Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Binge eating and emotional eating keep millions of people from living their best lives. If you're one of them, this podcast is for you. Hosts Georgie Fear, Christina Holland, and Maryclaire Brescia share insights and key lessons from their wildly successful Breaking Up With Binge Eating Coaching Program. Their methods integrate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, nutritional science and change psychology -- but what you'll notice is that it works and feels good. Step off the merry go round of dieting and binge eating and into a healthier, happier body and mind.
This is the Breaking Up with Binge Eating
Podcast where every listen moves you one
step closer to Complete Food Freedom,
hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and
my team at Confident Eaters.
The French Revolution, the Boston Tea
Party, and other historical examples
wouldn't have occurred if everybody
felt relatively well taken care of.
If you want to incite a rebellion, you
have to make people feel really unhappy.
First, what does this have
to do with binge eating?
Well, I think it has a lot
to do with binge eating.
I'm Georgie Fear.
Welcome to another episode of the
Breaking Up With Binge Eating Podcast.
Many people who binge eat use words
when they're describing it like Rebel
backswing or Boomerang to describe the
nature of how their binge eating starts.
They recognize that binges don't occur
in isolation or come out of the blue.
They're more like rebounds, the ricochet
of a basketball off of a backboard.
They're unintended consequences of some
preceding event or circumstance that left
them really unhappy or uncomfortable.
One of my jobs as a coach is to
help my clients untangle what those
upstream causative factors are.
If we can lessen those, stopping binge
eating then becomes much, much easier.
I want to help you understand some of
the psychological chain reactions that
are involved in disordered eating.
With better understanding, we
are poised to take back control.
A few episodes ago, I covered some
tactics for managing rebellious feelings.
I won't repeat them in this
episode, but the techniques included
ways to lessen feelings of being
coerced, forced, or trapped.
As you can imagine, those feelings make
people naturally want to lash out and
exert their autonomy, and when that
takes the form of eating, it often
appears as a binge or other eating issue.
This episode will be about a
related but different topic.
Instead of talking about resistance
and rebellion, I wanna talk today
about how binge eating arises at the
intersection of restraint and entitlement.
Let me tell you about Marta.
Marta is a married mom and her
four kids are involved in lots
of activities, volleyball,
soccer, art lessons, and piano.
She wants to encourage them to pursue
their dreams, even as varied as they are,
but she's also getting really tired of
trying to run this race along with them.
While the kids are at school, Marta
operates a small business out of her home.
She also does all the chores and laundry.
And when the kids get off the school
bus, she has got to spring into action
driving them where they need to go.
Not to mention finding lost cleats,
trying to pick up groceries or put
together a decent meal when she has
a gap and get that meal on the table.
She says If I get four or five butts in
chairs for dinner, I call that a win.
For the record, there are
six butts in Marta's house.
She herself almost never manages
to sit down to eat with the family.
She declares that she loves her life,
including the busyness of it all.
Her kids and husband bring her loads
of joy and she's so proud of them.
But her eating has been a holdout
that she doesn't feel proud of,
and she hasn't for a long time.
While one kid is at a piano
practice, she might grab
groceries before picking them up.
She describes to me how she would commonly
pick up a rotisserie chicken, garlic
bread, and bagged salad for the family.
But she'll grab a box of
chocolate chip cookies too.
She tells herself, well,
this is everyone's dessert.
At the checkout, it looks like
I'm buying a complete meal, but
she knows those cookies are never
going to make it into her home.
She eats them all before she
even picks up her daughter
from the piano teacher's house.
I asked Marta what emotions she
feels while she's out running
errands and picking up the groceries.
She admitted that often during
this sequence of events, she
feels angry or irritated.
Thoughts like, oh my God, this
never ends cross her mind.
Or she fantasizes about some future day
when the kids are out of the house and she
gets to sit on the couch for an evening.
But then she feels guilty for that
fantasy, like that's not something
a good mom would be thinking about.
I asked Marta what she felt she needed
to stop these impulsive cookie binges.
She said, I'm not sure.
Maybe I need to get help to
become less selfish or greedy.
This gave me some really helpful insight
into her perception of what's going on.
She sees her eating the whole
box of cookies as something
she does out of selfishness.
I see her eating this whole box of
cookies as an aftershock of practicing.
Too much selflessness, not selfishness.
During the usual daylight hours.
Marta is constantly trying to be
more productive, get more done, and
be of service to everybody else.
Her attention is so outwardly focused
on where in the house needs cleaning,
what her husband and kids want cooked
or laundered or purchased, what
client expectation she wants to meet.
She doesn't even sense being hungry.
She might eat some leftovers for lunch
or might not eat anything at all.
She says she secretly likes it when she
makes it the whole day without eating
because then she has saved calories
sometimes she says, I'm so out of touch.
