Fighting urges to binge eat is exhausting.
Maybe you get pissed because the urge is there and you start arguing with it, or you just keep saying, “I’m not going to do it, I’m not going to do it,” and hope it will go away.
The problem here is, that if you get angry and give it attention like that, it’s not going to go away.
When you fight an urge, you’re fueling it. You’re also using up your mental and emotional energy, which is something you need for you to be able to say no to urges.
Think about when you fight with people. You go back and forth, you both probably get louder and louder, and by the end you’re just angry and tired regardless of who wins. If you fight with that urge, you’ll get angry and tired while the urge gets louder and there’s a solid chance that you’ll give up on the argument before it does.
The urge is relentless and the more attention and power you give to it, the stronger it’s argument becomes.
That’s when it’s really difficult to say no to it.
Instead of fighting your urges to binge eat, I want to suggest a much more effective way to deal with them.
Allow them to be there.
There’s a huge difference between how you behave when you fight something versus when you allow something.
Fighting usually involves anger, attention, and an argument.
Allowing involves calmness, detachment, and no argument.
When you’re allowing an urge to be there, you’re giving it permission to exist, but you’re not giving it what it wants.
You’re being realistic, acknowledging it’s presence, but instead of letting it get you emotionally charged, you’re just noticing it.
Feel it, recognize that it wants you to binge, decide not to do it, and move on.
It really is that simple. Not easy! But simple.
I’m going to share with you an example of how this way of reacting works in a different scenario.
Say you’re babysitting an annoying little boy that you’ve taken shopping with you. He’s hounding you to buy him candy and he will not shut up. You start feeling really aggravated and argue with him, but that just makes him argue back and whine more. Finally, you’re so over it that just to shut him up, you buy him that candy.
That boy is your binge urge. It hounds you to binge, if you argue with it it just gets louder, so you finally just give in to it to shut it up.
But what if you just allowed that little boy to do his thing? If you just stayed calm, let him try to bug you, and you just let him be a whiny kid. Then you leave the store without buying him candy and eventually he’ll get over it.
That’s how it will happen with your urge too. If you can calmly let it be there and not react to it, not argue with it, it will go away eventually.
The key here is staying calm and not reacting.
Whether you stay calm or not is going to depend on what thoughts are going through your head.
“No, no, no, no, no,” does not feel calm.
“I hear you, but I’m not going to do it,” feels much more calm.
Choose your own thoughts that work for you.
The next time you feel an urge to binge, instead of getting pissed off that you feel it, notice it and allow it. Eventually, it will sense that you’re not going to binge and it will pass on it’s own.
Let it do its thing, don’t fight against it.
What thoughts do you think you can purposely think to calm yourself down when you feel an urge to binge? Share below!
