by Cina Hoey | Oct 20, 2021 | Binge Eating
The 6th thing to give up if you’re ready to stop binge eating is counting your calories.
I’ve included this because I get asked this question by almost every client. So here’s my take on tracking your calories, points, or macronutrients…
It’s another way we grasp too tightly to control that ultimately leads to being out of control.
Take my client I’ll call Sandra, for example. Sandra is conservative with her calories all day because she doesn’t want to use “too many.” By dinner time, she’s famished, but she’s saved many calories so she has a big dinner. But for some reason, she can’t get full enough. So when her family goes to sleep a few hours later she is binge eating her kids’ school snacks at 11pm and hiding the wrappers. She mentally puts “grocery store” on her list for tomorrow to restock so no one notices her slip up. If Sandra wasn’t hyper focused on her calories, she probably would’ve just enjoyed breakfast and lunch and naturally needed less at dinner time. She would have eaten less overall if she would have just listened to her body instead of focusing too much on numbers.
I could also talk about my client I’ll call Cameron. Cameron went over her calories for the day and is feeling so ashamed about herself she decides “screw it – I already went over I might as well go get that ice cream I’ve been craving.” An epic binge ensues.
Or Kiera, who was saving her calories ALL WEEK because she desperately wanted to look good in her crop top over the weekend when she went to a party. She binged for two days straight.
Or Linda, whose fitness trainer told her she should eat less calories on the days she didn’t work out, and while she accomplished this and ate less Monday on her “off-day,” she was bingeing hard by Tuesday night.
Or Amanda, who used up her allotted calories by 4pm on Friday and figured she’d just have to wait until Saturday to eat again. Friday 10:30pm she was at the drive-thru getting ALL the treats.
The fact is that calorie counting is not sustainable, it creates scarcity and anxiety, and it ignores the fact that your body is already equipped with a built in system to tell you when to eat and when to stop eating.
When tracking, we are provided a finite number of calories or points for the day and this immediately creates scarcity and anxiety. We’re so careful not to go over, so cautious about every single morsel of food we put into our mouths, that we are once again not consulting our bodies about what it needs in that moment . We are thinking of past meals (how many carbs did I eat at breakfast?) and future meals (how many calories should I save for dinner later?) rather than what does my body need right now? What would be supportive and satisfying to me right now?
Another issue I have with tracking calories and macronutrients is the possible inaccuracy. Do you have any idea how many food labels are inaccurate? And who even comes up with these numbers about how much you “should” eat? An app? A calculator you find online? Stop and think about that for a second and I’m sure you’ll see how absurd it is. No one knows how much you should eat except you.
Many people find “success” in tracking calories and macronutrients. I was one of them. I was the thinnest I had ever been in my life. I was also anxious and fearful of ever stepping outside the lines of those parameters my coach had set. And oh my the STRESS about how to track my meals when I went out with friends was so high that I ended up avoiding it all together, which damaged my social relationships in a major way. My perfectionism took over as I needed to hit every macronutrient perfectly. One day I simply broke. I couldn’t handle the constant control anymore. I rebelled. And this set off years of uncontrollable binge eating for me.
Again, this is not a long-term solution. The ONLY time I suggest clients track calories is very short-term (a week max) to make sure that they are eating enough. As I’ve mentioned several times by now, if you’re not eating enough, your body will create powerful urges to eat and this often leads to a binge.
Do not be afraid to eat. It’s not eating adequate meals and calories that makes us gain weight – we gain weight from binge eating, emotional eating, and not listening to our bodies.
Emotional eating often leads to bingeing or overeating and tracking calories can keep you on an emotional rollercoaster. If you hit your calories you feel good, if you don’t you feel shame. It’s a vicious cycle and one that does not honor your body or that some days you will naturally eat more or less than others. Or that your body will automatically regulate this for you. Have you ever watched a child eat? They know when to stop. They graze sometimes, eat full meals at other times. This is a skill we are all born with, we’ve just lost our way from too many diets, food rules, and restrictions.
So go ahead and delete MyFitnessPal from your phone and celebrate! Food freedom is one step closer. Don’t stop now, I’ll catch you in the next article for your 7th challenge!
All my love,
Cina
by Cina Hoey | Oct 20, 2021 | Binge Eating
The 5th Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge Eating is making food choices based on the past or the future.
You might have already put this together based on previous posts about dieting and skipping meals, but this post will focus exclusively on present moment food choices.
This is part of the non-diet approach that I teach my clients every day. Those of us that have struggled with balance with food have a hard time understanding this. In the blog on making up for your binges I mentioned that any attempts to “undo” your binges only perpetuate the cycle. If you’re ready to stop bingeing, the invitation now is to simply wait until you are hungry again and eat a regular meal at that time.
When hunger arises, no more only eating cucumbers or cauliflower or drinking green tea, but eat an actual meal – one that you are in the mood for and will be satisfying. This is what I mean by present moment food choices and this is where your mindfulness skills really come into play. What do you want right now?