I can realize all of a sudden
that I need to pee so badly that
my bladder is actually in pain.
With her physical needs placed so far
back on the shelf, I'm sure her mental
state and her energy level and her
other wants aren't ever on her mind.
Skipping meals, eating only scraps or
leftovers, making sure everyone else
is well fed, but never sitting down.
These are hallmarks of someone trying
to get by without needing anything.
The reaction to this often feels
like a wave of entitlement, a
strong burst of where's mine?
Sometimes that can be, I deserve this
bottle of wine, or raiding the kid's snack
pantry after everybody else is in bed, and
you can finally have a moment to yourself.
One way that we can recognize this
ping pong of reactionary entitlement
is by the irrationally strong
attachment and possessiveness.
That can be part of the problem.
For example, if somebody tries to get
in the way of having that bottle of
wine or they eat your ice cream bar that
you plan to enjoy, heaven, help them.
It may be the last thing they ever do.
You may be familiar with having a
strong attachment to particular foods
or eating routines, even the ones
you identify as binges, that doesn't
make you strange or weird or crazy.
We can have strong emotional attachments
to the very same behaviors that we
detest and desperately want to stop.
I see this all the time.
Sometimes it's tricky for people to
verbalize, but the idea of not ever
binging again can sound just as terrifying
as doing it for the rest of their lives.
Marta said to me, I don't wanna keep
eating boxes of cookies, but I feel
sad at the thought of not doing it.
I even feel sad if I consider,
I just eat some of the cookies.
Like that box of cookies or if it's
a carton of ice cream or whatever.
That's my thing.
It's the only thing
without it, I don't know.
She just trailed off.
It feels intolerable somehow.
Even wrong to restrain herself in the
one last corner of her life that hasn't
already been soaked in restraint.
When we've paired away so many sources
of fun, freedom, or pleasure in our
lives, that eating a box of cookies
alone in our car feels like something
we depend on and cannot do without.
The solution is not
taking away the cookies.
More restraint is the last thing.
Marta needs binge eating, as I said
before, and as Marta highlights is always
part of a cause and effect relationship.
Rather than seeing binges as a problem,
we can see binge eating behaviors in a new
light when we consider them as a solution.
In her case.
The problem is actually the continued
use of restraint during the day.
MARTA is clearly using restraint to
avoid or minimize daytime eating.
This is common and it's part
of why dieting increases the
risk for future binge eating.
Restricting food definitely sets the
stage for an insatiable appetite as well.
Mart is an example of how
restraint doesn't necessarily
have to be just about food.
She's also using restraint when she
wants to rest, but keeps on vacuuming,
wiping counters, and folding towels.
She's even using restraint
to try and curtail her.
Daydreaming about future evenings
when she might be free from
the nonstop parenting duties.
Purchasing and eating her bench
foods is a compensation to try and
correct for Marta's excess restraint.
So to help her, I outlined a plan
to gently ease up on the myriad
ways she's restricting herself.
That includes allowing herself to sit
or lay down for a while when she's
tired, making herself something to
eat for lunch, and allowing her mind
to daydream whatever it wants to.
There's nothing wrong with looking
forward to the eventual end of
any difficult chapter in life.
In fact, it can help us handle the
bumps and bruises of the current
phase with a bit more resilience.
Lastly, I included a challenge
to do something just for herself
for an hour long stretch of time.
Marta admitted she didn't know
what she would do, which is
normal and to be expected when a
person has trained themselves to
only focus on what others want.
So our next conversation will revolve
around figuring out what she wants
to do if she has some time to flex.
She hasn't really considered what she
wants to do to say, to eat, to watch,
but I know exploring these topics is
going to start Marta down the road
to not feeling like she needs that
binge eating behavior any longer.
Before I wrap up this episode, I want to
clarify that not all restraint is bad.
Being able to resist impulses
is an essential skill.
If we tried to live with zero restraint,
we would hit a lot of roadblocks in life.
We would not be able to reach goals.
We'd have terrible manners, and we'd
lack basic social functioning, and the
modern environment would easily lead
all of us to overeat and overspend.
A healthy level of restraint allows us
to acknowledge what we want and what
other people want, and act in a balanced
way so that we don't end up being
entirely selfish or too self-sacrificial.
In the next episode of breaking up with
binge eating, we'll talk more specifically
about how food interacts with restraint.
Many times the word restriction is
used as a catchall word for food
restraint with the underlying message
that you better not restrict ever or
else you are giving into your disorder.
But I have a lot to say on that
topic, including why having a
history of disordered eating does
not exclude you from ever being able
to lose weight in a healthy way.
We can develop a healthy level
of control over all of our food
decisions, including eating ones.
I'll see you then friends.
Thanks for tuning in.