The Body Love Binge - Eating Disorder Recovery Podcast

These words hit home during a global pandemic. When everything is interrupted and replaced by anxiety (and way too much time indoors), emotional eating is practically guaranteed to occur.

But we can weather the storm together.

Notice I used the words ‘get curious and another’, not replace or instead of… This is because the way we speak to ourselves and the language we use is soooo important. If I use the word replace or instead of, that’s a form of restriction. And you know what restriction leads to…

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If you’re reeeally bored right now or feeling more edgy than normal, you’re not alone. And if you want to eat when you’re not hungry more often, then oh baby, you’re DEFINITELY not alone.

A pandemic + quarantine lock-down would do that to pretty much anyone. And last week my inbox was flooded with questions about eating when you’re bored and what to do about it. To help you out, I have 3 tools you can use that I’ll talk about in a moment.

Because there’s so much fear and panic (and boredom) in the air, I think it’s fair to assume that some of us will binge no matter what. This is just real talk. I’m not going to promise that I can help you completely stop the binges immediately, because that would be something that I can’t guarantee, which is what I don’t sell. But if you follow my guidelines you WILL stop over time.

The truth is that nothing triggers binge eating like fear and lots and lots of time at home…cough… So here’s my recommendations...

Are You An Emotional Eater?

If you answered yes to any of the above then you’re most likely an emotional eater, welcome to the club!

I would say that 99% of humans are in the same club so it’s really nothing to worry about… that is unless it’s happening so often that it’s having a negative impact on your life.

There is a spectrum when it comes to emotional eating (like most things) and everyone will be somewhere on that spectrum. If you are considered a ‘normal eater’ you will most likely be at the bottom end of the spectrum. If you always turn to food and eat in large amounts, you will most likely be on the high end of the spectrum.

A lot of people (most of my clients and my past self) are both emotional eaters and binge eaters. Don’t worry, there is hope! Emotional eating is more complex than binge eating so I will dedicate this page to emotional eating and this page to binge eating.

Ok then so emotional eating…

Coronavirus... It's real.  But what can we actually DO to stay positive during these uncertain times? I will share with you 6 tips to help you feel better... If this helps you please share as it will help others.

You might say mean things to yourself like, “Why do I always do this?! I’m so weak! I never do anything right.”

This is the opposite of ideal recovery behaviour after a binge. Further shaming yourself only pushes you deeper in the hole. So, what if, instead of beating down on yourself, see if you can — just for a second — have some compassion for yourself. Whatever that THING is that you’re using food to escape from is probably pretty painful. Your pain is not small, I’m sure.

And the physiological drive to seek pleasure over pain, and to numb our pain with pleasure, is real.

We have the opportunity to make the choice to feel our pain. And we don’t have to be soldiers about it. We can take our anxiety and our pain and hold it in our arms like a baby, and just be soft with it. You deserve your own tender understanding and compassion.

It can be really hard...

A follower once sent me a message that went something like this:

"Victoria, I love the idea of what you teach and I think that you're really onto something with the whole needing to make peace with your body before you can lose weight. But seriously, let's be real. I am overweight, I feel uncomfortable in my body and it's absolutely ridiculous to completely let go of the desire to lose weight. I want to lose weight and that's never going to change! Does this mean I'm screwed? Surely there's a way to make this all work and lose weight too."

She hit the same point that we ALL hit somewhere on this journey to food freedom and body confidence (usually a couple of weeks in...and then again a couple of months in):

"Ok... great. Yeah, stop wanting to lose weight. Makes sense. But....seriously?!?!?!?! NO!"

This reaction is normal and I'd like to dig further into why it's ok to struggle with the desire to lose weight but also why keeping weight loss as your goal is NOT going to help you heal your relationship with food and your body.

So let me back up a bit...

I want to start off by telling you a little story about a woman who struggled with orthorexia. For those that don’t know, orthorexia refers to anxious-obsessive behaviour over “clean eating.” It’s another form of food-obsession, but it’s masked by a fixation on healthy clean foods.

During her darkest hour, she was doing two workouts per day which included strenuous activities like long-distance running and CrossFit circuits.

Even though she was doing two workouts a day, which requires many calories to sustain, she also continued to restrict her diet far below a sustainable level.

Although she claimed to be in the best physical shape of her life, it didn't feel like enough. She no longer trusted herself to make decisions about food and whenever she ate some sugar she went all in and binged.

Her self-esteem was crippled because she couldn’t reach her goals, which were set way too high. As a result, she would find herself sitting in the car parked up somewhere binge eating "bad foods" and hiding the wrappers.

She hid the evidence from others so they wouldn't know how much she had eaten...

That woman was me!

I'm sure you can all relate to experiences of body dysmorphia, body hate, and shameful eating behaviour.

When we feel like a failure, it's only natural to try to hide the evidence.

Shame is an ugly beast.

I was pondering the question, do we binge eat at night because that's when our willpower is the lowest, or because that's when no one is looking?...

Let's rewind 3 years and go back to a day where I was trying on clothes in a changing room with unforgiving florescent lighting.

I loathed what I saw.

To be dramatic about it, let me paint a visual:

If hate was visible, there would have been radioactive rays going from my eyes to my body.

I was staring at myself with hate, wishing my cellulite would just go away. Wishing that I could just slice off the fat that was packed to my body prompting my curves...

This was just one of the thousands of times that I felt so much hate towards every single part of my body.

During these times, self-love felt so far away. It wasn't tangible. It wasn't even something on my mind.