Ep #395: Getting The Binge Out of Your System

Hello! Next week, I’m going to be doing something for you that I’ve never done before and I’m pretty excited about it.

I’m going to be doing free group coaching.

I’ll be doing 3 one hour sessions on Zoom.

They will be on:
Monday March 2nd of 2026 at 12pm ET
Tuesday March 3rd of 2026 at 9:30am ET
And Wednesday March 4th of 2026 at 3pm ET

So you’ll have 3 opportunities to get personally coached by me on anything binge eating related.

All you have to do is show up live and raise your hand. I’ll coach as many people as I can in that hour but I’ll tell you, if I’m not able to coach you, you will get something helpful from the coaching you’ll hear with the other people. That’s the beauty of group coaching.

In my paid groups people tell me all the time how much they get from listening to other people get coached week after week and now you’ll get to experience that too, for free.

So come live if you can so you can have the opportunity to get coached yourself. Come to one of them, come to all of them, the more the better.

And if you can’t make it live, they will be recorded and available to watch for a limited-time.

To register, and to get the Zoom info, and get the replay link so you can watch the recordings, go to coachkir.com/freecoaching, and freecoaching is all one word, and I’ll also have this linked in the show notes so you can just click it.

I’m so excited to be doing this and to be able to coach you and talk to you and help you directly!

I’m also so excited for those of you who have never experienced coaching to experience it. It’s gonna be so great.

Alright, now let’s talk about getting the binge out of your system.

I remember times when I’d feel the binge coming.

I wasn’t feeling a super strong urge yet but, a less intense urge was there, and the thoughts about bingeing were there.

And I may have been experiencing this for a day, or two, or three.

It was like the binge was looming, and the urge to do it was building.

And I thought it was only a matter of time until it happened.

So at some point, usually when the urge did get stronger and the thoughts of bingeing were more frequent, I’d decide to just do it.

I wanted to get it out of my system. I wanted to get it over with, and just do what I thought was the inevitable.

Because then, if I just binged and ate all that food, I could stop feeling that feeling and stop thinking about bingeing.

It would be over.

For now.

And that’s the thing.

This was going to happen again.

I didn’t just get it out of my system and then was done forever.

I was done until it started again.

And if I just kept doing this same thing, just bingeing to get it out of my system whenever I felt those feelings and thought the thoughts, nothing would change.

It would be a continued cycle.

I’d just keep bingeing to get it out of my system, again and again.

Does this sounds familiar to you?

I’ve heard so many other people describe this too, and also use the same verbiage of getting it out of their system.

Which is of course why I wanted to do an episode on this.

I needed to stop the cycle.

You need to stop the cycle, rather than just feeding into it.

So that’s what I want to help you do today.

When you’re feeling those lingering, bothersome but not yet strong urges, and thinking those thoughts about bingeing, it doesn’t mean a binge is going to happen.

It means there’s something going on that needs your attention.

If you attend to whatever it is, and you take care of it, then you will stop feeling the urges and stop thinking about bingeing.

You’re not feeling the urges and thinking those thoughts for no reason.

It’s not happening just because you’re someone who has a history of binge eating.

That’s what people think a lot of the time – that it’s just a habit and that’s it.

But really, the binge eating urges and thoughts are a habit because of what is triggering the habit.

And what is triggering the habit is an unmet need or want.

Here’s what I mean.

Binge urges and thoughts exist for one of two reasons, or both for a lot of people.

It’s either because you’re being too restrictive with your food or you use food to control your emotions.

That means you’re being too restrictive by not giving your body enough fuel, so you’re not eating when you’re hungry too often or you’re not allowing yourself to eat the foods you want to eat, so you’re denying yourself of what you want.

And you control your emotions with food by eating food to escape uncomfortable emotions, numb them, or to change them so you can feel better or if you’re feeling good you might want to eat food so you can keep feeling good or feel even better.

Okay?

So when I say that you have an unmet need or want, here’s what it could be.

You’re not giving your body the fuel it needs.

You’re not giving yourself the food you want.

You’re not meeting your emotional needs and taking care of your emotions.

You’re feeling that urge to binge because your body is urging you to fuel it more.

Or you’re feeling that urge to binge because you’ve been feeling so deprived and restricted by constantly saying no to yourself when you want to eat certain foods that you’re now urging for a lot of them.

Or you’re feeling that urge to binge because you’ve taught yourself that eating food is how you feel better and how you handle your emotions and the stronger your emotions, or the longer you feel them, the more in quantity you’ll urge to eat.

You don’t have to binge to stop the binge urges and thoughts.

You need to take care of what’s going on with you that’s causing the urges and thoughts.

I definitely fell into both categories, too much restriction and controlling my emotions with food too often.

Those urges and thoughts would show up for me when I was consistently not acknowledging and working through how I was feeling. I just kept ignoring how I felt, just kept overeating a little here and there to not feel how I felt, and kept distracting myself.

Those urges and thoughts would show up for me when I was consistently not allowing myself to eat foods that I thought would stop me from losing weight, or that I thought would cause me to gain weight, or that I thought would make me binge.

I just kept denying myself and saying no and forcing myself to eat the healthier foods. Now, don’t get me wrong, I did and do like a lot of healthy foods but there were definitely times when I would make myself eat them when it wasn’t at all what I wanted.

Now, I didn’t usually fall into the denying-hunger category although there were some times when I’d feel hungry but try to not eat anything if I’d already hit my calorie goal for the day or if I was afraid that eating now would put me over once I ate dinner later.

