Sit With Your Feelings
We must learn how to feel our feelings. Feelings are just feelings, they wont kill us even though they feel very overwhelming at times!! Most of the women I have met who have eating disorders are very sensitive and the eating disorder was sometimes developed as a way to regulate and control feelings that felt very strong and overwhelming. I used to binge to stuff the feelings down, restrict my food as a way to limit the feelings, and purge to release them. So then what happens when you stop using the eating disorder as a way to regulate emotions? The feelings come up!! My favorite quote in early recovery was, This too shall pass. Trust me, the feelings do pass. Part of recovery for bulimia is learning how to feel the fear, feel the emotions, process and accept them and release them.
How To Prevent Eating Disorders For Parents
It definitely pays to be informed about eating disorders in order to spot warning signs and seek out the proper treatment. This is especially true for parents of tweens and teens, who may be at an especially sensitive place for eating disorders as their bodies are changing due to puberty, and may also be facing increased peer pressure to have their figures look a certain way. Here are some eating disorder prevention tips for parents to help instill positive body image in their children and help head off eating disorders before they can take root.
Social Benefits Of Treatment
When teens stop eating disorders, they will start to feel more comfortable in their own bodies. This is evident in their relationships with peers in the program, with parents and other family members, and in the relationship they develop with their therapeutic team. As they relax their strict expectations for their physical experience, they will begin to experience more joy in their lives and that happiness will quickly spread to their social interactions during and after teen binge eating disorder treatment.
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When Should I See A Doctor
It is important to see a doctor as soon as you suspect that you or someone else has binge-eating disorder. A doctor can refer you to a specialist in eating disorders such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.
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Simplify Your Meal Plan
In my experience, following an all-or-nothing approach to nutrition can indirectly lead to binge eating. To combat this, simplify your nutrition program. Instead of counting calories and following stringent macro ratios, opt instead for some simple, flexible nutrition guidelines that can be sustained in the long term.
Here’s a glimpse of the simple nutrition guidelines I practice:
- Eat real, whole foods most of the time.
- Eat when physically hungry.
- Eat slowly .
- Stop eating when satisfied but not stuffed.
- Enjoy your favorite not-so-healthy foods when you truly crave them .
Stopping A Binge When It Hits
Despite your best efforts, the urge can still come upon you. Try these tactics to stop yourself. And have multiple approaches in your toolbox in case plan A fails.
Sit with the emotion. What are you feeling that makes you want to binge? Identify it, and accept it without judging the emotion or yourself. This will be hard at first. But emotions pass, and as you accept your feelings, youâll realize you donât have to binge to get rid of them.
Surf the urge. You may think your desire to binge will just continue to grow. But if you distract yourself with other things and get away from your food triggers, youâll see that feeling start to go away. Think of the urge as an ocean wave that will grow, but then wash away.
Distract yourself. Find something to take your mind and body away from food. You can, among other things:
- Play a game you really enjoy
- Go for a walk
- Meditate
- Read a book
Pick up the phone. Hereâs where that support system you built comes in. Call your trusted friend or support group member and tell them what youâre going through. Talking it out can help make the urge pass.
Also, some therapists specialize in working with binge eating disorder, and some medications are FDA-approved to treat it. Talk with your doctor to explore these options.
Find your happy place. Do whatever makes you feel good about yourself. You can listen to music that boosts your mood, hit the gym, or watch a funny movie.
allow yourself to fall into a daze. Stay in the moment.
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How Do You Know If You Binge Eat
You often get some kind of pleasure from emotional eating. It does its job and fulfills your need for comfort in the moment. Bingeing isnt always enjoyable and often leaves you feeling worse off than before.
If you eat until you feel physically uncomfortable but feel unable to stop and have ceased to enjoy the food, it is likely that you are bingeing.
Keep A Food And Mood Journal
Keeping a food and mood journal that tracks what you eat and how you feel can be an effective tool. It can help identify potential emotional and food triggers and promote healthier eating habits.
One study in 17 people showed that using an online self-help program that involved keeping a food diary was associated with fewer self-reported episodes of binge eating .
Several other studies also suggest that tracking your intake may be linked to increased weight loss and aid long-term weight management .
