Did you binge last weekend or last week?
My daughter planned a surprise get away for me on the weekend to a friends cottage to just get away, have a change of scenery and attempted to relax, LOL.
There were drinks, snacks and cheese cake for dessert! It was a great 18 hour getaway where were we did indulge in food/drink we don't normally do and that me how you roll every once in a while OR is it every weekend for the WHOLE weekend?
Let's set the stage. Perhaps you start the week with the best intentions knowing that a weekend of fun was coming up. You got everything in place. You did your meal prep for the week, you planned all your workouts for the week, you got everything perfect.
But at some point your brain starts to itch. It might be as early as Monday afternoon, or as late as Friday night, but eventually the cravings began to build.
Perhaps it is simply a physical sensation. An irrational urge to eat....
Perhaps it is a craving for how food will make you feel - the sense of release and being able to zone out, not think, and not feel for a while....
Perhaps it is more visual. You start to picture foods you’d love to be able to indulge in...
Perhaps it is more of an inner dialogue:
“You know you’re going to binge eventually anyway, so you might as well do it now!”
“You’ll feel so much better if you give yourself a break, just this once.”
“You deserve it, you’ve been working really hard, life’s for living, life’s all about balance.”
“I promise this is the last time. I really mean it this time.”
“It’s not been a great day, so might as well write it off and start again tomorrow.”
“I’m just too busy today, I’ll get back on track (tomorrow, next week, after this project/spring break).”
Depending on how busy, stressed, or overwhelmed you are, and how much energy you have, you may have been fighting these feelings for a while.
But at some point you find yourself mindless hunting around for food, or mindless grazing, or perhaps it was a full blown, screw it moment - like another part of your brain just takes over control.
It all starts with the internal battle, the justifications, the arguing with yourself. Then you just say screw it giving yourself a moment of release - a quieting of your mind, even if just for a moment.
Then it’s followed by the guilt, feeling disgusted in yourself, and beating yourself up. Which in turn is followed by another round of “RIGHT! THAT’S IT! THAT’S THE LAST TIME THAT EVER HAPPENS!”
But, as the famous Einstein quote goes, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Which is why if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
You can’t keep trying to fix it on your own. We all have blind spots. You don’t know what you don’t know, so how can you expect to figure it out?
You can’t keep trying the same one or two things and then convince yourself you’ve tried, “everything!”
You can’t keep using willpower over and over again, and then convincing yourself that there’s something wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just that willpower makes urges, cravings, and binge eating WORSE not better!
The truth is that binge eating is a learned behaviour. You need to learn a NEW behaviour. That’s the answer. It’s simple, not easy.
It’s about having a system that works consistently and reliably for creating emotional and behavioural change. A system that is COMPLETE.
If you are ready for a complete solution, one that heals your relationship with food, one that teaches you its ok to have your cake and eat it to, one that shows you how to move daily and eat whole foods for better digestion, better sleep and more energy while making you stronger from the inside out then email me back to schedule a call.
