Ep #181: You’re on the Right Path

Hi! This episode is going to be an important message for you to hear as you’re going through the process of stopping binge eating.

You might have some ideas about what that process is going to look like for you from start to finish.

Especially after you’ve been learning so much on this podcast and have so much knowledge.

You might think that all this knowledge is going to make it easy peasy for you to never binge again.

Or, you might think that even with all your knowledge, stopping binge eating is going to be really hard.

Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle.

You might imagine what each day, each week, or each month will look like for you as you’re doing this work.

You might expect that no binges are going to happen, or maybe that a lot still will, or somewhere in the middle.

And you may be right about this for you but, you also may not be.

Now, everyone’s process looks different and I can’t tell you what yours is going to look like. I can’t tell you what is unrealistic or realistic for you. There’s so many factors that determine that and most factors cannot be predicted because they are uncovered along the way.

But I will say that for most people, never bingeing at all once you start trying to stop bingeing is unlikely to happen.

Most people will binge while they’re in the process of stopping binge eating.

From what I’ve seen from doing several rounds of my Stop Binge Eating Program and from working with lots of one on one clients before I began the group program, and from hearing people’s stories who I’ve never worked with, stopping cold turkey is the exception, not the norm.

For myself, I didn’t stop cold turkey once I learned what I needed to learn. My stopping binge eating process really began when I was in my life coaching training and certification program. Throughout the training I learned how to change myself, my behaviors, my thoughts, and my habits. On the final day, I got the most insightful information I’d ever received about binge eating, which was the concept of the lower and higher brain, which I talk about in episode #2 of this podcast in case you missed it, and that night after learning everything I learned, I binged.

At breakfast the next day, it was like a mini binge.

I also binged a few days later when I finally returned home from the training after visiting friends that lived nearby to where the training was.

It wasn’t instantaneous that once I learned everything, I was done. I still felt urges. I still gave in to urges. I still binged.

And that was part of the process for me.

What wasn’t part of the process was believing I wasn’t capable of not bingeing or beating myself up because I had those binges.

I actually looked back at my journal from that time and reading through what I wrote, I didn’t write anything about how these binges meant I couldn’t stop.

I wrote about how it was part of the process and how I believed I could do it and I kept going, and kept putting in the effort and applying the tools I’d learned in my training.

I believed it was part of the process and it probably will be for you too.

When you’re working on stopping binge eating, you bingeing doesn’t mean that you’re not on the right path.

Bingeing is part of the process.

It’s supposed to be on your path toward being binge-free.

It’s just like a fallen tree on a hiking trail. That tree is supposed to be there. It being there doesn’t mean you’re going the wrong way. It just means you’re going to figure out how to get over it or around it.

You’re going to overcome the obstacle of the tree and become a better hiker as you step up and over it or as you navigate yourself around it. You’re going to overcome the obstacle instead of making it mean you’re done with the trail, that you can’t go any further, and just turn around and go home.

Consider your urges obstacles. Consider a binge as an obstacle.

The urge is supposed to be there and you’re going to handle it. And you’re going to become better for having handled it instead of just eating to make it go away.

The binge is supposed to happen and when it does, you’re going to handle it productively. You’re going to learn from it and strategize for the next time you feel an urge.

These obstacles are the part of the path where you learn something. You learn something about your urges, about yourself, about how you treat and talk to yourself, about how you handle mistakes and fails, and about what you still need to work on in order to stop binge eating.

When you feel an urge, when you binge, nothing has gone wrong. This is how it’s supposed to be for you.

Arguing with this, getting frustrated, or feeling hopeless isn’t going to help you move forward down your path.

If you were facing the tree and arguing with the tree, feeling frustrated or hopeless, that’s probably the moment that you’d give up and go home.

Don’t give up on yourself just because there’s an obstacle.

Learn from your urge. Learn from the binge. They are there, on your path, for you to learn from to become better.

You are on the right path, even when you feel urges and even when you binge.

Stay on it, keep moving forward, and never give up on yourself.

I’ll talk to you again soon.

Bye bye.