Binge Dieting

In this episode I share a conversation with chef Tina McDermott who shares her best tips for quick and easy recipes and grab and go food ideas. We also talk about supplements, digestive issues, GMOs and organic items, and weight loss. The specifics about food and recipes starts at about ten minutes into the podcast.

In this podcast I share a conversation with Dr. Carolyn Ross, who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders and emotional eating. We talk about many things, including the brain, supplements, trauma, therapy, the inner critic and judgment and forgiveness.

Do you often find yourself craving food and feeling the need to control what you eat at the same time? If you want to stop this overwhelming tug of war once and for all, sometimes you need to delve deep into yourself and find out why these feelings surface. IFS, or internal family systems therapy, understands that we are made up of multiple "parts" inside of us that are either needing to protect us or that hold our vulnerabilities.

In this episode, I discuss how you might talk to the parts of yourself that overwhelm you with cravings. Extreme cravings or a need to rebel against diet rules often are rooted in past experiences of deprivation or shame. We all have these little parts inside of us that developed to protect us. When we learn how to separate from and understand them, we can get them to change.

Tune in to the full episode and learn more about what to do the next time you're craving food.

1. Identify and connect with the parts of yourself causing you to have extreme reactions when craving food.
2. Find out how you can connect with the different parts within you.
3. Learn actionable tips on what to do when you're craving food.

Intuitive eating is a way of eating where you listen to your body and tune into internal hunger and fullness cues. It requires you to trust your ability to self-regulate. You learn to give yourself food boundaries not because you have to, but because you want to feel good and empowered. Intuitive eaters flow with the ups and downs of eating without being extreme.

Intuitive eating may be difficult to achieve for people who have a history of eating disorders. One of my clients described how she found it hard to resist craving food, and convinced herself that since it was what she was craving it would be justified. She thought this was intuitive eating. She was not practicing intuitive eating though, because she was not connected to a peaceful wisdom space. Instead, she was under the spell of the loud, scared, and protective parts inside of her. She was craving from a scared or defiant place.

There are often three primary parts of you involved in an overeating or craving cycle. One will have an extreme need to eat, the second will have an extreme need to not eat and might be demanding and critical of you, and the third is the part that will try to figure out what to do. Sometimes the third part is pure shame.

Many of my clients find it hard to make food decisions because all these parts working together at the same time just leads to a shutdown. You need to take a step back and investigate why these sides feel so strongly.

When we want to overcome this anxiety and overwhelm around food decisions, we need to investigate and understand these parts of ourselves.

IFS therapy uses a specific technique where you learn to separate from the part of you that is craving food, and ask it what it's afraid of happening if it doesn't keep urging you to eat. In this way you learn the skill of listening from a genuinely open hearted space.

There is always a reason for your compulsions. When people go on long-term diets, this eating part of them develops to protect them from being deprived or left out. This part of you may get creative to convince you to eat. It may also feel that if it doesn't get its way, you'll be in danger. Sometimes the reason appears to be just the brain based habit of making you feel an urgency.

From there, what we need to find is the part deep down that created the need for this protective part in the first place. You need to connect with this part with loving care and compassion, and this is the skill to be developed. You learn to heal this part of you by validating its feelings and experiences. It might not make sense until you practice it experientially.

Often the habits of the brain are just repetitive brain patterns stuck in time. We learn to help our food craving parts see that you are no longer living in the past and the original danger is gone. Usually parts needing food become extreme based on a perception of danger.

After understanding and connecting with the part that has an extreme need to eat (without hating it!!), you might investigate the other side of the conflict. Similar to what you had done with the part that is craving food, connect with the part that has a desperate need to go on a diet or stop overeating. What is it so afraid would happen if you didn't do this?

Chronic dieting does not work long-term because applying willpower will not work forever.

I talk about a specific client who was only able to heal when she connected with her internal parts and helped them come out of the past. She started to recover when she let go of her extreme beliefs about beauty. It takes time to understand your inner world, but it's worth the investment. Living in a world of stress around eating and the body is exhausting.

As you work with your inner parts, you can implement some food action steps. First, you might try allowing yourself to give in to your food craving without fear but with gentleness. Let yourself eat with curiosity. Notice what your impulse to eat food might be about. When you learn the skill of being present without fear and judgment, perhaps allowing your "dieter part" to calm down, you might learn a lot about what's going on.