Rather than just bingeing to get it out of my system, to stop the urges and thoughts, I could have stopped the urges and thoughts had I taken care of my emotions, had I just allowed myself to eat the dang foods I wanted to eat, and had I chosen to take care of my hunger rather than trying to stick to a calorie goal.

But I had no idea that that’s what I needed to do and that that could have helped me.

And maybe you didn’t know either.

But now you know.

I didn’t know that there was something going on, besides just urging to and thinking about bingeing.

I didn’t know there was something beneath the surface.

So I didn’t take the time to understand what it was, explore what was going on, and do something about it.

I just ate food.

So rather than just bingeing to get it out of your system, explore why it’s in your system, why you’re feeling and thinking the way you are.

What needs attention? What do you need to stop doing, and start doing?

If you have no idea, you could just start with the basics – is this related to restriction or emotions?

Take a look at what’s been going on with you today, or in the recent days when you’ve been feeling and thinking this way.

Let’s get to the bottom of this, rather than just staying on the surface.

And then, once you figure it out, and you take care of it, you are going to keep taking care of it so you don’t even begin to experience those feelings and thoughts again.

If you’re not neglecting you and your body’s needs and wants, you won’t urge for them.

You won’t urge for fuel, for freedom to eat what you want, or to feel better.

You’ll be taking care of them before you feel that urgency.

Now, if you’re not sure what it even means to take care of them, here are some examples.

The restriction ones are simple.

When your body is hungry, feed it, fuel it. You’re not doing yourself any good by ignoring hunger. You might think it will help you to lose weight but really, it’s just helping you to feel urges to binge once you brain has had enough of not being fueled properly.

And allow all foods and make no foods off-limits or forbidden. This does not mean you just impulsively eat whatever is around or whatever you think of. This does not mean you eat as much as you feel like eating without any consideration of how it will affect your body.

It means that you have permission to eat the foods you’ve previously told yourself you can’t eat. You can. You are not going to restrict these foods from your life. You are going to allow them and when you’re making eating decisions, you are going to consider both what you want to eat and what your body would want you to eat. You’re in a partnership with your mind and body and you will compromise and be considerate of both.

And if you would like a more detailed explanation of what it means to have unconditional permission to eat what you want, go listen to episode #388. Doing this doesn’t have to mean that you’ll binge or overeat or only eat unhealthy foods. It means you get to feel more relaxed, less guilty, less pressured, more at peace, and more in control.

And that you get to stop urging so strongly for the foods you never let yourself eat.

Now what does it mean to take care of your emotional needs?

It means that you are not ignoring, avoiding, numbing, or escaping how you feel.

You’re not constantly distracting yourself by eating food or doing something else when you feel an uncomfortable emotion.

You’re not using food as a way to feel better all the time.

You’re letting your emotions be felt.

You’re acknowledging them. You’re giving them your attention.

You’re letting them exist.

And then, you’re understanding them.

Why are you feeling this way?

Write about what you’re feeling and why, or talk to someone about what you’re feeling and why, or talk to yourself, do talk to text, type it out, just do something that gets it out of your head and in front of your eyes or directly into your ears.

It’s so much easier to understand your emotions when you write or speak rather than just letting all your thoughts swirl around in your head.

Then once you understand, you can start to work on changing how you feel in a productive way.

You feel how you feel because of what you’re thinking, because of how you’re interpreting something, because of your perspective on something.

And all of that can be changed if you take some time to consider other options.

And when your thinking, your interpretation, your perspective changes, how you feel changes.

It’s like when you’re feeling angry because of what you’re thinking about something someone did. And then you start thinking about it differently and don’t feel angry anymore. That’s what I mean.

Or when you are feeling stressed about something but then calm down, before the thing actually happens. How you feel changes because your perspective of what you were stressed about changes.

This happens often when I’m coaching people. They come to the call feeling a negative, uncomfortable emotion, we talk about it, they see things differently, and they feel better.

You can handle your emotions, and you can handle them without food.

And in addition to the thought work I just talked about, you can also do actions and activities to help as well, and I’m sure you’ve already heard of plenty but to remind you, you can take deep breaths, move your body, lay down, do something you enjoy, meditate, do absolutely nothing, or do another enjoyable or self-care activity.

But what’s most important is that your thoughts are changing, because that’s what will change your emotions.

And I do want to touch on the good feelings real quick since I did mention them earlier, when you’re wanting to keep the good feelings going so you keep eating.

Allow your good emotions to subside. You will feel them again. There will be more.

And it’s important that we allow ourselves to live in the emotional spectrum where we’re going through ebbs and flows of emotion and we’re not trying to force the good ones. Enjoy them when they’re there, and let them go when it’s time. They’ll be back.

So, stop continuing the cycle by bingeing so you can get it out of your system.

Break the cycle by taking care of what you’re really urging for, what you’re really wanting when you’re thinking about all that food.

And break it even more by continually taking care of your needs and wants so you don’t even get into those urges and thoughts to begin with.

Okay? Now, if you want help with this, or help with anything binge eating related, don’t forget to sign up for the free group coaching I’m doing next week. Go to coachkir.com/freecoaching, come to the sessions you can come to, watch the recordings for the ones you can’t, and take away something, or many things, that will be very helpful for you as you continue to work on stopping binge eating.

I can’t wait and I’ll see you then! Bye bye!