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Emotional Eating and Binge
Eating:
A Personal Insight
From my
own personal journey since I was a young girl struggling
with binge eating and being overweight, and as a
professional working for the last 21 years with binge eating
and compulsive eating men and women who struggle to lose
weight, stopping binge eating has taught me over and over
again that it is their emotional issues, their emotional
hungers that they keep stuffed inside of their bodies by
eating that keep them living in the binge eating
world. It is their emotional hungers that keep them
from incorporating and practicing normal healthy eating
habits that would allow them to feel physically healthier,
psychologically happier, have more energy, lose weight and
be able to move more freely in the world. Emotional
eaters who suffer from binge eating spend most of their
adult life trying to stop their binge eating by going on one
diet after another rather than addressing the binge eating
disorder directly so they can live a happy and normal life.
What I teach my clients at SolutionsWeigh Program for Binge
Eating Disorders is to do exactly that. Stop binge
eating!
Binge
Eating Ideas That Work:
How to
Stop Binge Eating Idea #1
Give a
voice to your feelings. The more you give a voice to
your feelings the less you will attempt to swallow your
feelings by binge eating.
-
Learn
healthy, nurturing, ways to ‘feed’ your emotional hungers without using
food.
-
Learn to
give a “voice” to your uncomfortable feelings such as anger, fear and
sadness instead of “swallowing” those feelings by bingeing and
overeating.
-
Learn to differentiate between your physical and emotional hungers.
How to
Stop Binge Eating Idea #2, 3, 4
Do you
know how to perform self-soothing? Most people with
binge eating disorders don’t. They didn’t learn how to
self-sooth as young children for various reasons.
Instead, they have learned to use binge eating of food as a
way to self-soothe. But, it doesn’t work. If you want
to stop binge eating, learn these self-soothing techniques
as an adult. ( taught in our 6 week course Binge on Words©)
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What
are your favorite foods when you are binge eating?
Do they have any early family memories attached to them?
Think about what you are trying to get from that
emotional connection now.
-
Don’t stop at “I don’t know”. Most people are
stuck in what I call the “I don’t know syndrome”:
they don’t let themselves think beyond this point.
There is valuable information that you need in order to
stop binge eating. Ask yourself the following
question: “If I did know how I feel, what would I
be feeling”? Some thoughts will come up.
Even if you think you are making these up, it comes from
you, so it’s a good starting point.
-
Write down how much time in a 24-hour period you label
yourself in a demeaning or derogatory way. Many
people with binge eating problems refuse to nurture and
respect their bodies and themselves until they lose the
weight. However, beating yourself up and demeaning
yourself is not the way to build up your self-esteem and
confidence. What feels better, praise or
criticism? If you think the way to lose weight is
by criticizing yourself, look at who in your life taught
you that. If you want something from other people,
you need to start giving it to yourself first.
How to
Stop Binge Eating Idea #5
Binge
eating disorder and emotional eating is not about being out
of control with food. It’s about needing to control
uncomfortable emotions that you want to avoid. If you
change your focus and learn the skills to give voice to your
emotions and your feelings, rather than try to control your
food, you will be amazed at how much easier it is to set
limits with food.
Do you
always feel hungry? Put down the food. Your inner
child is starving!!!!!
Take a moment to listen to yourself. That’s not hunger
you are experiencing, its your inner child who wants you to
listen to her. You are not paying attention to her.
She doesn’t want you to shove food down her throat.
What she wants and needs is for you to binge on words.
Breathtaking, juicy, big fat dripping, wonderful, salivating,
well done, binge words to feed your inner child of love.
Binge on words that will fill up that empty pit of hunger in
her stomach with warm fuzzy feelings that you have been
searching for your entire life. Binge eating people so
often spend most of their lives hating the way their bodies
look and refusing to be kind to themselves because of the
hatred they have for their bodies. That self-loathing
is not just about your body, its also a statement about
yourself.
If you had
a small child standing in front of you looking up at you
with an innocent face, would you tell her how much you hate
her because she is fat? Never, so why is it OK to tell
yourself that? It's not. So think of your inner
child (give her an age) standing in front of you, starving
for your (parents) attention. You can ignore her,
verbally abuse her, or soothe her. Think about what
your parents did to you. Today, you have a choice,
don’t continue to verbally abuse yourself with harsh words
and criticisms that only make you the cycle of self-hatred
continue.