You can repeat this experience of noticing, but next time, perhaps be present without eating even though you're craving. With curiosity, allow the craving to be there. Again, notice what comes up. You might want to turn towards your emotions and see if you can understand what you're afraid to be with. Is there an emotion that's looming underneath? Or is it just a sensation of irritability or discomfort? Sometimes you can coach yourself by saying, "I'm craving food, but I'm saying no, all is well, I can be safe in this moment". This is an individual journey that can be very intense or tangled for some people and less so for others.

When we learn to get the loud parts to settle down and feel calmer, what will naturally arise is our higher self. It will know what to do.

• Receiving Chant by Karen Drucker

"With intuitive eating, you learn how to make food decisions out of a choice to honor your body wisdom."

"You just want to try to listen, go within, and open your mind and your heart to this part of you. Because you want to honestly understand why it is doing this."

"You had this cellular memory of deprivation that gets trapped inside, and in order to get it out, it must be heard and witnessed and no longer repressed."

"The trick is learning how to understand [that] they're little parts within you. Once you separate from them and get this relationship with them, that's when you get the healing shifts."

"We are the healer we've been waiting for. We are it."

Have any questions or want to schedule an appointment or enroll in my class? You can email me at [email protected] or visit my website.

To making peace with eating,

Betsy

In this episode, I discuss how our experiences in our younger years shape our body image and relationship with food. Many of these experiences may have contributed to how you behave and feel around food and your body as an adult. Using the model of internal family systems, you can reconnect with your experiences and find more inner peace. In time, you will be less triggered by comments or experiences that once made your body contract or freeze and your mind ruminate.

Tune in to the episode to learn how you might work on your relationship with food and your body by exploring the root of your food insecurity or your overactive need to diet.

Also, consider joining my online class to help you learn how to help yourself get out of stressful eating habits. For more information go to www.betsythurstonrd.com.

1. Identify when and how your food insecurity started.
2. Discover how reconnecting with your past experiences can help you in your journey to healing.
3. Learn how helpful it can be to have more understanding and compassion for yourself and your inner child.

• Mary O'Malley

As an adult, you may have developed an image or belief that you are flawed because of your body and how you feel and act around food. You don't trust yourself around food, and you might avoid it as much as you can. You might also have periods of secretly overeating. Shame and fear of judgment might happen daily.

When there's a fear of being fat or a history of long-term dieting, more often than not, there is an initial source of wounding. And this is often rooted in childhood experiences or sometimes times in college or early adulthood.

You may have been surrounded by real or perceived judgments around your body, or you might have been flooded with internal judgment. Other people's fear for their own bodies may have been projected onto you. These experiences may be traumatizing and have resulted in you feeling inadequate, creating an internal obsession over your weight and body.

We can always explore the past with awareness of the present. Tapping into the memories of your younger years could help you heal from issues surrounding your weight and body.

By learning to connect with the root of your fears and food insecurity, you gain more understanding and compassion for yourself in your journey to recovery.

Growing up surrounded by body critics may have led you to watch your food intake and obsess over every little change in your body. For instance, a slight hint of being bloated might set you into panic and hypervigilance. Yet feeling bloated is completely normal; it's a part of digestion.

The part of your mind that takes over in this way actually believes you're in grave danger. It wants to save you from the early memories of shame and hurt. But these parts can create hyper vigilance and dieting habits, which can be very demanding and destructive. It's important to learn how to separate the threat from the trigger and calm the internal noise in your head.

One of my clients came to me when she was in her late 30s. She'd been on every diet on the planet. But she still felt defeated and disappointed. She knew it was very exhausting to live in deep fear of having a certain body type and obsessing over what she was eating.

What we started to do was to talk about the practicalities of food and a bit on intuitive eating. Then we were led to memories of when she was a little girl who'd experienced being bullied about her body. She was able to get in touch with this critical energy from a curious place.

Through a specific process, she reconnected with her inner child, and this allowed her to understand and re-experience what happened in a new way. This child realized that forever more, she was not alone, and she also knew that she was heard. In the weeks after this experience she was able to relax and eat intuitively much better.

Another client grew up in a household where the fabric of the conversation, with her mother, in particular, was on dieting. Food and the 'perfect' body were overvalued. Along with this, she felt as if she wasn't paid much attention to as a child.

