Ep #3: What Happens After You Binge Eat

Hi! How are you? I’m so glad you’re here. Today, I want to talk to you about what happens after you binge.

As you go through the process of eliminating binge eating from your life, you’re probably going to binge.

And please know that this is a normal part of the process.

When I thought I had learned everything I needed to know to stop binge eating, I still binged.

It wasn’t just, I have this knowledge, the switch has been flipped, and then I never binged again.

Because, having all that knowledge wasn’t enough. I had to apply it and put it into practice and create new habits and that took time.

And the same will happen for you.

You’re doing something new, things you haven’t done before, you’ll probably make a lot of mistakes along the way and you might forget things sometimes.

If you binge, it doesn’t mean you can’t stop binge eating or that you’re a failure or that this won’t work for you.

It just means you have more to learn, more to work on, more to uncover, more to practice, and it might also mean that you would benefit from getting help with this.

Stopping binge eating is a process and progress will likely not be linear.

You’re not going to do everything perfectly every single time.

So, you can expect that binges will happen.

And if you do binge as you’re working on stopping binge eating, what will you say to yourself? How will you treat yourself? How will you talk to yourself?

After I’d binge, I would tell myself that what I did was disgusting or that I was really disappointed in myself or I’d just get frustrated with myself.

I’d be thinking, “How could I have done that to myself again?

So many other people do the same thing. They mentally beat themselves up about it. They’re so hard on themselves. Because they binged, they make it mean that they’re worthless, a failure, that they’re weak, that they’re disgusting.

They tell themselves that they hate themselves, that there is something wrong with them, that they ruined everything.

They are just so mean to themselves and hard on themselves.

If you talk to yourself that way too, what happens when you do that? How do you feel emotionally when you talk to yourself that way?

I bet you end up feeling emotionally awful on top of all the physical discomfort you feel. You might feel self-loathing, shame, guilt, frustration, hopelessness, or defeated.

Then, what happens when you feel that way?

Probably not much that’s productive or helpful.

Most people would isolate themselves, do nothing, ruminate about what they did and how terrible they think they are, or just give up on themselves.

Or they might come up with a plan to overly restrict their eating the next day or do a really intense workout that is too much and that they don’t enjoy, to make up for what they ate.

What can also happen, is more eating. There is no effort put into not eating, not giving in to the urge for more, or they’re eating to numb or escape how emotionally awful they feel.

Any of those behaviors sound familiar?

Negative feelings will drive negative actions, and the reason why you feel negatively is because you’re thinking negatively about yourself and what you did.

It’s your thoughts that cause your feelings.

Eating all that food will cause you to feel bad physically but the negative, uncomfortable emotions you feel, those are coming from your thoughts.

So it’s not the binge that makes you feel bad about yourself. The binge isn’t what makes you feel self-loathing, shame, guilt, frustration, hopelessness, or defeated. It’s how you think about what you did that does.

If you are talking negatively to yourself, it’s going to make you feel negatively, and then those negative emotions will drive you to behave negatively.

Those negative thoughts you’re thinking about yourself will start you down a negative path that you don’t want to go down.

After a binge, you want to feel better, you want to do better, you want to not give up on yourself and not keep bingeing, right? That won’t happen if you’re being so negative with yourself.

If you want to get back to work and better yourself after the binge, then you need to stop talking to yourself so negatively, so harshly, and being so mean and hard on yourself after the binge.

Now, I’m not saying that you need to be super positive afterward. That’s likely not really realistic.

But, what I am saying is that you don’t have to call yourself a failure, tell yourself that you ruined everything, or call yourself disgusting.

Now, you might want to say, “But I am a failure, I did ruin everything, and it was disgusting.”

But my question back to you is, why would you choose to talk about yourself that way?

Yes, I said, “choose”.

You choose the words you use when you’re talking to yourself about yourself.

You have so many options for what you can say to yourself after you binge and you are not required to use such negative, harsh, mean words.

You can choose to talk to yourself differently.

Now, I get that you might think you’re just being honest, that you’re just telling the truth.

That’s how you see yourself.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a fact.

You are not factually a failure, you didn’t factually ruin everything, and you’re not factually disgusting.

The fact here is that you gave in to your urge and binged.

The fact is that you ate the food you ate in the amount you ate it.

That’s it.

You don’t have to say anything mean to yourself about it.

Think about this.

If someone you love came to you and told you they binged, and told you all that they ate, what would you say to them?

I bet you wouldn’t say the same things that you say to yourself. I bet you wouldn’t say to them that they’re a failure, that they ruined everything, and that they’re disgusting.

Why? Because it’s not kind. It’s not supportive. And because you don’t want to make them feel bad, or feel worse than they already do.

Yet, here you are, being unkind and unsupportive to yourself and making yourself feel bad and feel worse.

So the point isn’t whether or not you’re being honest, it’s about how it affects you.

And being so hard on yourself and so mean to yourself is going to affect you negatively.

And just like with you talking to your friend, you get to choose better ways of talking to yourself.

You may be used to talking to yourself so negatively because that’s how your self-talk has been for so long. You’ve basically trained yourself to talk that way.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t override you usual thoughts with different, more useful thoughts.

You can change how you talk to yourself.

You can be kind, compassionate, supportive, and encouraging.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’re excusing what you did or that you disregard it. That’s not what this is.

You’re accepting the fact that you did what you did and are deciding to not mentally beat yourself up about it, because that’s not at all useful.

Mentally beating yourself up and being hard on yourself is not going to change what happened, nor is it going to stop you from doing it again.

How many times have you mentally beaten yourself up for binge eating? And how effective has that been at helping you to not do it again? Not very I assume.

You can’t mentally beat yourself out of bingeing.

The more beaten up you get, the worse you will feel and the worse you’ll treat yourself.

But if you are kind to yourself, you will feel okay and treat yourself well.

So, after you binge, what kinds of things do you say to yourself? And what do you want to say to yourself? What do you want to hear after a binge? These things matter.

It’s these thoughts about yourself and about what you did that make you feel how you feel emotionally. Any feelings of shame, guilt, regret, frustration, hopelessness, or defeat are all caused by how you talk to yourself after you binge.

Remember, it’s your thoughts that cause your emotions.

So speak to yourself like you would the people you love the most.

Again, you wouldn’t call them names and be mean, right? You’d want to comfort them and be accepting of them no matter what they did.

You’d want to be loving and caring with them. So be loving and caring with yourself.

We all make mistakes, we all mess up sometimes.

You binged, it happened, and now you get to decide how you want to think and feel about it.

Negative self-talk isn’t going to make things any better, it just makes things worse.

So give being kind, compassionate, comforting, supportive, and encouraging with yourself a try. See how you feel. See what you do.

I bet you’ll see a difference, a good difference, in what you do after you binge. You’ll take better action, do things that will contribute to you stopping binge eating rather than contributing to the problem.

Better behavior will come from better thinking.

So if you want to put yourself on the path to stopping binge eating, and if you want to feel better emotionally, talk nicely to yourself.

And a quick side note, also be kind if you make other mistakes in your life, not just with bingeing. Be more kind to yourself in general because it will feel good and will have a positive impact on you.

So be kind to yourself, even if you binge, and I’ll talk to you next time.