This choice should not be made based on what you ate earlier today or the night before, even if you binged. Here are some examples:
- You went out for breakfast and ate pancakes so you will only allow yourself to drink a protein shake for the rest of the day, even though hunger surfaces again in the afternoon.
- You binged the night before so today you’re only allowed 500 calories, even though your body is asking for more than that.
- You went out to lunch and ate a full meal so dinner is only a small salad with no dressing, even though you’re hungry again.
When you make choices based on an earlier meal you feel may have been too dense, high in calories, carbs, or fat, etc., you inevitably end up not eating enough at this meal and before you know it you’re setting yourself up for another binge. Is that what you want? If you are still reading these articles I’m guessing the answer to that question is no!
While you shouldn’t make choices about what to eat now based on what you ate before, I also suggest you do not make choices about what to eat now based on what you might eat later.
Often when we know we are going out to dinner later, or will be eating a meal that might be calorie dense (restaurants, holidays, birthdays, dinner parties, social events), we will try to “save” our calories for later in the day. This is also a pretty big no-no, because have you noticed what happens when you do this? You are so ravenous by the time that meal comes that you end up overdoing it, and in many instances, it turns into a binge.
Adequately supplying ourselves with food throughout the day is crucial to avoid a snack attack at night.
Because not binge eating is not just about that moment you actually overeat. It’s about what you’re doing and thinking the rest of the day also.
Trust me, when this becomes a regular practice for you, you will begin to see that you will enjoy those heavier and more “special” meals even more if you are not absolutely starving. You’ll feel at ease all day, even excited, that you are going to that new restaurant with your friends later, and when you get there you will order exactly what you want off the menu, and you will savor it, be present with your food, and more importantly, be present with your friends. You’re less likely to overeat (although it’s okay if you do!) and you might even pack some up to eat later or the next day.
This is what “normal eaters” do. They eat when they are hungry, they eat what they are hungry for, they do not overanalyze over every food choice, they just stay present, eat what they want based on what’s available and move on with their lives.
Constantly thinking about food, planning all meals out, and worrying over caloric intake is a thing of the past. Present moment choices, ease around all foods, and tuning into your body is your new approach.
If you are following these guidelines and the ones to follow, binge eating doesn’t stand a chance.
Sending you ALL of the love in this expansive universe as you make these changes. Don’t give up, you’ve got this. Catch you in the next article about what NOT to do to stop bingeing!
All my love,
Cina
P.S. If you enjoyed this post about mindful, present moment choices, you might want to check out my course on Applying the Principles of Mindfulness to Binge Eating Course!
by Cina Hoey | Oct 20, 2021 | Binge Eating
The 4th Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge Eating (4 of11)…
The 4th thing to let go of to finally stop binge eating forever is labeling foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy,” and only eating the healthy foods when you are “trying to be good.” Do you hear all of the judgments I just made in one sentence?
Those of us that have struggled in our relationship with food for years have all sorts of judgments and rules about eating that keep us stuck in cycles of anxiety and overeating. When we first become conscious of our weight we are taught to diet. And as I’ve mentioned before, diets fail 99% of the time, leaving you defeated, ashamed, with the same amount of excess weight and many times even more. Usually, this leads us to seek more information on what else we could possibly do differently in order to lose weight.
Most of us spend several years in this cycle so just stop for a second and think about the amount of nutrition information that can accumulate over time. It is absolutely absurd how many “food rules,” and restrictions we learn as new diets, fads, and foods become popular. In fact, this is so prevalent that a term “Orthorexia,” the obsession with healthy eating, has been named. Many people begin overeating because they just want to listen to the experts and eat healthier, only to find themselves in anything but a healthy lifestyle.
The problem is that nobody can get on the same page. The Keto crew disagrees with the Weight Watchers crew. And the Weight Watchers disagree with the Vegans and the Vegans disagree with the Paleos and the Paleos disagree with the Raw Foodies, and the intermittent fasters think they are hold the answers, and some groups think sugar is the devil, others say its dairy, others say its gluten, and while you chase every one of these possibilities you completely lose touch with yourself and your relationship with food spirals into confusion and despair.
Trying to figure out what to eat has become exhausting.
If you read my first post in this series you already know that dieting is not the way to go, which might be frustrating for you because there is actually something comforting about just being told what to do. Us dieters get high on rules and control. Something about a new diet gives us a buzz in our system. We love it – until we rebel against it with a binge.
But what I’m inviting you to do here is let go of all judgments about food so that you can actually learn from your own body.
That’s right, babe. Y-O-U are the new authority on what to eat, when to eat, and how much. You say which foods are right for your body and which ones aren’t.
See, that intelligent body of yours not only will tell you when it’s hungry and when it’s full, but it will also happily give you feedback about which foods it’s not crazy about. I’m sure this is different advice than you’ve heard before because up until now you’ve just been trying to find the “right” diet. What I teach my clients in my Binge to Balance program is how to do exactly this – use their body as their guide. And just like anything else, these are new skills to learn.
When you begin putting effort towards learning these new skills, you’d be surprised at how quickly you catch on, at all of the signals you missed before, at how in tune you can be with your body, and ultimately, that you are the best resource in deciding what to eat.
