You know that moment when you’re right on the edge of binge eating? There’s so much you can do in that moment to prevent a binge. I want to jam on some of the methods that helped me most when I was overcoming my own struggle with binge eating. I also filmed a video on this topic, you can check it out here:
The first thing you can do is ask yourself what do you actually want when you binge? Often it’s not food, it’s a state change. Your mind is craving a change from one vibrational frequency to another, usually due to a negative feeling.
The key here is don’t numb the negative feeling, because when you do that, you miss the lesson in the experience and why it’s there in the first place. Binge eating will immediately change your state, but it is fleeting. Your body can only communicate to you through sensations, so if you numb them or ignore them, you’re not resolving the issue.
You don’t stop a binge through ignoring the sticky feeling, it’s by leaning into it. Feel into it. What is your body communicating to you? What do you need to pay attention to? You must be in a state of non-consumption for that data (the sensation) to come through. Feel it, understand it, and then do something about it. Maybe that’s working to heal that feeling altogether, maybe it’s just loving it, maybe it’s slowing down.
How do you want to feel? What is your reason or intention for putting that food into your mouth? Just by being present and asking these questions, you will derail binge eating. What tends to happen is we go into binge autopilot and don’t realize what we’re doing, and that’s the beginning of the cycle of self-sabotage. But if you can just take a few seconds to stop and ask yourself these questions, it can make all the difference.
The main ninja strategy I used when overcoming binge eating that helped me truly shift the narrative and get into a place of healing my emotions rather than numbing them was asking myself:
“What am I really hungry for?”
It’s never about the food. What is your body really asking of you? How can you honor it? Maybe you need to slow down, or have a difficult conversation with someone, or go out in nature. Untangle all of that, honor what your body needs, and you will build up trust in your body. This is how you re-establish connection between mind and body, head and heart.
