Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Breaking Up With Binge Eating is for anyone stuck in binge eating, emotional eating, or the restrict-then-binge cycle.
Hosts Georgie Fear, Christina Holland, and Maryclaire Brescia share practical, evidence-based tools from the Breaking Up With Binge Eating Coaching Program—grounded in nutritional science, behavior change psychology, and approaches like CBT and ACT—without the shame or perfectionism.
New here? Start with Episode 10: The 2 REAL Causes of Binge Eating.
Pick your Listening Path (where to start, by topic): https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here-pick-your-listening-path
There's a particular kind of eating urge that often begins with three words. "Might as well." You eat something that you hadn't planned to eat. Maybe it's a handful of chips, a cookie with your lunch, dessert at a restaurant, or simply a larger portion than you intended. The food itself might not be any real problem. You may have really enjoyed it. You may still feel physically fine. You're not overstuffed. But then the thoughts arrive on the scene and start causing trouble. Oh, I wasn't supposed to eat that. I've already gone off track. Today's ruined. I might as well keep going. And while your stomach may feel fine, your mood tanks. You start to feel upset, like a failure. And then, almost as if it's magic, you find yourself getting another bowl of ice cream. Another brownie. Refilling that glass of wine you are eating in response to the distress caused by what you previously ate. This is what I call the eating because I ate urge. When guilt, disappointment, fear, or other upsetting emotions from one eating decision trigger the urge to seek relief by eating more. When my clients tell me once I had messed up, I thought might as well and kept going. I have a standard response. I tell them, when you hear, might as well. I want you to think damage control. I really want those two phrases linked so closely in your mind too, that the first one automatically triggers the second. The moment your brain says, might as well. I want another part of your brain to answer. No damage control. Let's call this key number one to defeating this type of urge. You must not allow might as well to pass as valid reasoning in your mind. You need to reject it. Thoughts become more persuasive when they pass by unchallenged. Might as well is not a harmless observation. It's an instruction to escalate. That's why I want you to answer it immediately. Damage control does not mean punishment. It does not mean skipping your next meal, exercising until you feel redeemed, or waking up tomorrow with an even stricter plan. Damage control means allowing the eating event to remain the size it currently is. You ate the chips. The chips are over. They don't have to recruit the rest of the bag, the ice cream in the freezer, the cereal in the pantry, and everything else you have decided to eat before becoming good again tomorrow. That first decision has already happened, but the next decision is still available. I often illustrate the idea with the analogy of a surgeon operating on someone. If they nick an artery and the patient started to bleed. What do they do? Well, they clamp or cauterize or do whatever it is that they do to slow or stop the blood loss, keep the patient stable, and continue the operation to achieve its goal. They don't just start slashing away in there because, well, might as well pack everything up now. Or imagine part of a city is flooding. Workers would use sandbags and pumps to contain it. No one would just abandon the rest of the city because five buildings were damaged. But how easily we throw our hands in the air with our eating. The damage control mindset can be difficult to embody in the moment because dietary rules tend to create a sharp boundary between total success and complete failure. It's classic black or white thinking. As long as you have eaten according to your rules, you're on the acceptable side. But the instant you cross that line even slightly, you may feel as though the entire day has moved into a different category. You were on track, but now you're off track. You were being good. Now you have blown it once. The day has already been classified as a failure in your mind. The practical difference between eating one cookie and eating ten cookies can start to feel strangely small. In reality, there's obviously a difference. Your body experiences each additional serving or bite. your comfort digestion, sleep, mood and sense of trust with yourself may all be affected by each additional bite. But psychologically, the biggest penalty may have seemed to occur with the first bite, because that was the moment you broke the rule. Once you believe the moral damage is already done. Continued eating can feel almost free of consequences. That's why somebody might have a cookie and think, great, now I've failed and I didn't even get to enjoy myself properly. The mind begins trying to optimize this violation. Well, if I'm going to feel guilty anyway, I might as well eat what I really want and make it really worth it. I can't feel any more guilty psychologically. You may not expect to feel much worse after several servings than after the first one, but physically, of course, every bit counts. The eating