As a result, this client was stuck in a world of stressful eating habits. The solution began with her spending time to find the little girl who was shamed for her body and only found comfort in food. Taking care of this little girl brought her much healing. She was able to find compassion not only for her present self but also for the child she was.

A different client had a problem with binge eating. She felt great shame for being successful in her career, yet secretly having a problem with overeating food. She would follow a diet and rebuke herself if she fell off the track, and then the cycle would continue.

But it was through working with a sense of quietness and compassion that she was able to open a space for curiosity and realize the origins of the problem. She was able to process her problem by reflecting on the abuse she experienced as a child. The feelings of loneliness and helplessness around eating shifted to understanding and calmness.

"If you've been dieting for your whole life, and here you are listening to this podcast, I want you to take in hopefully, that another diet is really not going to get you anywhere, we really need to get to the bottom of the problem in order to fix the problem."

"I can guarantee you that no matter what happened as a child, on some level, you were just doing your best. You're just a kid seeking love. That's all anybody ever wants."

"It's about connecting with a sensation of feeling alone, or scared or overwhelmed, or helpless, and letting that part be heard, and come out of hiding, and connect with another part within that's listening."

"We have an infinite ability deep within us for healing and peace. It's there; we all are self-healing. It's a matter of finding it. It is. Peace is always available. Calm within is always available."

"We all need to look at the areas in ourselves where we believe we are not enough. I think it's universal… And if we all could work towards healing, our inner children, all of us, imagine how the world would be a better place. We can heal this planet, because then, we're not so stuck in fear and caught up in our heads and worrying all the time. We can be so much more available to life."

Have any questions or want to enroll in my class or schedule an appointment? You can email me at [email protected] or visit my website.

To making peace with eating,

Betsy

In this podcast Dr. Amy Johnson talks about her approach to helping people who struggle with anxiety or with all extreme or unwanted habits. Amy looks at life from the big picture, and her model is very different from most models of change available today. Betsy uses the model of Internal Family Systems Therapy, and the conversation explored the differences in these two ways of working with people. This conversation brings up people who have had many different experiences that were difficult, such as feeling invalidated, experiencing stress from the physical effects of sugar, and feeling worry or shame over the body. In this interesting conversation Amy's approach was unusual and refreshing; she constantly zoomed her lens way out to the bigger picture.

Intuitive eating is the practice of looking inward and noticing body sensations so you can more accurately choose which foods and which portion sizes would be best in that moment.

It also involves noticing thoughts, habits, and emotions that might be present as you reach for the food--especially those which might have nothing to do with physical hunger or satiety.

Intuitive eating is a practice of honoring the wisdom of the body and trusting that you will feel best when you can learn to delay or minimize the habits and impulses to eat for the "wrong" reasons. These include eating to avoid feeling bored, lonely, sad, angry, or scared, or to rebel against restrictive diet rules. Most people who live with a diet mentality feel compelled to take an extravagant break from the boring and limiting rules. It's fun to be bad!

It is difficult to eat intuitively when you hate your body, or when you hate the parts of you that feel compelled to eat for reasons other than hunger. Intentionally focusing on the skill of self-compassion can dramatically increase your ability to eat ideal portion sizes of ideal foods. Sometimes an ideal portion size is very small, perhaps even just 4 or 5 bites. Other times the ideal portion might be much larger. Sometimes an ideal food is a comfort food and sometimes it's a plate of vegetables and lean protein. If you skip meals or have limited amounts of protein or colorful foods then you might end up so physically hungry that you overeat.

Intuitive eating is hardest to do when you're stuck in an emotionally charged headspace, or when eating habits take over, so this is the exact time when you might want to stop, pause, and ask yourself what food and in what amount would be just enough for you.

Common eating habits that sabotage intuitive eating might include Friday or Saturday nights, alcohol, the hours in between dinner and bedtime, or afternoon breaks from the pressures of the day.

Taking your time to eat slowly and deliberately is the essence of mindful eating. When you eat mindfully you pay attention to the look, feel, taste, smell, texture, and portion size. You notice that you are chewing and swallowing even as you notice what's going on in the room around you. You can develop the capacity to eat mindfully at the same time you are present in a setting with others or stuck in a moment of sadness or fear.

