BANISH THE BINGE By Anthony Noud
Working full time as a nutrition and physique coach, I have pretty much heard all the excuses about not being able to stick to your diet, make your training sessions or just poor excuses for not reaching your body and lifestyle goals. With regards to food specifically, one of the most common, and most difficult to work through would have to be….. “I simply just LOVE food too much” or “I don’t think you understand Anthony, I have a MASSIVE sweet tooth” or the best yet, “It’s my comfort food!” Today I would like to try and tackle the hot topic of comfort food, being a “foodie”, binge eating or emotional eating….call it what you like, but the best way I can describe it is being in a the position where no matter how bad you want to stick to your diet and exercise, you just cant seem to stay on track for long enough (or regularly enough) to get you to your goal.
First and foremost, I am NOT a psychologist nor do I claim to be any kind of emotional transformational guru. I have, however, been an “emotional eater”, binge eater, and still am a self confessed “foodie”. Hopefully some of you can relate to my experience, and the experience I have gained from working with hundreds of others and pick up on some of the lessons I learnt along the way.
The number of times I have sat down in a consultation with people who have broken down in tears and poured out truly heartfelt desires to me about how important their weightloss goals are tells me that its not that they don’t want it. In fact, its quite the opposite…most people REALLY want it! To the point that its something they obsess about DAILY! Constantly wishing to be slimmer, looking for the latest diet, diet food, diet pill, super food, low calorie snack or slimming clothing, all the while constantly judging the next person on the street and comparing their own bodies….I have NO DOUBT whatsoever that you really want that body that you will one day feel comfortable in.
Many of you may be doing more than just WISHING/HOPING for that day to come and actually be practicing good health, exercising regularly and also watching what you eat…..The only problem is that no matter how motivated you are on Monday morning, come Friday (or often sooner) you just cant seem to help yourself to that food you KNOW you shouldn’t be eating….
Whether it’s a work function, a social event, pressure from friends/partners/co-workers or simply because its Friday and you feel like you deserve a nice meal and a drink….you succumb to your minds will and then fast forward to Sunday night and you have been eating crap all weekend, feel disgusted with yourself and are now swearing black and blue that tomorrow its all gonna stop! It’s kind of strange because in many other areas of your life you have amazing will power, but when it comes to your diet you just cant seem to stay on track!!
The best way I have heard this explained was the way it was explained to me:
When you were a child and you started crying, what did your mother give you? Her breast, right? And then you got a little bit older and you cried you were given a bottle, and then a dummy, then in went your thumb until you were old enough to throw a tantrum in the shopping centre until ice cream was the prescribed remedy….Most of us can relate to this, or at least have seen it…so what was all of this teaching us? That from the earliest age we are taught that when I have a feeling I get given FOOD!
Have you ever noticed a baby sipping on a bottle of milk?? Picture it... it goes glug, glug glug, glug and their eyes start to roll back in their head and they relax and its like “ahhhhhh, all better now” – This is us being taught from BIRTH that food fixes our feelings!
Now this may not resonate for all of you, and that’s ok! But what about this scenario…
Then we start growing up and it’s the same old story, birthday party you get a cake, get a good report card and the family goes to sizzlers, win a game of weekend sport- get macca’s on the way home, lose a game of weekend sport- get macca’s on the way home… Now we might not be crying about it anymore but its still the same action…..good times, bad times, anytime…..we are still putting the dummy (ie; food) in our mouths. Basically, from an extremely young age we are taught not to feel our feelings, but instead lets make everything better with food.
“But that’s not my problem!” I hear you say… “I only eat when I am bored! Or stressed at work” or “I am good all week and then lose it all on the weekends!” I am here to suggest something crazy… NONE of us in this country are overeating because we are hungry….and NOBODY ANYWHERE is fat because they are hungry.
What I am suggesting is that many (I would say more than 95% of people I know) are emotionally eating in some way. Emotional eating is a bit of a taboo subject and conjures images of someone locking themselves in the bathroom with a whole chocolate slice and crying while the slice is quickly digested… and yes, that would be considered emotional eating, but what I am getting at is a little more subtle, and brings us back to the dummy in the mouth thing I was on about…
In my personal case it was weird because I could be extremely strict and stick to my diet 100% all week long with no fuss, but come Friday night all bets were off, I’m talking proper bingeing on anything and everything from sweet, fried, baked, savoury, etc until I felt sick and literally couldn’t move. This would leave me feeling guilty, gross and with a strange sense of being powerless over my behavior… I knew well that I was gonna feel disgusting and regret it the next day but its kind of like I couldn’t help myself…The dummy had stopped working and I was stuck in a cycle of doing this regularly with my frustration growing rapidly. Every time that feeling came up I couldn’t help it, I just had to eat.