because I ate urge is not only a logic problem, it's also a specific form of eating for pain relief. What we talked about in the previous episode, what you just ate, creates an onslaught of emotion. There may be guilt, fear, disappointment, panic, disgust, or shame. Those emotions can become so uncomfortable that your brain reaches for the same behavior it has used to soothe discomfort before. More eating. So the loop looks like this. I ate. I feel terrible about eating. I eat to escape feeling terrible. Now I feel worse. I want relief again. Eating to relieve the distress caused by eating is like using one credit card to pay off another. You may get a brief sense that you've handled the immediate problem, but you've not resolved the debt. You just moved it around and added more to the balance. The distraction of finding something else to nosh on may work for a few minutes. The taste, the chewing, the planning of the next food, and the numbing effect of continuing contemporarily. Push whatever you're feeling into the background. But the feelings haven't disappeared. They're waiting. And now they're attached to more food, more discomfort, and more consequences. This is not a loop you can just keep repeating until the distress is gone. Eventually, the only way out is to stop eating to cover the feelings caused by eating. That doesn't mean that you must suddenly feel peaceful and fine about the initial slip up or overeating incident. I'd expect you to have some degree of regret. Or darn it, that was suboptimal. Just like the surgeon in my example is probably bothered that he nicked a vessel, but he still chooses to patch things up and continue on. Damage control is an approach you need to be able to take while you are feeling disappointed. I'm never going to lie and say any of this is easy. I know it's very hard. However, we don't want to mix up difficulty and impossibility. It is completely possible to steer yourself in a healthy direction and make rational choices, even while you are feeling upset about a recent mistake. So what will happen if you make a mistake? You feel bad, but you think damage control. Well, instead of feeling worse and making your situation worse, making the call to stop eating for now starts you on the road to feeling better. Let's call this key number two to defeating eating because I ate urges. Be prepared to put the brakes on your eating and go back to normal at your next meal, even though you still feel crappy. This is the fastest way to stop making yourself feel worse and begin moving toward feeling better. I also teach people to embrace dietary imperfection and to practice it deliberately. Surgeons have expectations that every so often during a procedure, some vessel is going to get nicked. And you should expect that during your journey to form healthier habits. Sometimes you're going to slip and do unhealthy behaviors. expecting and embracing dietary imperfection is key. Number three. Lots of people think that being a gold star eater means they become so consistent that they rarely eat anything unplanned. People hope if they can follow their plan closely enough, they'll never have to experience that unstable chaos is around the corner feeling that comes after eating something you didn't plan on. But real life contains chips. Real life contains birthday cake snacks offered by your friends. Days when your appetite feels larger than you expected. Real life changes. Plans. Real life throws, holidays, travel and confronts us with days when you simply choose something because you want it. If you only know how to function when your eating feels perfect, small deviations can leave you feeling unhinged or off kilter. Tolerating dietary imperfection is a skill. It is something you can deliberately practice and I recommend for your own resilience that you do. You can include a handful of chips with your lunch and tell yourself this is part of the plan. I don't have to eat one hundred percent nutrient dense foods to be in my best health. I'm aiming for eighty to ninety percent nutritious and the remainder can be for fun. Intentionally including less nutrient dense foods is one half of practicing dietary imperfection. A planned chocolate in your packed lunch. A scoop of ice cream with your family after a day at the beach. Eating a few French fries that came with your sandwich. The other half of this skill is keeping your wits about you when the unplanned happens. Maybe you didn't plan on having cake at the party and you didn't plan on overeating. But what do you know? It happened. By definition, these practice sessions are not planned. They just pop up in your life and say hi. Pop quiz. Time to practice that dietary imperfection skill Georgie talked about. Are you ready to stay calm and continue with our day? That is the skill. You're not only practicing how to stop after a reasonable amount, you're practicing how to remain emotionally steady after you have not followed a food rule perfectly. You're learning that one unusual choice does not have to change the tone of the entire day. You're learning that you can feel slightly disappointed without panicking or overreacting. Continuing to care for yourself after an imperfect eating moment is so much more valuable than maintaining a flawless record. Everybody overeats sometimes