Listen to this podcast episode if you want to learn more about intuitive eating: listen to the episode here.

In this conversation with Nancy McKay, Betsy and Nancy talk about her recovery from alcohol dependence and self criticism. A lot of ideas are presented in this podcast, from noticing thought, living in your "truth" versus pretending, anger, feeling your feelings, and finding freedom. Listeners who might use food or alcohol in excess, or who live a life that doesn't feel authentic or fulfilling will benefit from hearing her story.

Nancy is a life coach with a "special twist". She uses equine therapy for clients who come to her ranch in Colorado. Listen to the full episode to hear her full story!

In this conversation with Julie Allen, she talks about her journey from inpatient treatment to a life without the extreme behaviors that went along with her eating disorder. Julie talks about OCD and anxiety, about what got her to wake up and find the courage to stop obsessively worrying about her body and her calorie intake, about weighing herself, about intuitive eating, and about clothing and dressing in a way that feels comfortable and which allows for days when her body feels heavier than normal. At the end Julie also talks about her approach to food and eating as she parents very young children.

This conversation will be helpful to those who struggle with disordered eating or those who have a more extreme pattern of eating issues which are best helped by inpatient care.

Julie now owns a women's clothing boutique which caters to all sizes of bodies, and donates a portion of all sales to help those who need eating disorder treatment but can't afford it. She is the founder of the Mary Rose Foundation, which helps support education and funding for eating disorders.

Manifesting is a popular term these days, and it is the process of making your dreams a reality.

Manifesting doesn't always work though, and that's why it is best to break the goal into small pieces at first. It's also key that you spend some time feeling the emotional blocks that might be in the way first.

Going on a diet usually requires rigid and even punishing rules around food. When dieting we deprive ourselves, and then beat ourselves up when we make the smallest mistakes. If your body has too much weight on it then it's true, it makes sense to take in fewer calories in a day or a week in order to make that happen.

The problem is that the diet mentality is short lived and stressful and everyone reverts back to eating to soothe or for other emotional reasons. The happy medium is to find a way to set a boundary with food without dieting.

In this episode, I show you how to do just that. When we look past our constant need to be in control, we can better assess whether we are truly hungry or using food to numb and avoid. I encourage you to take a step back and get honest with yourself in the moment of eating about what you're feeling or believing. If it's not true physical hunger, what's the worst thing that could happen if you put the fork down? What if you can just be with what's there without the food?

If you want to learn more about how to set a boundary with food, tune in to the episode!

1. Discover the difference between setting a boundary with food and dieting.
2. Learn to sit with the discomfort that comes with setting food boundaries.
3. Identify instances when dieting may be beneficial.

• The song by Karen Drucker I've Got the Power

Our minds are always reverting to some form of fear, even though it might be rooted in a memory buried way down under the surface. We all have a need to be needed, to feel good enough, to fit in and to feel a sense of purpose. Our life experiences will always give us opportunities where we feel the opposite though, so we often live in a state of trying to prevent feeling one thing or another that might expose our insecurities. It's normal to try to calm our looming insecurities or to distract ourselves with food, even though the added weight gain will increase those insecurities.

What happens next? We get stuck in a state of overthinking and planning and dieting, leading the mind to panic and make up exaggerated stories about the consequences of extra weight. The mind now shifts its focus to the body rather than other sticky and unsolvable obstacles that might come our way in life.

Overthinking is not helpful.

A simple but powerful antidote to an overthinking mind is to take a step back and ask these questions:

• What am I doing?
• What am I scared about right now?
• What is taking over my mind this time?
• Why am I so worried about food?
• Why am I so caught up in this?

A food boundary can be helpful when it's gentle; when it's not about dieting or restricting but about noticing when you're disregarding your goals for health. It can be helpful as you learn how to eat intuitively. It can be a helpful signpost to remind yourself that you might want to not eat those chips or that cookie so you can stop and check in with the inner world. It's listening to your body and asking, "Why do I want to eat this food right now?" It's probing the depths of your mind and being curious instead of mindlessly eating.

You might want to zero in on the foods or social settings when you often habitually eat too much and choose in advance to create a boundary. For example, before going out or before sitting down for the evening alone at home you might decide what you want the eating experience or the being at home alone experience to be like. Wherever the problem eating is happening, this is where you write down a goal for a boundary. You might try a boundary around chips or ice cream or the amount of sugary foods in a day or eating second portions.

