Ep #169: Being in a Partnership with Your Body

Hi! Are you ready for another super great episode of the Stop Binge Eating Podcast? Me too. Let’s go.

Today I’m talking about you and your body.

You’re both impacted by your eating decisions.

You’re both going to feel a certain way when you eat certain foods and amounts of foods.

You’re both going to have a reaction.

But when you’re bingeing, you’re probably not considering your body, the impact on it, how it’s going to feel, and it’s reaction.

You’re just thinking about you.

You want to feel better. You want relief. You want the yummy food. You want to calm down. You want to numb out.

So you eat to get those things.

But what about what your body wants?

I know it matters to you. You do care about your body and how it feels.

And every time you finish a binge and your body feels terrible, you care a lot.

You sit there, wishing you hadn’t done what you did to it.

That’s how I was, and I wouldn’t even consider my body until it was all over.

I was so focused on the food and eating as much as I could and my body wasn’t even a thought in my mind.

Even when my body hurt, when my stomach was extremely full, when my body was screaming at me to stop, I would still fit in just a few more bites.

Because I wanted to.

It was really like an F U to my body.

Eff you, I want this, so I’m going to eat it, I don’t care how you feel.

When I was bingeing, I was making all the decisions about what I ate based on what I wanted and I didn’t even stop and ask my body what it wanted.

If I did, it would have probably said no thank you, I’m fine, check back in a couple hours, I’ll probably want food then.

But when you’re feeling that urge to binge, you’re probably not going to take that time to check in with your body.

You just feel the urge and go eat or feel the urge and fight it and then go eat.

You don’t pause and check in.

You’re so concerned about how you’re feeling and what you think you need to do that you’re not considering who else may be affected by your decision.

And that who else is your body.

It will be affected.

So let’s start considering IT when it comes time to make decisions about eating.

Give your body some say. Ask it what it wants. Have a conversation with it.

Take a pause before diving in to the food and evaluate your body, what it might want and what it might need.

Now, this doesn’t mean you only eat according to your body. That would be saying that we only eat for fuel and only eat when we’re hungry.

But that’s not how most of you want to live. You want to be able to have dessert and snacks when you’re not hungry, just for the fun of it. You want to be able to eat foods that aren’t the best fuel for your body just because they taste good.

None of this is a problem if, you’re considering your body when you decide what and how much you’re going to eat.

So you can want to eat a brownie, just for pleasure, but check in with your body. See how it feels now. Consider how it will feel if you eat it. Consider how much will allow you to experience pleasure while not causing your body to hurt.

And this doesn’t just go one way. Your body is going to ask for food by signaling hunger and you may not be able to eat at the moment. So you can let your body know that it will get what it’s asking for soon.

You can both want things and compromise.

You and your body are in a partnership. In your binges, you’ve been running the show and being the dictator. How about if instead, you acted like you are in a true partnership with consideration and compromise.

You’re partners in your life, you and your body. But you are the one who makes the final decision and acts on it. Don’t just decide and act based on what you feel like doing. Consider your partner, your body.

It’s no different than a person to person partnership where the two people discuss, one person solidifies the decision, and then takes action.

You and your partner are deciding on where to go out to eat. You discuss, a conclusion is made, one person puts the nail in the discussion and then makes the reservations.

Imagine if you were instead in a relationship where the other person made all the decisions without your input, kept choosing places you don’t like with foods you don’t want to eat, and dragged you along and also forced you to eat when you were already full. You wouldn’t like that.

Don’t put your body in that position.

Give it say because it will be affected by your decision.

So start taking a pause before you take action and consider what your body wants, not just what you want.

You can compromise and make decisions that you will both be happy with.

Even if that decision means that you’re going to experience some discomfort for a bit because you’re going to not eat to make an urge go away.

That’s compromising.

You’re going to feel the discomfort and take one for the team, the team being you and your body.

And you do it because you know it will benefit both of you in the end.

Be in a partnership with your body, not a dictatorship.

You’re in this life together, always.

Have a wonderful time together.

Bye bye!