You blew it.
You successfully didn’t binge for however many days and then BAM, binge city.
You now have two options – beat yourself up about it, or learn from it and do better next time.
A lot of you probably beat yourself up. I hear it all the time. You talk about how weak and disgusting you are.
But it’s not true.
Binge eating does not make you weak, it does not make you disgusting. Those descriptions are merely your opinion of yourself in that moment and your opinion is not a fact.
You know it’s not a fact because I disagree.
Why would you choose to believe those things about yourself? How will that help you? (It won’t.)
What will, is learning from what you did, figuring out where you went wrong, and working on that the next time you feel a binge coming on. What did you do when you felt the urge to binge? How were you thinking and feeling?
Take your experience and use it for your benefit so you know what work you still need to do.
Most importantly, be compassionate with yourself.
How you talk to yourself after a binge is what will determine how you feel and how likely you are to either continue making terrible decisions for yourself or make good ones.
Terrible decisions include binge eating more, restricting your food, or punishing yourself with excessive exercise. This is a continuation of beating yourself up. Good decisions include going back to making healthy decisions and eating food that makes you feel good. This is being kind to yourself, even though you made a mistake.
The simple answer for how to recover after a binge is to treat yourself well. Positive and encouraging self-talk is super important when you are trying to make better decisions for yourself.
Beating yourself up will never give you the result you want.
There is no big secret here. The worse you treat yourself after binge, the more likely you are to just call yourself a failure, give up, and do it again. And the better your treat yourself, the more likely you will be to be in the right mindset to do the work you need to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Be good to yourself.
