The holiday season was always just one giant anxiety attack in my binge-eating days. My experiences have shown me that holiday parties, office parties, and gatherings of friends were all accompanied by abundant food, drinks, and desserts. This (very first-world) problem led to a significant personal problem for me. At this time I was still quite controlling about what I ate and how much I exercised, so these holiday parties, and especially the actual holidays themselves, threatened the tight grip of control that I had on my eating.
I want to embarrass myself and share a story from Christmas 2015. My family knew what a lunatic I was at this point, and some of them would playfully make fun of the food scale that I PACKED IN MY SUITCASE when I came home for the weekend. Still to this day my brother rips on me for asking restaurant waiters how many ounces the salmon was. I had to track it in MyFitnessPal, duh. So, back to Christmas.
My aunt was way nicer about my … preferences. These preferences included not eating anything with any oil, butter, or sauce I couldn’t identify every ingredient in or anything that added calories to my meal. It was all too risky. I needed to know where every calorie was coming from. I needed to track, weigh, and measure. I needed to control. So my aunt, being the hostess she is and wanting everyone to feel like they could enjoy the food they most wanted at our Christmas meal, was sure to steam me some shrimp so I could eat that day. So that’s what I had for Christmas dinner – not the meats, veggies, and potatoes cooked to perfection that were okay foods to eat – just some steamed shrimp. I skipped dessert and probably prided myself on my self-control.
Later that night, when I got home, I tore into the leftovers, especially the cookies and pies. I consumed thousands of calories in one sitting, at midnight, on Christmas, by myself.
Here are all the things I did that led to this episode of binge eating and I hope that you will take this information and apply it to your own life so you don’t end up stuffed with sugar and regret on your next holiday. Once I list all the dysfunctional behaviors and twisted thoughts that led me here, I’ll share some things you can do to help bring in more balance this year.
Here’s what I did that year, and what I encourage you NOT to do if you want to skip the binge-induced shame spiral this holiday…
I overexercised almost daily, making my body tired, malnourished, and craving calories
I counted, weighed and tracked every morsel that went into my body, creating a lot of anxiety around food and a lack of trust in myself
I was disconnected from my body and relied on an app to tell me when or how much I was allowed to eat
I felt threatened by food rather than grateful for the nourishment
I “saved” up calories to be able to eat more food at dinner, just in case I wanted to (this meant I likely had only eaten egg whites and broccoli that day)
I got into a “Fuck it” mentality and rationalized why it was okay to binge
I didn’t manage the stress and anxiety that came with the holiday season, or just the holiday stress in general
I focused more on staying in shape than on the people around me and making meaningful connections and memories
So, friends, here is my list of what you can do to move through your holidays a little more peacefully:
Don’t Show Up Starving I don’t mean eat your own food so you don’t have to eat any once you get there. Eating a normal breakfast or lunch like any other day will help you eat mindfully once you arrive. You’re setting yourself up to overeat at dinner if you don’t nourish your body earlier in the day.
Focus on Present Moment Choices Oftentimes we will either “save up” our calories for a heavier meal later in the day or we will “make up for” what we ate at a holiday meal in the days that follow. This sets us up to overeat or get into a binge/restrict cycle.
Stay Connected to Your Body If you want to practice eating more intuitively and make those present moment food choices, you must learn that your body is your guide. Stop making choices about what to eat based on your thoughts and what you think you should or shouldn’t eat and start paying more attention to your body’s cues and preferences.
Avoid the Extremes In order to avoid the F-it mentality, I encourage you to remember that the more you take on this “on the wagon (January) /off the wagon (December)” approach, the more you perpetuate this cycle. Phases of off the wagon are always followed by on the wagon and vice versa. Another way to say this is that restriction is always followed by bingeing and control is always followed by a loss of control.
Eat the Foods That Sing to You If and when the holiday season presents opportunities to strengthen connections with people you love and create new joyful memories, please, I beg you, do not let food and weight anxiety get in the way of you being present and enjoying your life. At your next holiday take a few slow deep breaths before you select the foods you most want to eat. What sings to you? Eat without guilt, but with mindfulness. This isn’t an excuse for a free-for-all, but full permission to eat the foods that satisfy you. If you’re eating slowly, putting your utensils down in between bites, and tasting and experiencing the food, you don’t have to worry about bingeing. Eat, pay attention, and respect when your body tells you it’s had enough.
Increase your self-care Holidays can be stressful! Don’t get caught in the chaos of holiday shopping, eating, drinking, and increased family interaction without making time for rest, repair, and relaxation. See your therapist, practice stress reduction, and make time for solitude or hobbies/interests that bring you into a flow state. Without this stress management, we will likely resort to emotional eating.