To get started, simply start recording what you eat and how you feel each day using either a journal or app.
Summary Food and mood journals can help identify triggers to address potential problems. Studies show that using a food diary is associated with fewer episodes of binge eating, as well as increased weight loss.
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The Struggle To Eat Less At Night
Many patients overlook the possibility that the might have night eating syndrome because they:
People who struggle with night eating behaviors often have feelings of shame and guilt they attribute their eating patterns to “habit” and become “used to” having poor sleep and mood issues.
Gabriela tells us:
I always woke up with the intention of being good. I was super vigilant about my food choices and calorie intake for the first half of the day, not knowing that I was really underestimating how much my body needed. By mid- to late-afternoon, the bakery across the street or the vending machine in the hallway would be calling my name, and I would feel like I was caving and abandoning all my good intentions. By the time I got back into bed at night, Id be feeling over-full and guilty, swearing Id be good again the next day.
How Does It Start
In some cases, people simply overeat out of mindless habit, like always sitting down with a bag of chips in front of the TV at night. But oftentimes, itâs the result of underlying emotional problems. Having a negative body image can play a big role.
For many people, compulsive overeating is part of a cycle that starts with a restrictive diet. May calls it the âeat, repent, repeatâ cycle. You might begin a diet because you feel bad about your weight or size but find that itâs too hard to stick to — especially if you use food as a coping tool. Eventually, you hit a breaking point and binge on âforbiddenâ foods, and then the guilt and shame set in, and the restrictions begin again.
The cycle can be hard to break. âEven people who say theyâre not on a diet often have ingrained ideas about âgoodâ or âbadâ foods,â says Marsha Hudnall, president of Green Mountain at Fox Run in Vermont, a center for women who struggle with overeating. âBut when you have a substance that is naturally appealing and soothing and comforting, and you make it off-limits, it just becomes more attractive.â
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Clean Out The Kitchen
Having lots of or trigger foods in the kitchen can make it much easier to binge eat.
Conversely, keeping healthy foods on hand can reduce your risk of emotional eating by limiting the number of unhealthy options.
Start by clearing out processed snack foods like chips, candies, and pre-packaged convenience foods and swapping them for healthier alternatives.
Stocking your kitchen with fruits, vegetables, protein-rich foods, whole grains, nuts, and seeds can improve your diet and reduce your risk of binge eating unhealthy foods.
Summary Removing unhealthy foods from your kitchen and stocking up on healthy alternatives can improve diet quality and make it harder to binge eat.
Strategy : Stay Hydrated
Staying hydrated has many benefits, but it can also help curb unwanted cravings and reduce overeating. In one study, 24 adults who drank 17 ounces before eating consumed fewer calories than people who did not drink water before a meal.
Water can also boost metabolism and may contribute to weight loss.
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What Is Binge Eating Disorder
All of us eat too much from time to time. But if you regularly overeat while feeling out of control and powerless to stop, you may be suffering from binge eating disorder. Binge eating disorder is a common eating disorder where you frequently eat large amounts of food while feeling powerless to stop and extremely distressed during or after eating. You may eat to the point of discomfort, then be plagued by feelings of guilt, shame, or depression afterwards, beat yourself up for your lack of self-control, or worry about what compulsive eating will do to your body.
Binge eating disorder typically begins in late adolescence or early adulthood, often after a major diet. During a binge, you may eat even when youre not hungry and continue eating long after youre full. You may also binge so fast you barely register what youre eating or tasting. Unlike bulimia, however, there are no regular attempts to make up for the binges through vomiting, fasting, or over-exercising.
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Does Your Mood Affect Your Appetite
Alum Shari discusses how her depression made her night eating worse:
My depression made it hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. I often got out of bed at noon, and then my eating just got pushed back for the rest of the day. Id be eating dinner around 9:00 p.m. and Id stay up for several hours grazing before going to bed. It felt like a vicious cycle I couldnt break out of.
Night eating syndrome is not a well-known eating disorder. While often underdiagnosed and undertreated, it is fairly prevalent. Around 2 percent of the population has NES, making it 2 times more common than anorexia nervosa and almost as prevalent as binge eating disorder . Moreover, one of the symptoms of NES includes a depressed mood that worsens during evening hours.
