To stop binge eating, you have to stop giving in to your urges to do it.
It’s a simple explanation with a not so easy application, but that’s how you do it.
Urges are comprised of any thoughts and feelings that encourage you to binge. The thoughts make binge eating sound like a good idea. The feelings are either making you excited to binge or are so uncomfortable that you think you need to binge to make them go away.
To not binge eat, you have to say no even though you strongly want to do it.
Look at other bad habits people have and what they need to do to overcome them.
To stop smoking cigarettes, you have to not smoke even one cigarette.
To stop drinking, you have to not have a drink.
It’s different with food because we can’t eliminate it entirely from our lives. We can’t just say we’re not going to eat food anymore.
So then look at how someone would stop binge drinking if they still want to be able to have one or two drinks.
They pay attention to how they feel after those one or two and make a decision to not have any more. Or they decide before they even start drinking how many they’re going to have and stop after that amount, even if they’re still wanting to drink more. They honor their decision they made for themselves.
It’s quite similar to binge eating.
There are two scenarios to look at – either you’re not eating and you decide you’re going to binge or you’re eating and it spirals into a binge.
If you’re not eating and are craving a binge, don’t eat.
If you’re eating and start to feel like it’s getting excessive and out of control, stop eating.
Now, there’s more that goes into this of course, otherwise we would all be able to stop eating whenever we want and there would be no binge eating problem. But I want you to see that the explanation of how to stop is really that simple.
Don’t confuse simple with easy.
Now let’s dig a little deeper into this.
To change your behavior, you have to first change how you’re thinking and feeling. Our thoughts create our feelings and it’s our feelings that drive our actions. It’s all connected. You can’t change your actions while still having the same thoughts and feelings. You have to do the work that changes what’s going on in your head before you can change any behavior patterns you have.
It’s not enough to just recognize triggers and you can’t just try to avoid them all the time either. This work is about changing how you respond to your triggers and learning how to experience them without binge eating.
That’s how you put an end to this.
Stopping binge eating begins with successfully not binge eating just one time when you want to binge.
Each success thereafter builds up to greater success and eventually binge eating is thing of the past.
Do slip ups happen? Yes. Do they ruin everything? Not at all. They indicate what you still need to work on. Success very rarely comes without any setbacks so expect them to happen. Over time they will become less and less until not binge eating becomes effortless.
Start now by paying attention to how you’re thinking and feeling before you binge. Recognize what’s going on with you in the moments when you’re not eating to fuel your body, or when you’re eating more than a small treat when you’re not hungry.
Most importantly, decide to not give in to your urges to binge eat, one at a time.
Have you signed up for your free mini session with me yet? It’s a chance for you to ask me any questions you have about how to stop and also find out everything you want to know about working with me one on one so you can stop binge eating for good! Learn more about what a mini session is like here!
