responses. If you binge, you need to reflect on the thoughts, feelings, and events that led up to the binge.
4. Stop dieting.
If you have a bingeing problem, your focus shouldn’t be on trying to lose weight. Your focus needs to be on normalizing your eating first and working with your triggers, emotions, and relationship with food. Most people lose weight as a result of doing this anyway because they are no longer taking in large quantities of food. Don’t try to restrict your food after bingeing. This will only serve to keep you in the restricting/overeating cycle.
5. Learn to tolerate and process difficult emotions.
Recovery from binge eating requires getting to know your emotional self. Many people binge because they are overwhelmed by strong emotions. It takes practice to hang out with uncomfortable feelings. When you do, you learn that feelings are temporary and they will pass. You realize your world won’t end and you’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for.
If you’re triggered by uncomfortable feelings, you can sit with them and breathe until they dissipate, or you can process them by writing in a journal, or by talking to a supportive friend. Some may be so strong that you may need to distract yourself: by going for a walk, or doing something on the computer, or some other activity until the feelings pass.
6. Practice Mindfulness
Recovery from binge eating requires mindfulness. Mindfulness is being fully present in the moment. It’s only by practicing being mindful in the moment that you can learn to be aware of what you’re feeling and needing in the moment. Mindfulness gives you the chance to pause and choose another response.
When you practice mindfulness, you can decide if you’re actually hungry or if you’re wanting to eat in order to meet an emotional need. Eating for emotional reasons never leaves you satisfied and it keeps you stuck in a vicious cycle of always wanting more. You need to become willing to meet your emotional needs in a more constructive manner.
7. Practice Surfing Your Urges
Practice riding out urges and temptations. Urges to binge will pass (usually in about 20 minutes). The urge will crest like a wave, then subside. When you ride out the urge, you see that just because you have an urge, you don’t have to act on it. Surfing your urges teaches you to separate the urge from the behavior which gives you much more control over food and your impulses.
8. Practice Self-Compassion
Recovery from binge eating requires that you learn to be gentle with yourself. Beating yourself up for your bingeing and/or overeating leads to shame, guilt, and more overeating. When you’re compassionate with yourself, it’s easier to move on and move forward quickly without getting bogged down in a spiral of shame and guilt. Bingeing is a misguided way of taking care of yourself. Until you become more practiced with better coping skills, it will be your default behavior.
When stressed, we humans tend to regress back to our default coping behaviors. Be kind to yourself. You’re doing the best you can with what you know how to do. Beating yourself up only makes the problem worse. Get curious about your binges: what triggers them, and find better ways to respond to the situations that provoke the binges.
Bingeing and food obsession is a terrible waste of time and life energy. That energy could be better spent on creating a life that nourishes you on all levels. I have found this is what allows you to leave emotional eating behind for good. Creating a nourishing life is the ultimate goal of my work and my wish for everyone I work with.