HOW TO CONTROL BINGE EATING!
learn to give a “voice” to your uncomfortable feelings such as anger, fear and sadness instead of “swallowing” those feelings by bingeing and overeating

learn healthy, nurturing, ways to ‘feed’ your emotional hungers without using food. (keep a diary, have some extra water or go for a walk

Learn to differentiate between your physical and emotional hungers. (Are you really hungry? Try and have some water first you might just be thirsty)

What are your favorite foods when you are binge eating? Do they have any early family memories attached to them? Think about what you are trying to get from that emotional connection now.

Don’t stop at “I don’t know”. Most people are stuck in what I call the “I don’t know syndrome”: they don’t let themselves think beyond this point. There is valuable information that you need in order to stop binge eating. Ask yourself the following question: “If I did know how I feel, what would I be feeling”? Some thoughts will come up. Even if you think you are making these up, it comes from you, so it’s a good starting point.


Write down how much time in a 24-hour period you label yourself in a demeaning or derogatory way. Many people with binge eating problems refuse to nurture and respect their bodies and themselves until they lose the weight. However, beating yourself up and demeaning yourself is not the way to build up your self-esteem and confidence. What feels better, praise or criticism? If you think the way to lose weight is by criticizing yourself, look at who in your life taught you that. If you want something from other people, you need to start giving it to yourself first.

Binge eating disorder and emotional eating is not about being out of control with food. It’s about needing to control uncomfortable emotions that you want to avoid. If you change your focus and learn the skills to give voice to your emotions and your feelings, rather than try to control your food, you will be amazed at how much easier it is to set limits with food.


Take a moment to listen to yourself. That’s not hunger you are experiencing, it’s your inner child who wants you to listen to her. You are not paying attention to her. She doesn’t want you to shove food down her throat. What she wants and needs is for you to binge on words.
Breathtaking, juicy, big fat dripping, wonderful, salivating, well done, binge words to feed your inner child of love. Binge on words that will fill up that empty pit of hunger in her stomach with warm fuzzy feelings that you have been searching for your entire life. Binge eating people so often spend most of their lives hating the way their bodies look and refusing to be kind to themselves because of the hatred they have for their bodies. That self-loathing is not just about your body, it’s also a statement about yourself.

If you had a small child standing in front of you looking up at you with an innocent face, would you tell her how much you hate her because she is fat? Never, so why is it OK to tell yourself that? It's not. So think of your inner child (give her an age) standing in front of you, starving for your (parents) attention. You can ignore her, verbally abuse her, or soothe her. Think about what your parents did to you. Today, you have a choice, don’t continue to verbally abuse yourself with harsh words and criticisms that only make you the cycle of self-hatred continue.

You can heal those wounds, Think of it this way: Adopt your inner child, she’s STARVING, she’s been neglected, criticized and emotionally abandoned. If you saw a five year old on the street, your heart would go out to her, well that’s what your inner child feels, too. It's not hunger pains you feel, it’s the child who never heard those words of love from the parents who raised you.
If you want to stop binge eating food, start bingeing on words. Words of love and praise go a long way in helping build self-esteem. Even if you think yours is broken, it can be repaired. Not by continuing the hatred, but by nurturing the wounds. Binge on your kind words, they are non caloric and they don’t cost anything!

Remember these words and say them to your inner child when you are feeling the urge to binge:


You are special
I will always love you
I will protect you
You are wonderful
I love you because you are my child
You are the best
You are soooooo beautiful

Are you an all or nothing person? Are you either on a diet or off a diet? Are you either binge eating or not binge eating? Changing your binge eating habits is also about changing your life. Ask yourself if you are ready to make changes in your life. Permanent changes. Taking care of yourself is not a short term project that stops when you get busy with another project. Are you willing to devote the rest of your life to your personal self-care no matter what else interferes? If your answer is “I am not sure”, than you might seek out some counseling to explore the other issues that are keeping you from taking care of yourself.

Make your binge eating failures into motivation. Successful people are motivated. They have plans that are manageable, which include failing, which is a pre-requisite to learning to change. Yet, most people with binge eating disorders stop trying because they see failing as a weakness. Failing is the only measure we have that what we are doing needs to be changed. If one doesn’t fail, one is not trying hard enough. Read a few books about successful people, and notice that failing is a part of what made each one successful.


11. Do you have special foods you eat when you are binge eating? Make a list of these foods.

For example, do you need to go out and buy a certain brand of ice cream if you want to binge? Do you eat a particular brand of cookies or chips? Do you make sure you have a certain snack in your house at all times? For some people, it doesn’t matter, they just want ice cream, or chips, or sweets, but for others, it’s a very particular brand of food. Whether it’s the general category or particular brand, there is a secret emotion that you need are looking for. It usually goes back to a something you got in your past where you also made the connection to a certain food. Try the following exercise to help you connect to your “secret ingredients”:

a. What foods do you want when you think of the following feelings
Angry__________________________________
Sad____________________________________
Lonely__________________________________
Frustrated_______________________________
Depressed_______________________________
Guilty___________________________________
Disappointed______________________________
Happy___________________________________
Anxious__________________________________
Powerless________________________________

Next, think back to when you were young and try and connect each food with a family occasion or particular memory you have about your family or family members. Keep a diary when your feeling low to target your reasons on why. Copy the feelings above and explain what happened then.

For instance I will only have cadburys chocolate whenever I am feeling sad, no other chocolate brand will cut it for me and I have even travelled 30miles to get a bar of chocolate that I wanted just because they were sold out in the other shop! The reason I have this type is because they remind me of my grandfather and we were very close and one of my regrets was never being allowed to say goodbye to him. For years I never dealt with the grief of losing him.