WHY YOU BINGE AND HOW TO STOP

Hands up if you’ve ever indulged in a bout of unplanned eating, aka a binge?

Off course you have and, for the record, my hand is up!

You’ve probably never realised though that a binge or unplanned eating episode – they are the same thing, by the way, one just sounds more emotive than the other – has an anatomy and a cycle.

In other words, there is something causative that came before it. Somehow, you put yourself in a situation where you created the conditions for a binge, even though you didn’t realise it.

So if you’ve ever eaten a packet of biscuits and then branded yourself weak-willed, useless, lacking in willpower and guilty of “not wanting it enough” you can stop that now.

Hopefully, when you’ve read this post, you’ll realise that train of thought is not only not helpful, but not true. When you’ve read this post, you’ll be able to identify when you’re in danger of being in an environment that can foster a binge and take action to head it off at the pass.

 

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY BINGE/UNPLANNED EATING?

When you binge, you are being driven by an urge or an impulse to do so even though you might not realise it.

An urge – like the word urgent implies is a strong desire to do something that is all-consuming. When an urge hits, you can’t think about anything else.

An impulse is a strong urge. It is non-reflective, meaning you don’t have time to think about it so it happens quickly.

Think about standing in a queue at a petrol station, alongside that big shelf full of chocolate. Suddenly your hand is reaching out and grabbing at something. That’s an impulse. You didn’t think about it. You didn’t plan it. It just hit you.

Have a think now about when you last had a bout of unplanned eating. Think about what you planned to eat and think about what you actually ate?

THE ANATOMY OF A BINGE.

There are five stages to a binge. If you look at the graphic  below you’ll see them marked out. I think we can all agree that sums it up really.

First we have the urge.
Then we have the tension while we try not to give into it.
Then we act on it.
Then we have the very temporary and transient relief while we’re actually in the grip of the binge.
Then, inevitably we have the guilt that follows and all the verbal self-flagellation that goes with it. We’re weak, we’re useless, we’ve ruined everything now etc etc etc.

But even though it may feel like it, in many cases the urge to binge didn’t come out of the blue. The seeds were probably sown a lot earlier. This is what you call an antecedent or, simply put, something that came before the binge.

 

WHAT CAME BEFORE THE BINGE?

There are a number of factors and situations that can trigger a bout of unplanned eating.

Let’s look at them.

1, Emotional triggers.
We’re hardwired to find comfort in food because as children we were often given sweets to distract us if we fell over or cried for any reason.
Food can also provide a distraction from stress. When we’re chronically-stressed we tend to overeat refined carbohydrates because of the relationship between seratonin production (happiness hormone) and carbs.
We often use food to reward us for a perceived achievement, e.g a cheat meal after a few days of compliance with a diet or training programme.
Sometimes we binge as an act of rebellion. I once had a client who would eat a whole packet of biscuits because her partner would tell her she shouldn’t be eating them.
We can also use food to disassociate or distract ourselves from something unpleasant.

2. The “Last Supper” Effect.

This happens when we plan to start a diet or training regime on a certain day, usually Monday, then we spend the days leading up to this date eating everything in sight.

3. An overly-restrictive diet.
If we restrict ourselves to bland, tasteless, repetitive food this can trigger a binge. This is very often what we do when we decide we’re going to try to lose weight. We cut out all the things we like and force ourself to eat uninspiring food that we don’t enjoy. It doesn’t take too long before we get fed up and defiant and fall massively off the wagon

4. Letting yourself get too hungry
If you’ve been with me a while you’ll know I talk about this a lot. If you go long periods without food either by accident or by design, your metabolism will dial up your appetite because it needs calories to survive and it doesn’t care where they come from. You’ll find yourself in that situation where you are so flooded with hunger hormone, you can’t seem to get full.
5. Habitual overeating
If you’ve been very overweight and, therefore, been used to taking in a lot of calories this can be a hard habit to break. You have to re-train those neural pathways to form new habits.

