Ep #157: Anticipating the Urge to Binge

Hi! Today I am talking with you about anticipating the urge to binge.

If you’ve download my free Pdf titled “How to Not Binge Eat Tonight,” you’ve seen that the first step I talk about on there is anticipating the urge.

If you haven’t downloaded it, you can go to coachkir.com/free and scroll down to the bottom. You’ll find it where it says, “Ready for a binge-free night?” There’s also a link to it on the show notes page.

So the first thing I recommend you do is to prepare yourself for an urge. A lot of you get blindsided by your urges and you’re not ready to handle them when they come up.

So you’re surprised and freak out or just react.

Now, we can’t always know when every single urge is going to show up. But, there might be times for you when they are likely going to show up.

Maybe it’s when you have a day off.

Maybe it’s right after work.

Maybe it’s at night when you’re watching tv.

Maybe it’s every Sunday at 5pm.

If you’re expecting it to happen when it most commonly does, you can plan for how you’re going to handle it. Or you can also make time to prepare yourself for when it may randomly happen.

You can set yourself up with a plan of action.

But, when I talk about what you’re going to do what I’m really talking about here is what you’re going to intentionally think.

What you’re doing actively, like the activity that you’re doing doesn’t really matter that much.

Sure you can prepare yourself with an activity that might distract you away from feeling an urge but, it’s not a guarantee that it will stop you from feeling one.

You may plan to hang out with a friend and then feel an urge while you’re with them.

You may plan to engage in your favorite hobby and then feel an urge while you’re doing it.

It can happen.

And when that urge pops up, it’s what you’re thinking about it that’s going to matter the most.

That’s what you want to prepare – how you want to be thinking when you’re feeling the urge.

But how you prepare is important too, not just what you’re preparing.

A lot of you aren’t preparing in a useful way. You’re creating worry or stressing yourself while you’re anticipating.

You’re imagining bingeing, you’re imagining that it’s going to be inevitable that a binge will happen when you feel the urge, you’re thinking about how awful it will be to feel the urge, you’re afraid of the urge before it even gets there.

The anticipation alone is creating so much discomfort for you that you might end up creating an urge to binge!

So many of you feel the urge to binge when you’re experiencing emotional discomfort because you don’t know how to handle the discomfort and then feel the urge to eat to make it go away.

So when you worry yourself or stress yourself out about the possibility of an urge, you create emotional discomfort that you’re not going to want to feel.

If you fear that anticipating an urge is going to be a stressful experience, it only will be if you make it into one by worrying about the urge.

When I tell you to anticipate the urge and prepare for it, I’m talking about calming yourself down, not working yourself up.

A binge is not inevitable when you feel an urge if you handle it properly.

It’s possible to feel without eating.

You are capable of feeling the urge.

And you have to go in not being afraid of feeling the urge.

You anticipate calmly and focused and get yourself prepared by thinking that you’re going to do it and you’re going to be calm about it, you’re going to breathe through it, and you’re going to not binge.

You’re giving yourself a little pep talk. You’re getting yourself ready for game time when the urge happens.

That’s how you anticipate the urge.

You do it by encouraging yourself and thinking about what you’re going to think when the urge is there which are thoughts like, “It’s okay that I feel this” and “This is only temporary,” “And how this feels will not be nearly as bad as how I’ll feel if I binge.”

Those are examples of thoughts you want to be prepared to think when you’re feeling the urge.

So prepare your mind and be ready to feel the urge and to not eat.

As you anticipate, calm yourself down instead of working yourself up and stressing.

You got this.

I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye.