Ep #391: Make Your Binge-Free Voice LOUDER

Hi! When you’ve been binge eating for a long time, and have been wrapped up in diet culture for a long time, your thoughts about bingeing, losing weight, restricting food, emotional eating, and negative self-talk can be pretty loud.

You hear it a lot.

And when you try to think differently, when you try to think in a way that will help you to become binge-free, and stay binge-free, those other thoughts might take over and win.

Because, they’re louder.

They’re more dominant in your mind.

I’ve had so many people tell me that when they’re trying to practice new self-talk, new thinking, thoughts that will help them to become binge-free, those old, loud thoughts take over.

So they have such a hard time internalizing the new ways of thinking.

And it can be discouraging.

Here you are, having learned so much, with new perspectives, ready to apply it all, and those dang thoughts keep winning.

So how do you quiet the binge and diet thoughts and make your new thoughts louder?

Well, there’s actually two things you can do to help you do that.

The first thing is to work on what you believe to be true.

And you start doing that by taking the time to dismantle and separate yourself from those binge and diet mentality thoughts.

So here’s what I mean by that.

Say you have a thought that you need to cut out certain foods because it will help you to not binge and lose weight.

This is a thought you’ve had in your mind for a long time, ever since you started trying to lose weight and ever since you started bingeing.

Cutting out the food was the answer for you.

But since then, you’ve learned that it’s actually not the answer.

You’ve learned that cutting out the foods is actually going to perpetuate binge eating and that cutting out food to lose and maintain weight just isn’t sustainable….especially if it leads to bingeing.

You’ve learned this but, that voice that says it will work and you need to do it is still there, and it’s loud.

If it is, it’s because there is still a part of you that thinks it’s true.

There’s still a part of you that believes it will help, that it is the answer.

It’s like you’re stuck in between the restrict and don’t restrict thoughts.

If you are, you need to give yourself a deep talk, and tell yourself the whole story about what will happen if you restrict.

Don’t stop at, “I don’t eat them and I don’t binge and lose weight.”

Keep going with the series of events that will happen. What happens after awhile? What have you experienced?

Don’t just tell yourself it’s not the answer, get as detailed as you can about why it’s not because the more information you have to back up the falseness, the easier it is to let it go.

That’s what needs to happen here. You need to really break down the belief and understand why it is false rather than just telling yourself it is.

But you don’t just stop there.

Sometimes people will do that, but then when they try to tell themselves to not be so restrictive they’re too scared of what will happen if they’re not restricting.

So even though they see the old belief as false, they don’t fully believe in the new thought either. So they go back to the old one since it will at least give them a quick fix and they then hope they will overcome that usual reversion back to bingeing.

So if you want your new way of thinking to be louder, and be the more dominant thought, you have to prove it to be true.

And that’s going to happen in two parts.

First, you get all the information. Like you did with the old belief, you go through the whole story.

And here’s the whole story.

You don’t restrict foods.

And at first, you might overeat or binge on them because you’re doing something that’s been restricted, and this is a normal reaction.

But, you’re going to practice thinking less restrictively, meaning you’re allowing yourself to eat the foods again, you’re not making them off-limits or forbidden, you’re telling yourself it’s okay to eat them, that you’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re being permissive with these foods.

And after that initial overdoing it, and once you’ve gotten into a truly permissive place in your mind, you calm down, the food becomes less appealing since it’s no longer forbidden, eating a lot becomes less urgent since it’s always available, and when it’s less appealing and less urgent, you want it less so it’s so much easier to eat less of it.

That’s the whole story.

So first, you get on board with that explanation if it makes sense to you.

Because once you’re on board, you’re ready to do it and give it a try.

Which is the second part – actually living it.

You start by believing that the story could be true for you and then you live into the story.

And when you do, you prove it true. You see yourself eating in a way that’s more aligned with the eater you want to be and bingeing less.

Then you have evidence that you actually created, you lived it, that shows you what will happen when you’re not overly restrictive and how the result is so much better, and more sustainable, then being too restrictive.

Once you have that evidence, it’s going to make it so much easier for you to be louder with it. Because, you believe it so much more.

It’s going to be so much easier to shut down those old, diet mentality, “restrict the foods” thoughts.

Basically, when you genuinely believe in the new way of thinking more than the old way, it’s so much easier to shut down the old way and make the new way louder.

So that’s one thing you’re going to do to make your binge-free, new way of thinking louder.

You’re going to go through the process I just walked you through to believe in the new way more than the old way.

And the second is repetition.

Your old thoughts are loud because they’re practiced. You’ve thought them so many times that they have become habitual.

The more habitual a thought is, the louder it’s going to be.

Also, the newer a thought, the quieter it’s going to be.

So if you want a new way of thinking to be louder than the old, you gotta practice it, repeat it again and again.

And you gotta keep replacing the old thought any time it comes up.

Your brain says to restrict, you say you’re not going to do that and here’s why, and you refer to what I talked about previously.

You keep replacing and replacing.

You keep redirecting.

And the more you stand up to the old way of thinking, the louder your new way will become because it will become more habitual.

So when you combine the process of letting go of the old way of thinking, believing and proving the new way, and repeating the new way while redirecting away from the old way, the new way will get louder.

The thoughts that will help you to stop binge eating, the more useful thinking, the self-talk you want to hear, the thoughts that a binge-free person thinks will get louder.

So speak up to yourself, deeply understand the truth and tell yourself the truth, and practice, practice, practice.

Alright, be loud and proud with your new knowledge and just a quick side note, if you don’t know what new thinking to practice, listen to any episode of this podcast and you will find one. There’s so many to choose from and you can start with any one. Start, and make it loud.

Alright, bye bye.