6. Being in a high risk situation.
Finding yourself in a situation where there is a lot of food on offer like a buffet or party especially in conjunction with points number 3, 4, and 5 can trigger a binge.
7. Grooming.
This is where someone mentions something you like saw an advert for something. It plays on your mind, keeps cropping up and eventually becomes an urge. An example of this was a conversation I had with a friend who’d just come back from a holiday to France. I ended up stopping off on the way home, buying two croissants and scoffing them in the car!

 

HOW TO PREVENT A BINGE.

So now we know the situations that can trigger a binge, let’s look at how we can prevent an unplanned eating episode.

1.Emotional triggers
Reflect on your last bout of unplanned eating. Think about about how it started. Where it started. How did it feel. Why did you want it, really? Was it to make to comfort you and, if so, could you have done something else? Buffer food, spa treatment, comedy show? Can you create new pleasurable neural pathways instead of high calorie food. Could you swap your binge food for something healthier? (E.g bread for protein pancakes)

2. Last Supper Effect
Don’t be unrealistic with your approach to diet and exercise. Don’t set yourself a goal you can’t hit like zero sugar or five days training a week. You are just setting yourself up for failure. There is no need for drastic swinging from one extreme to another. Just try and improve your behaviour one step at a time.

3. Too much restriction
Don’t be overly restrictive with your diet. This is not sustainable. Use an app like myfitnesspal to educate yourself about what you are eating and how many calories you’re consuming. If you’re serious about changing your habits and your body shape, you need to be aware of your food intake.

4. Going hungry
Don’t let yourself go without food for hours. Look at your schedule and identify opportunities to eat. Have fallback foods on hand to snack on. Rice cakes, cooked meats, tuna, prawns, yoghurt.

5. Habitual over-eating
If you are someone who has been prone to overeat in the past, avoid high risk situations for the time being, while your neural pathways are still being remodelled and new ones created. If you have to go somewhere where there will be a surplus of food, eat before you go to limit the damage. Tell people around you that you don’t want to be exposed to high risk situations. Ask them to be considerate of that. We all have those workmates who bring cakes and biscuits into work and try and persuade us to partake so they feel better about doing so themselves. In that situation, your willpower will only last so long so, before it gives out, have that conversation with them. Tell them you are really making an effort to eat a healthier diet and, while you appreciate their generosity, they would be really helping you if they didn’t shove snacks and sweets in your face.

6. Grooming. 

Just become aware of this as a way of generating urges and impulses. Conversations about how much you enjoy certain types of food or adverts you may see throughout the day can groom you for a binge.

 

LEARN TO “SURF THE URGE”.

If you’re in search of lightbulb moment on this whole subject, this is it.

The truth about cravings is that they don’t just continue to get stronger and stronger until we have no choice but to give into them. In reality, they are more like waves. They will ramp up, peak and then just dissipate.
The problem is, we never resist long enough to feel them dissipate. We never ride them out. We just acquiesce too quick because we believe that this is the only way to make them go away.

Learning to “surf the urge” then could become a crucial weapon in your healthy-eating armoury. If we can just hang fire on scratching that itch, it will go away all on its own.

HOW TO SURF THE URGE

When the urge kicks in, try to stay with it. Notice how it feels. Where you it hits you. Be mindful of those sensations. Stay aware of the physical and mental effects of being in the grip of an urge.

Ask yourself why you feel like this. Try to determine what came before. Have an internal dialogue with yourself in a bid to understand your own behaviour.

While you are doing all that, you’ll find that the urge will peak and drop away, just like a wave breaking.

Obviously, this is not something you should try for the first time in high risk situations because you may be setting yourself up for failure. So pick your battles and remember practice makes us better at everything. Once you have successfully ridden out the urge to binge and realise it can be done, you’ll get better at it.

You won’t always win though. And that’s okay too. Hopefully, you win or you learn!

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