or gets sucked into the tractor beam of some homemade baked goods. Imperfection is not what knocks people off course to their goals. Being unpracticed at imperfection does a person who has practiced imperfection can eat something unplanned and remain oriented? They may think that was more than I intended, or I don't feel especially good about that choice. But they continue with their day. They still eat dinner. They still include foods that support their energy and health. They don't need to escalate, confess, punish themselves, or make a dramatic new plan. The imperfect eating remains one imperfect eating event. So what can you do when the eating because I ate urge appears. Start by catching the phrase and answering it immediately. Might as well damage control. Then name what's actually happening. You might say, I want to eat because I feel upset about what I already ate. And because you have prepared yourself mentally to do it, you tell yourself, I can choose wisely and just stop eating for now. I'm not going to add any more food to my problems. Then make the next decision very small. Return to whatever ordinary thing came next. Were you going to do laundry? Were you about to take a work call or refill the cat food? Do that. You don't have to reorganize the entire day around this eating incident. Resist the urge to punish yourself tomorrow, or turn damage control into an excuse to exercise like a caffeinated squirrel. Damage control is simply stopping eating now. Not digging the hole deeper. No fixing or compensating back to our regularly scheduled, mostly nutritious programming. The reason I don't want you to start boot camping yourself tomorrow is that a great deal of might as well eating is fueled by a hidden bargain. I'll eat everything I want tonight. And then tomorrow I will be extremely controlled. But that promise of restriction tomorrow creates urgency and permission for today. If you believe you're not going to be allowed to eat M&Ms again, finishing all the M&Ms now can seem rational. If tomorrow will involve skipping breakfast, eating tiny portions, or removing whole categories of food, tonight becomes a last chance event. So say clearly to yourself, I'm eating normally tomorrow and you don't have to earn the right to do that. Normal eating tomorrow is part of damage control today. When tomorrow's restriction is canceled, the current food is no longer your final opportunity. You don't have to fit in every taste before midnight. If you find yourself really struggling, highly distressed, and you feel unable to carry out your everyday functions, you can still avoid hurting yourself with more food. Try asking yourself, okay, I'm feeling really upset by what I ate. What meaning am I giving this incident? Often the distress is much larger than the food. The chips may have become evidence that you can't trust yourself, and that's a big, scary thought. Or a large dessert may seem to prove that you are returning to your old behaviours again. Eek! That's a lot scarier than a piece of cake. Eating more than you planned on might trigger fear about your weight, health or future. Those fears deserve attention, but another round of eating can't answer them. You may need to tell yourself I feel afraid because I care about this. I do not have to solve fear with food. You could also say this is part of the plan. I'm learning how to eat imperfectly and continue on. This week I would like you to try and notice any moment of dietary imperfection. It doesn't have to be major. Maybe you eat a snack that you hadn't planned on, or you take unnecessary bites while cooking, or you have a dessert or whoops, you eat past comfortable fullness. When it happens, don't focus on how bad it was or how you'll adjust to make up for it. Instead, practice the next part. Say this is part of the plan and then continue eating well. Have your usual next meal. Include the foods you normally would. Don't reduce the next portion to compensate and don't decide that the day is now a free for all because it doesn't count. You're practicing how to remain oriented after something imperfect. So when your brain says, might as well, what are you going to say? I really hope you just had damage control. Please tell me you said damage control. When your brain tells you the day is ruined. You can remind it that the first decision is over, but the next one is still new. You may have to feel some discomfort for a little while. That's not failure. That's being alive and experiencing all that the world gives us. The feelings will move on, I promise, and they may soften faster than you expect once you stop adding to them. You learned a lot of things in the past, and you can learn this too. If this episode brought up something painful for you, you're in good company. These loops are powerful, but they are treatable, and they become much easier to interrupt with practice and support. For help applying these tools to your own eating patterns, you can learn more about working with me personally at Confident Eaters dot com. You'll also find a link in the show notes. Any questions you have, feel free to contact me at Georgie at gmail dot com. I'll be back next time. Until then, remember, if you say might as well, I'm going to be there whispering in your ear. Damage control. We've got this.