People can and do recover from binge and emotional eating. But that doesn’t mean that they will never overeat again! Consider these ideas:
When you ask if binge/emotional eaters will always have to be careful, that question implies that you have to “control” something about your eating. Usually, being “careful” means making sure you don’t eat certain foods or don’t eat “too much” of something. Instead, think about being mindful as you pay attention to your physical cues for hunger and satisfaction. This mindfulness is important for everyone – even “normal” eaters must be aware of when, what and how much they eat based on their hunger signals. And, even normal eaters overeater occasionally.
When you are in the midst of binge/emotional eating, you are eating for all [private_membership circle]kind of reasons that have nothing to do with physical hunger. As you embark on a non-diet approach to ending overeating, you become aware of your disconnection between physical hunger and reaching for food; initially you will still find yourself overeating despite this awareness.
As you practice attuned/intuitive eating, you will develop your competence at eating when hungry, eating what you are hungry for and stopping when full. You will also develop ways to postpone eating for emotional reasons. This phase of your journey is where the bulk of your work to end overeating occurs, and it can take months or years to really build this competence. This intense focus on your hunger – making sure to get exactly what you crave – can even make you feel that you are as “obsessed” with food as you were when you were in dieting! However, always remember that this heightened attention to your hunger cues is in the service of ending overeating. As you practice these skills, they will become integrated to the point of feeling natural to you. Or, as one client described her process of working her way out of overeating, “It’s organic.”
Even as you integrate attuned/intuitive eating, that doesn’t mean you will never have to think about eating again. You’ll feel in charge of your eating, but everyone has to tune in to hunger signals and to take the time needed to go to the grocery store and prepare meals.
We often tell our clients that even as they cure their binge/emotional eating, it remains a vulnerability for them. In other words, in times of stress or emotional turmoil, there is a chance that you will turn to food again for soothing. However, rather than viewing this as problematic, think of your reach for food as a cue that something is bothering you, and use it to figure out what is really going on. All of the work you have done to become an attuned eater will help you to gently move away from overeating and to manage the feelings that are triggering this reach for food.
Lesson # 55 in The Diet Survivor’s Handbook reads: Reaching for food when you’re not hungry can become an opportunity to learn something about yourself. Welcome these moments!
In this lesson, we describe how two diet survivors became curious when they unexpectedly found themselves overeating, and how they used these experiences to uncover the real issue that was bothering them, allowing them to find constructive solutions. You can do that to! Shifting from the notion that you always have to be careful to the belief that you will eat intuitively most of the time – and that you will stay mindful of what is happening when you don’t – should help to empower you!
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Eat well! Live well! Be well! Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel, are co-authors of The Diet Survivor’s Handbook, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet www.dietsurvivors.com Chicago Center for Overcoming Overeating: 847.267.1200 [/private_membership circle]