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Check If You Have An Eating Disorder
If you or people around you are worried that you have an unhealthy relationship with food, you could have an eating disorder.
Symptoms of eating disorders include:
- spending a lot of time worrying about your weight and body shape
- avoiding socialising when you think food will be involved
- eating very little food
- cutting food into small pieces or eating very slowly
- wearing loose or baggy clothes to hide their weight loss
Binge Eating Disorder Treatment Goals
Goals are designed to help your teens therapeutic team focus on specific achievements during your childs treatment. These measurable goals are both general to the disorder and specific to the needs of your teen based upon their personal experience with the disorder. The U.S. National Library of Medicine reports that there are a number of positive goals to look for in teen binge eating disorder treatment programs.
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Getting To The Thoughts And Feelings Behind Bed
When I work with someone struggling with compulsive overeating issues, not only will I be attentive to the details they express to me about the nature of these binge episodes, but also to the thoughts and feelings that may be at the root of this difficulty with food and emotions.
Together, we explore the presenting and co-occurring psychological and psychosocial issues that may be underlying this behavior. As a clinician, I think of this compulsion to overeat, as described above, in terms of a disorder called Binge-Eating Disorder , which can be potentially life-threatening, and also to which some controversy surrounded its newly proposed diagnostic classification.
Nevertheless, understanding the emotional challenges and stressors a person is experiencing, and how they have become imprisoned by the distortions of themselves in relationship to food, stress, weight and their own bodies, is where we can begin the journey of healing for this disorder and/or compulsive behavior.
Break Free From Binge Eating
The new book, 33 Ways to Break Free from Binge Eating, with a foreword by Alan Aragon, is now available.
And you get to pay what YOU think is fair
To give you an idea of how much content is in this book, the article you just read is over 3,000 words and the book is over 22,000. As you can see there is a lot of new information in the book.
Nia Shanks33 Ways to Break Free From Binge Eating gets the first of five stars for how the author shares her own struggles with binge eating and how she ultimately broke free. She keeps the Ive been there too tone throughout the book. This not only shows that she knows from experience what she is talking about, it also creates a bond with readers and makes them feel more understood.
Another star for this book: Its practical, not theory. Nias advice is definitely personal and experiential. Its also backed by evidence, and she does cite her sources. But rather than fill pages with scientific study details, she gives you practical behavior and mindset strategies that can all be applied immediately.
A third strong point is that the book is concise and easy to read. Its just over 100 pages of the most important information. The tone is conversational, and all 33 of the article-length chapters can be finished in one or two sittings.
-Tom Venuto, author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
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Challenge Your Diet Mentality
While listening to your bodys hunger signals for information about what to eat is super helpful in making sure you get enough food,
be careful not to fall into the trap of the hunger & fullness diet, which will backfire just like every other diet on the planet.
At the end of the day, rules and restrictions around food are the real enemies when it comes to binge eating recoveryand practicing Intuitive Eating can only go so far if youre still struggling with diet-mentality around it.
Take A Look At When And Why You Binge
When we work with people with binge eating disorder, we see them living in environments that can promote overeating. For example, bingeing often happens in the evening, after a long day, when we are alone and possibly watching TV . Setting up our environment is essential to increase success in stopping a binge, but where do you start? You can start by asking yourself some important questions:
- What does it look like when I binge?
- What am I feeling before, during and after a binge?
- What triggers me to binge?
- How do I typically overeat?
- Where does this happen?
Once youve answered these questions, there are several things you can do. Lets say that TV watching is often a trigger for you. Maybe you start by changing this behavior to eat at a table, with a plate, while sitting on a chair . As you eat, be mindful about it. Use your senses while eating the food. This prevents numbing out and mindless eating . Structuring your environment in this way can promote eating meals without bingeing. Doing this repeatedly can increase your chances of success in this realm. Another beneficial practice that can help you reduce binge eating episodes is to take a look at the data before and after a binge. Start by asking yourself:
- What happened before I started bingeing?
- What was I feeling before, during and after the binge?
- Did something happen today that made me more vulnerable to my emotions?
- How did I eat this meal or snack?
- Where did I eat and what else was I doing at the time?
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