Sustainability & Being Kind to Self Instead of diving headfirst into a juice cleanse come January, I encourage you to continue to practice self-attunement. What types of exercise don’t make you want to skip them? What do you enjoy? What feels good to your body? Which foods are supportive? What kind of rhythm can you find in your body? Try to resist the urge to swing to the extremes. If you find yourself in an extreme during the holiday season, forgive yourself and move on. What’s sustainable now? What can we do differently starting right this moment to avoid the extremes? How can I be kind to myself, let go of the shame of imperfect choices and behaviors, and move in a sustainable way with food and exercise? If you ignored every one of these rules and you’ve already “blown it,” please be easy on yourself. Today is a new and precious day.
Peace with food is possible. Enjoying a holiday is possible. Being more compassionate to and accepting of your body is possible. Let this holiday season be one where you do things a little differently. Be a bit more present, a bit more kind to yourself, and a bit more balanced. What a beautiful gift to be able to spend time with others, connect, and celebrate together. Focus on that and how you want to show up in these settings rather than the amount of calories in the mashed potatoes.
The 11th Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge & Emotional Eating is comparing yourself to others.
We made it babe! This is the last post of this series. If you’ve stuck with me through all 11, go you! And Thank you!
So if you are 100% ready to stop the destructive and exhausting battle with food, you absolutely must stop comparing yourself to others.
There is a quote that I love that says comparison is the thief of joy. I’d like to add to that and say that comparison is also completely delusional.
When I was the thinnest I had ever been in my life, I would bet that some other women would have envied the body that I had. Here’s what those women didn’t know.
I was miserable.
Anxious.
Terrified to eat anything.
And still feeling like my body wasn’t good enough.
You have no idea what kind of relationship that woman has to her body. You have no idea if she’s starving, critical, and anxious or if she’s truly at peace in her skin. To be clear, I’ll take peace in a bigger body over misery in a smaller body every. single. time.
Additionally, when you hit your goal weight you are not automatically provided a unicorn that whisks you off into a magical land where you have no problems. You’re still you. With the same thoughts, the same fears, and the same insecurities.
Yes, I’m being annoying and I know none of you are actually that delusional, but you are delusional if you buy into the “I’ll be happy when…” syndrome.
As a psychotherapist that has studied the mind/body connection quite thoroughly, I can tell you that the “I’ll be happy when…” game is a losing one. Here’s why:
Your body becomes addicted to emotional states the same way it gets addicted to substances. So if you spend years hating your body, comparing it to others, and feeling inadequate and shameful about it, you think weight loss is going to magically make all of those feelings go away?
Nope. Your mind has created some very well-worn neural pathways about criticizing your body and because the mind is efficient and a little lazy, it reproduces the same thoughts repeatedly because it conserves energy to do so. This is why just losing weight will not actually make you feel confident, empowered, sexy, beautiful, or happy.
So basically this means that YOU MUST CHANGE AT THE LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS before anything in your life really changes. This is true about weight, money, relationships, career, spirituality, happiness, anxiety, depression, and more.
I’ve helped enough people through enough problems to know this to be true.
So here is your opportunity to shift your mind and trust me babe, the rest will follow.
Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop robbing yourself of the joy you could have in the present moment, even if you aren’t at your ideal size right now. What a revolutionary thought! I could actually enjoy myself even if I haven’t lost weight yet!
Comparing yourself to others sets up the shame spiral, which sets up the binge spiral.
You are good enough as you are.
You are good enough as you are.
You are good enough as you are.
As I mentioned in the last post, your thoughts are the ancestors to your behaviors, so more compassionate and kind thoughts about yourself will lead to more compassionate and kind behaviors.
You are powerful beyond measure. You are the key to unlocking this.
Stop comparing yourself to women with completely different DNA, eating habits, and lifestyles than you. Stop comparing yourself to your sisters, friends, co-workers, and random strangers on tiktok.
This is your journey. Own it.
This sums up my 11 Things to Give Up to Stop Binge & Emotional Eating series. THANK YOU for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please reach out with questions and comments because I love your feedback! And if you know a babe that needs these messages, please share with them!
All my love,
Cina
P.S. If you are ready to take a deeper dive into this process, please reach out to inquire about individual and group coaching or my in-depth online courses to support you on your journey!
The 10th Thing to Give up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge and Emotional Eating is Body Bashing.
You had to know this was coming. The last post was about shaming and criticizing yourself for your actions, and this one is geared towards the way you shame and criticize your body.
Here are some examples I’ve heard inside my own head and from my clients…
“I’m so disgusting”
“I hate my stomach”
“My arms are so flabby”
“I’m a fat cow”
“My thighs are humongous”
“I just wish I could lose ____ lbs.”
“My body is so gross”
“I’ve really let myself go”
“My body is deformed”
You learned from your last lesson that shame and doubt lead to self-destructive behaviors like binge eating. Why would you take care of a body you hated?
