Lilith with Doughnuts, by Maria Raquel Cochez

Binge Eating Ideas That Work:

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.

How 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.