If you want to turn your binge eating habit into a healthy eating habit, the first thing you have to do is BELIEVE you can do it. This is the first and most important step in binge eating recovery.
Put it this way: if you believe you can eat healthily without overeating, it means you’ll be able to eat healthily sooner rather than later. If you don’t believe it – you won’t be able to eat healthily, no matter what kind of therapy you undergo, unless you start to believe that the future is bleak for you.
You may be wondering, “How can I believe in my ability to eat healthy when I’m always overcome by this unbearable urge to binge eat?”
We understand that the urge to eat is strong, but it is still possible to overcome it. Lots of people have and you can too if you really want to.
You see, drives are really just the thoughts and feelings. So if you are determined to stop them, you can do so by making some changes in your daily routine. Then those binging thoughts will weaken as you keep practicing the changes.
Here are some key points to help you make changes:
1. Start imagining yourself slim (or have a slim mental image of yourself)
2. Draw a schematic picture of yourself on a piece of paper where you are slim and happy.
3. Set aside 30 minutes a day to sit still, close your eyes, and envision a lean, healthy you. Associate happy feelings with this picture of yourself.
4. If you have a particular time when you binge eat (eg, some people binge eat after work or after school), try to eat at that particular time, or at a time close to your normal binge eating time meditate
5. Never eat alone. Invite a friend or relative to have dinner with you. Tell them to stop you when they see you losing control.
6. When you eat, look at yourself from a different angle and try to observe yourself from a third-person perspective. Mentally make comments to yourself as if you were sitting in another chair watching yourself eat. For example: “She/he is now eating her/his Caesar salad tenderly and calmly because she/he is a lady/sir. S/he chews slowly because s/he enjoys the taste of the food and doesn’t want to rush. She/he is talking to her/his friend about what happened during her day.” Slow down, think before you act.
7. Learn to observe your own behavior and make mental comments on your own behavior regularly throughout the day. From the moment you wake up, mentally comment on your behavior as if you were observing yourself from afar.
8. Don’t keep too many snacks in the fridge. Put more fruits and veggies in the fridge just in case you get a binge urge, when there’s no junk food then you have more control.
9. Regular exercise changes your feelings from negative to more positive. This is because after regular physical activity, you release the feel-good chemical endorphin in your brain — this will (gradually) reduce your urge to binge.
10. Always remind yourself that you don’t need to eat that much to stay healthy. The truth is that the only way to be truly happy and healthy is to moderate your food consumption. You know this is a true statement because you know how bad you feel after being bitten.
Now I’ve saved the best for last.
If you think all of this is going to be too difficult for you right now, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way you could do all of this easily and quickly? What if someone else’s information could be built into your subconscious simply by listening to a hypnotic voice and putting you in a meditative state? What if you could also do this while you sleep?
The good news is that you can do this by using specific mindfulness training for binge eating/overeating. Mindfulness training allows you to easily and effectively make the changes you want by programming your subconscious to change and help you break the binge cycle.
Thanks to Irina Webster