When you body shame yourself, you are less likely to follow that up with mindful and supportive food choices.
When you body shame yourself you are less likely to practice self-care.
When you body shame yourself, you give others permission to do the same.
When you body shame yourself, you eat to deal with the stress of hating your body.
When you body shame yourself, you dissociate from it and cannot possibly eat intuitively…
…And this is the biggest threat to your relationship with your body of all. Body shaming only fuels the cycle of eating foods that don’t actually support or feel good in your body because hating it breaks your connection to it.
If we’re dissociated from our body, we can’t hear the body calling for our attention, whether that is to eat or to stop eating, so then we either restrict or over eat, keeping us in the very cycles we are looking to break free from.
I could go on for hours in this post because this is a topic I feel particularly passionate about, and forming a new relationship with your body warrants many, many deeper lessons, most of which are included in-depth in the courses I offer.
For now, know that body shaming has to go if you want to stop binge and emotional eating.
Be on the lookout for the critical voice in your head and do something absolutely outrageous … don’t listen to it.
The 9th Things to Give Up if You are Ready to Stop Binge and Emotional Eating are shame & doubt.
I know you’ve been on a million diets and you feel like you’ve “failed,” but the important thing to remember, as I mentioned in post #1, is that DIETS FAIL.
They don’t work, however when you are losing weight you will say, “oh I’m on the ____ diet!” And give it all the credit. But when that weight comes back on you blame yourself. You don’t see the link between the diet and the weight gain. You think YOU’RE the link, when in reality, it’s the diet.
This toxic relationship with food that you’ve been in for a number of years, alongside the horrific social conditioning about how you should look and eat, has led you to forget about the wonderful, worthy being you actually are.
You shame yourself because …
You’ve lost and gained weight multiple times
You can’t just eat “healthy” foods
You love sugary, cheesy, carby foods that aren’t “good” for you
You binge eat in secret
You “fell off the wagon” … again
You binge again after saying “this is the last time”
You don’t fit in the clothes you used to
You can’t seem to find a balance with exercise
You’re the heaviest you’ve ever been
You doubt …
Your ability to actually follow a program like mine that helps you make peace with food FOREVER
That peace with food forever even exists for you
That you won’t become a ravenous beast if unleashed near your favorite foods
That you can maintain a healthy weight without dieting
Your ability to show up, learn from, and support yourself
That anyone would ever accept and love you if they knew how you really acted around food
Why would you treat yourself well, eat balanced, practice self-care, or exercise regularly if you hated yourself and felt like you were an awful, damaged person?
Something I tell my clients repeatedly is that self-criticism leads to self-destruction.
When you are self-critical in one moment, you end up behaving self-destructively in the next. In other words, your binge eating is driven by your critical thoughts about yourself.
When you stop shaming and doubting yourself, and start offering yourself compassion instead, a whole new set of behaviors show up that are in line with your new thoughts about yourself…
…because if self-criticism leads to self-destruction, self-compassion leads to self-care.
Shame leads you to seek perfection, which doesn’t exist, so when you inevitably fail at being perfect (we all do), you have more reasons to attack yourself.
WAKE UP, BABE.
PERFECTION IS NOT REALITY.
OVEREATING DOESN’T DEFINE YOU.
YES PEACE WITH FOOD FOREVER REALLY EXISTS.
YES YOU ARE CAPABLE OF HEALING.
YES YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND COMPASSION EVEN IF YOU ARE A BINGE EATER.
YOU ARE HUMAN. We fuck up. In fact, we are spectacular at fucking up. Are you going to learn from this or just continue to shame spiral?
The shame must go. Own your path. Own your imperfections. Own the fact that you are working on it even if you haven’t quite figured it out yet.
You’re amazing even for reading this blog and CONSIDERING change, because even that is scary.
If you can’t find compassion for yourself right now, borrow mine…
I love you. I see you. I understand you. I honor you. 💕
The 8th thing to give up if you’re ready to stop binge eating is worrying.
I could write one thousand pages about this, but I will keep it short and tailor it to why you need to stop worrying to heal your relationship with food and your body, specifically.
Here are the things we worry most about that impact our behavior with food:
If your partner will find you less attractive if you gain more weight
If your partner will leave you when they find out you’re a binge eater
If you won’t be able to find a partner if you’re not thin and fit
Sound familiar? Check in with yourself the next time you are having these thoughts. Are these thoughts ones that drive you to take better care of yourself? Unlikely. They are more likely to be the thoughts that drive you right to your favorite binge foods.
As a psychotherapist, I am often talking to clients about their worries and it seems worry is a natural part of life. But if you are a binge and emotional eater, I am asking that you begin to pay very close attention to your worries. In my Binge to Balance Program I teach my clients to explore their triggers and worries throughout the day.