Often overeating is a chance for you to rebel against your own rules or society's rules or your partner's rules about beauty. It could just be a way to not feel things. It could also be connected to a happy emotion; it can be a way to connect to others, to experience joy and freedom and to enhance a fun situation. There are hundreds of different reasons why people might overeat or eat even though they're not hungry, or when they deceive themselves and convince themselves they are physically hungry when they're not. If you don't investigate this, the patterns might never change.

I don't think it's a good idea to be on a strict diet and to ignore true hunger. Just notice when you're overeating. As you become more self-aware, the next step would be to enforce a food boundary and be with the discomfort involved with dismissing the urge. It can be noticing the short moment between that next bite and you saying, "That's enough, no more".

When you put your fork down, you make a conscious decision to face life instead of using food as a coping mechanism. You might realize that your fears are largely unfounded. You will be okay. Once you get honest with yourself and acknowledge your fears, you're generally going to be alright.

A food boundary is you saying, "Fork down. I am looking forward to feeling whatever is going to come up right now. Bring it on, life."

However, in some cases and for some people, a diet may be beneficial. Sometimes after a period of indulgence your body might appreciate an internal detox. Rather then a diet as a means for weight loss and control, a "diet" that restores balance to the body is occasionally not a bad thing. This process is listening to what your body wants you to do. So it's not really going on a diet, it's paying attention to your body.

This process becomes harmful when we get overly attached to the outcome, such as with an intense need to lose a lot of weight or look different.

A temporary "diet" can help people embrace low-calorie and nutrient-dense foods. It reboots our taste buds by incorporating healthier alternatives. The brain learns to appreciate and enjoy simpler foods.

A "diet" also encourages people to put more effort into planning their food choices. When you diet, you plan to make sure you're not caught off guard in stressful or overwhelming situations. With a plan in mind you manage to stay on track even when you're too busy or tired to whip up something healthy. It's not even really a diet; it's basic self-care.

When we make a plan, we let our logical planning center take the lead instead of the fast-acting and fearful part of our brain. Planning ahead means overbuying healthy foods with long shelf lives while underbuying convenient, fatty, and sugary items.

It also means that you don't go to the grocery when you're hungry or tired. If you do, you're aware of this and have made a list, so you don't purchase food impulsively.

Setting a food boundary and following through with it would mean that you tap into a source of internal strength. It requires listening closely to your body rather than giving in to the subconscious brain.

The benefits of a food boundary may not be immediate, but they add up over time. When you set a food boundary, you are willing to forego immediate gratification to embrace difficult experiences that are a natural part of life. You train your brain to find another way to be present with discomfort.

At the end of the day, the best "diet plan" isn't a diet. It's a way of life that has three general rules:

1. Pay close attention to the thoughts that go through your head before eating. Ask the why.
2. 1. Why do I want to eat this so badly?
   2. Why is it difficult for me to just be present?
   3. Why do I believe I need this food to be happy?
3. Plan ahead for food availability.
4. Forgive yourself when you overeat and then regret it. Pick yourself up and try again.

In the end, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that you can follow. Only you can figure out what's best for your body and what feels good for you. But it's important to know that a food boundary can exist without a diet. It all starts with paying attention and taking the time to get to know yourself.

"The only reason these things are scary is because I created a story in my mind that unless my body looks different, I'm unacceptable, I'm not enough, people are judging me. It's this big deal. And that's the joke. We made it up."

"Imagine what would happen if you just noticed the human impulse, to control, to fix, to worry, to create stories, and you just sat with it, what would happen? Nothing. You would be fine."

"Our fast-thinking brain is all about immediate gratification. All you need to do is to be willing to slow down enough and get calm enough inside so you cannot be derailed by an overactive, fearful, fast-thinking subconscious mind."

"It's about asking what your deepest, truest part of you needs, way deep down, the real you, so to speak, rather than the part with an agenda to numb, to avoid, or to not miss out."

"People think that there is one correct amount of protein or carbs or fat and there was one correct amount of ratios, and there is one correct solution, and there isn't one. So this is about you figuring out for yourself, what fits for your body and what feels good for you."

Have any questions or want to take my online class or schedule an appointment? You can email me at [email protected] or visit my website.

To making peace with eating,

Betsy