Now, after quite a while of this continuing I realized that no matter how bad I wanted my goals, or how focused/disciplined I could be or how strong my intentions were, something had to give…
Why is it that we binge eat KNOWING full well that we will regret it afterwards yet still cant stop? It’s because we are ignoring our bodies needs (feelings) and instead trying to fix them with food! And put simply, the dummy isn’t working anymore!
I started actually paying attention to my body. Now this might sound weird, but instead of listnening to my head when it said “You should totally go out for dinner, you deserve it, its been a big week….go on! You deserve it, plus it will be amazing!” I actually STOPPED listening to this and paid attention to my BODY instead.
What I found was quite remarkable….When I stopped and paid attention to my body I realized that what was going on wasn’t hunger at all, in fact it had nothing to do with food. I was simply FEELING FEELINGS!
Whether it be stress, anxiety, fear, anger or in my case- fatigue after a big week at work, I started to notice that this impulsive desire to eat just so happened to come up whenever I felt uncomfortable feelings. What I perceived as hunger (which is what I had been trained to do) was actually my body telling me that I wasn’t giving it something it needed- in this case, REST!
What I needed to do rather than eat was to begin to support my body to feel these feelings…Now to some of you this might be common sense, but for me who was given a dummy from a young age this was all new to me.
So what I am suggesting here is pretty crazy, and only if you’re interested might you try it….but instead of listening to that voice in your head that says QUICK, get some food into you NOW!, simply FEEL THE FEELING in your body instead! This is supporting your body and teaching it that it doesn’t need food to fix anything because you are there to support it! (which is all it wanted in the first place).
In order to be able to support your body you will need to work out the stressors, triggers or feelings that are triggering you…you may not even know what these are, but my bet is that when they come up the best solution your mind comes up with is to mindlessly go to the fridge, shop, drawer or wherever else you get your comfort food fix.
A good way to do this is to keep a food and feelings diary, noting what you eat as you eat it, and also noting how you feel at that time. Now over a few days this might not make much sense, but keep at it for a month or so and I guarantee you will begin to see the bigger picture- noticing patterns and trends.
A good example is a PURE and LEAN coaching client I worked with recently. Although she was losing weight her results could have been better because in her own words she “couldn’t stop eating sugar, its out of control!”. After chatting with her she was certain that it was just because she had a sweet tooth, lack of will power and ate when she was bored. I got her to keep a food and feelings diary and within about 10 days of her paying close attention to her body she realised some really interesting things: 9 times out of 10 when she would eat something that wasn’t on her plan it was either because she was feeling anxious about her work- constantly stressing that enough wasn’t being done, targets weren’t met and the associated stress would lead her to say “stuff it, give me some chocolate” OR the other time she would eat was when her partner wasn’t home or wouldn’t return a phone call/text message.
**note** these are the surface level signs, once she had looked more deeply into these by using the 5 why’s (or similar) (click here for info) She discovered that there were deeper underlying issues at hand, but that’s something we can cover in a future post.
So once you identify WHEN (and hopefully why) you are likely to binge eat, you can then begin to support your body during these times. This may be different for everyone and will depend on the reason/feeling you are experiencing but a good place to start is by acknowledging that you are actually having a feeling eg; “I know your stressed, you have had a big day, you don’t actually want to eat” and then asking your body what you actually feel like…. Some of the more common things that come up will be things like:
- Have a rest/power nap
- Take a leisurely walk
- Sleep in!
- Connect with a friend
- Have a massage/facial/haircut
- Exercise
- Meditate
- Read a book/watch a movie/listen to music
- Simply have some quiet time
It doesn’t matter what you do! As long as it is something that you enjoy and you are supporting (not forcing, or shaming) your body into doing! –This last bit is important! Perhaps write a list of 5 things that you can do, along with supportive affirmations you can use when you feel your triggers coming on.
Remember, most of us learnt the habit of eating when we feel something from way before we can even remember so don’t expect it to change overnight.
In my case, it took me around 12months to get a real handle on my emotional eating and apply these ideas with real success. In my personal experience, it was this particular work which has made the biggest difference to my life surrounding my food, diet and satisfaction with my body. I no longer binge eat, or eat uncontrollably… that doesn’t mean that I don’t ever eat a bad thing (I certainly do!) But I no longer regret or feel guilty for anything I eat and this has brought an amazing sense of freedom to my life.
Since sharing and applying these principles with clients willing to learn I am now 100% certain that working WITH your body towards your goals, and feeling your feelings is the only way I have seen people stop binge/emotional eating for good… forcing, shaming and ignoring your bodies needs is futile and only makes the problem worse.
Supporting your body makes it possible to eat clean and LITERALLY LOVVEE IT! With practice this is the END of emotional eating and the beginning of living life totally free of all that food/body related stress….. where you eat right for your body because it is perfectly in line with your goals, brings you great joy and almost effortlessly, BRINGS YOU YOUR RESULTS!
If you would like any further information on this topic, have feedback or are interested in the nutrition coaching services we offer at PURE and LEAN you can contact me directly on anthony@pureandlean.com.au I would love to hear from you!