The reason for this is that it will guide you to understand the impact of your thoughts on your behaviors as well as choose adaptive response to triggers and not react self-destructively.
I would bet that if you tracked your worries (not your calories!) for a few days or a week you would start to notice some common themes on the days you binge.
I have a client that binged every single time she had an interaction with her abusive mother. After working together, she now understands how to ride out those urges and do something different. To manage her stress, her anger, and her worry without food.
As I often tell my mindfulness students, each moment conditions the next moment. If you are present for your worries in this moment, you are better equipped to overcome the urge to eat in a dysfunctional way.
We have so many things that we can worry about, both related to our weight and not related to our weight. The world is full of frightening realities. But, guess what? It’s also full of wonder, magic, kindness, joy, excitement, opportunities, love, and passion.
Here are 11 things to do instead of worry:
Imagine everything working out fine!
Ask yourself “What doesn’t suck right now?”
Remember a place you went that was peaceful and fun
Remember a time you laughed SO hard
Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude – list everything you’re grateful for – big and small
Distract yourself with a task – clean out a closet or organize your books
Read, watch tv, draw, color, paint, sew, knit
Go for a walk or a drive
Do something that you enjoy so much that it makes time fly by
Make a worry jar – dump your worries in there
Talk to your therapist or a good friend
If this is the article that stands out the most to you, please consider working with a skilled psychotherapist, further exploring your mindfulness skills, or group coaching to really learn how to deal with worry, fear, anxiety, stress, and other powerful emotions that can take over and cause you to go into the auto-pilot mode where we eat just to not feel what we are feeling in that moment.
The 7th thing to give up if you’re ready to stop binge eating is prioritizing weight loss as your number one goal. If you’ve been reading the previous articles in this series, you know by now that the ways we manipulate our food intake only cause problems.
What’s difficult about this is that most of my clients are afraid to let go of their rigidity around food because they are terrified that this will only lead them further down the weight-gain rabbit hole.
I am here to tell you that is not the case and that if you have gained weight, it is from binge eating, overeating, eating emotionally, and not listening to your body, not because you haven’t tried hard enough.
The more you try to dismiss your hunger the louder it gets. The more controlled you become with food the more out of control you eventually become. The more anxiety and stress about your weight and what to eat to lose weight, the more you will overeat.
Weight loss must take a backseat as you heal your relationship with food and your body once and for all.
Does that mean that you will never be able to lose weight again? No. It means that you take a radically different approach this time because if the things you’ve tried in the past actually worked for you, you wouldn’t be reading this and you wouldn’t be binge and emotional eating.
These are some of the main problems with prioritizing weight loss:
You try to eat less than you need, leading to overeating when your control snaps
You weigh yourself too frequently, which creates anxiety, which leads to emotional eating
You ignore signals from your body to eat, stop eating, or rest because you are more concerned with weight loss than self-care
You judge and shame your body, which leads to depression, social anxiety, and ultimately, overeating (more on this in post 11!)
You seek out other unhealthy measures of weight loss – pills, supplements, surgeries, procedures, and other gimmicks that can have negative consequences
You’re not present. You can’t enjoy anything you do at the weight you’re at right now because you’re always thinking about I’ll be happy when I lose ___ lbs.
Do you think you will be exhilarated when you hit your goal weight? This is delusional thinking. You’ll be happy for a very short amount of time. Then you will become anxious about “keeping it off,” afraid to eat anything, and still not enjoying your body. Goal weights are moving targets that create desperation and dysfunctional behavior, so let’s throw those out the window while we’re at it.
I know that many of you reading this right now actually have gained a lot of weight from binge and emotional eating and would feel better physically and emotionally if you lost some, but for now, this cannot be your main concern for all of the above reasons.
What we are working towards is a long-term, healthy, sustainable relationship with food and your body. This does not happen in a few weeks. More importantly, this does not happen after you lose weight. It happens in the present moment. It happens now.
So, if you’re really ready to let go of binge and emotional eating, weight loss is not your #1 priority. Your #1 priority is unlearning all of the harmful thoughts and behaviors that led you here in the first place.
Eating in the way I am describing in this series will help you to balance your weight naturally without forcing it in the ways you have before – that hasn’t worked for you because it doesn’t work for anyone.
If you struggle with patience and being present with what’s happening now, I urge you to check out my course on mindfulness and binge eating.
So if you haven’t already, now is probably a good time to toss your scale in the garbage as I suggested in article #3. Accept where you’re at right now and be patient with yourself as you make these massive life changes.
Let me also gently remind you that your weight is far from the most interesting thing about you. Your weight is not you. It’s not your energy, your passion, your love, your care, your generosity, your kindness, or the special you-ness that you bring to the world. It’s just a number. And you are incredible.
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