You can
heal those wounds, Think of it this way: Adopt your
inner child, she’s STARVING, she’s been neglected,
criticized and emotionally abandoned. If you saw a
five year old on the street, your heart would go out to her,
well that’s what your inner child feels, too. It's not
hunger pains you feel, it’s the child who never heard those
words of love from the parents who raised you.
 At
a recent retreat I gave, when the women talked about how
much they hated themselves and what they looked like, and
told me that they refused to be kind and say nice things to
themselves until they lost weight, I gave them this picture
of their inner child. I told them to sit quietly and
think of themselves at that young age, and think of who said
those mean and cruel words to them and how it felt.
Look at this innocent child who did nothing wrong. The
tears came pouring down their faces as they realized that
little girl was still inside of them, and how hurtful those
words still feel today. If you want to stop binge
eating food, start bingeing on words. Words of love
and praise go a long way in helping build self-esteem.
Even if you think yours is broken, it can be repaired. Not
by continuing the hatred, but by nurturing the wounds.
Binge on your kind words, they are non caloric and they
don’t cost anything!
Make a copy
of this picture, and start feeding yourself with the
following words:
You are
special
I will always love you
I will protect you
You are wonderful
I love you because you are my child
You are the best
You are soooooo beautiful
How to
Stop Binge Eating Idea #6
Are you
an all or nothing person? Are you either on a diet or
off a diet? Are you either binge eating or not binge
eating? Changing your binge eating habits is also
about changing your life. Ask yourself if you are
ready to make changes in your life. Permanent changes.
Taking care of yourself is not a short term project that
stops when you get busy with another project. Are you
willing to devote the rest of your life to your personal
self-care no matter what else interferes? If your
answer is “I am not sure”, than you might seek out some
counseling to explore the other issues that are keeping you
from taking care of yourself.
How to
Stop Binge Eating Idea #7
Make
your binge eating failures into motivation. Successful
people are motivated. They have plans that are
manageable, which include failing, which is a pre-requisite
to learning to change. Yet, most people with binge eating
disorders stop trying because they see failing as a
weakness. Failing is the only measure we have that
what we are doing needs to be changed. If one doesn’t
fail, one is not trying hard enough. Read a few books
about successful people, and notice that failing is a part
of what made each one successful.
Hot to Stop Binge Eating
Idea #8
Search for the 'secret'
ingredient in your favorite food.
Do you have
special foods you eat when you are binge eating? Make
a list of these foods.
For
example, do you need to go out and buy a certain brand of
ice cream if you want to binge? Do you eat a
particular brand of cookies or chips? Do you make sure
you have a certain snack in your house at all times?
For some people, it doesn’t matter, they just want ice
cream, or chips, or sweets, but for others, it’s a very
particular brand of food. Whether it’s the general
category or particular brand, there is a secret emotion that
you need are looking for. It usually goes back to a
something you got in your past where you also made the
connection to a certain food. Try the following
exercise to help you connect to your “secret ingredients”:
a.
What foods
do you want when you think of the following feelings
Angry__________________________________
Sad____________________________________
Lonely__________________________________
Frustrated_______________________________
Depressed_______________________________
Guilty___________________________________
Disappointed______________________________
Happy___________________________________
Anxious__________________________________
Powerless________________________________
b.
Next, think back to when you were young and try and
connect each food with a family occasion or particular
memory you have about your family or family members.
For example, Jane always
wanted chocolate jelly rings when she was upset. They
had to be a special brand that she could only buy at two
specialty stores. So she would stock up on them for
those ‘just in case times’. When she thought about the
jelly rings, she had a memory of her grandmother sitting on
the couch calling her to sit next to her, feeding her the
jelly rings, and stroking her hair. It was always a
special time for Jane, because her mother was always too
busy to sit with her. So the emotional reason why Jane
needed to have jelly rings not because the jelly rings were
so special, but because she connected it to the closeness
and soothing she felt from her grandmother every time she
sat next to her and ate the jelly ring while she stroked her
hair.
Today, after doing the
above exercise, Jane has learned to stroke her own hair,
think of her grandmother and can get in touch with those
same wonderful warm fuzzy feelings and bring those special
memories back without eating the jelly rings.
These are just a few of
the many ideas we discuss in my special program Binge on
Words. I invite you to join us for our six week
program, or on a telephone conference call, or for a
telephone phone consultation. Stop binge eating!
I have devoted my career to helping binge eating and
emotional eating men and women. Please contact me
today or register for our
Binge on Words
program.
Sincerely,
Virginia E. Porcello, Ph.D., LMHC, CEDS, Director
Phone: 516-877-0200
Fax: 516-877-0211 |