Dropping the judgments about food will help you finally get clear on what certain foods feel like in your body and which ones are the right ones for you.
This will also help eliminate the anxiety around what to eat, which will lead you to feel more relaxed about food in general, feel less deprived when foods are no longer “off-limits,” and ultimately decrease episodes of binge and emotional eating.
Thank you for staying open-minded, and thank yourself for taking the time to read this and open your mind to new possibilities and ways of approaching food. You’re doing great!
All my love,
Cina
by Cina Hoey | Oct 20, 2021 | Binge Eating
The 3rd Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge Eating (3 of 11)…
The 3rd thing to give up if you’re ready to stop binge and emotional eating is weighing yourself constantly or “body checking.”
Let’s start with weighing yourself. That’s right, it’s time to surrender your beloved scale. I know you feel that your scale is a form of measurement that is absolutely necessary to make sure you are staying within your desired range, but stop and think for a second about what actually happens when you weigh yourself.
First let’s think about what happens when you see the number you want. Your anxiety might be eased in the moment, but this only sets up an attachment to that particular weight. I expand on this further in my course on mindfulness and binge eating, but for now, know that when we try to hold onto something too tightly – a particlar weight or size – we suffer, because nothing lasts forever and our bodies change and fluctuate ALL the time in a very natural way.
And what happens when we don’t see the number we want? Most likely a couple of things. It sends us into an emotional spiral and/or it leads us to believe we must become restrictive about what we eat. If this restriction method sounds like you, be sure to read posts #1 and #2 in this series to remind yourself that restriction is a slippery slope laced with recurring episodes of binge eating. If the emotional meltdown sounds familiar, it is most definitely time to break up with your scale. That number is just a number. It does not define you and you are the only one that can stop it from ruining your day. The bottom line is…
This type of attachment to our weight sets us up for an emotional rollercoaster.
If you feel like you can’t stop weighing yourself, at least try to significantly decrease the frequency. Your scale has become your prison and I am setting you free. The scale is such an inadequate measure for health and is so unreliable and inconsistent that I often tell my clients to throw it out. I do not own a scale. Don’t want one. Don’t need one. My body fluctuates and that’s okay. I’m also attuned to my body so I know how my clothes usually feel. This is enough of a feedback loop for me and it can be for you too.
Now, body checking. Body checking is when we are looking in the mirror at our bellies, thighs, arms, and other parts of our bodies to see how they look, make sure they look the way we want them to, or to find things to criticize about ourselves. I could really go on a rant about this because I feel so passionate about it – sooo of course I included more ranting about this in a later article in this series (#11, to be exact) – but for now, I’m grouping it in with your bad romance with your scale and letting you know that both of these behaviors perpetuate a critical and unhealthy relationship with your body.
You might be thinking that you don’t really care about your relationship with your body, you just want to stop binge eating, but make no mistake, these two are tightly linked and your relationship with your body must be prioritized if you are ready to stop binge and emotional eating.
Once again, I know I’m asking a lot. You want to maintain control and it feels like all hell will break loose if you are not constantly checking in on your weight and size. However, you are not doing yourself any favors. Instead of keeping yourself in check you are creating and perpetuating a ton of anxiety and destructive food behaviors, both of which fuel binge eating.
You’ve already learned that you have to ditch the diet, now I’m telling you to ditch the scale too. Scary? More like liberating. You’re welcome!
All my love,
Cina
by Cina Hoey | May 6, 2021 | Binge Eating
The 2nd Thing to Give up to Stop Binge and Emotional Eating is trying to make up for your binges.
This is part two of the 11 steps to stop binge eating (check out part one here if you haven’t already!)
I’m going to talk about the three most common ways my clients try to compensate or make up for their binges, why these are not effective methods of weight management, and how they perpetuate the cycle of bingeing.
1-Skipping Meals
This is definitely the most common! How many times have you tried to skip breakfast because you overate the night before? Attempted to survive on iced coffee until 4pm? Swore off carbs, or decided that you might just cut out eating completely for today? Maybe you told yourself you were “fasting.”
If any of this sounds familiar, you may want to check in with yourself about this. I know it’s tempting because you are terrified of weight gain, but if you read my previous article in this series you’ll know that restriction of any kind sends you right into a binge.
And yes, for those of you wondering this absolutely includes anything that resembles intermittent fasting. This is also too restrictive as you heal your relationship with your hunger, food, and your body.
Want to STOP bingeing for good? Instead of trying to skip meals, cut out fat, carbs, or calories, just wait until your natural hunger surfaces again and eat a regular meal!
2-Overexercising
After a binge you may try to “make up for it” with exercise. My personal brand of undoing a binge included hours on the StairMaster, extra runs, and often working out 7 days a week.
This will distort your relationship with exercise because working out is a privilege, not a punishment, AND this approach will leave you exhausted and extra hungry (kind of like having PMS all the time – yikes😩). What do you do when you’re tired, cranky, and extra hungry? That’s right babe – you’ll be bingeing again in no time.
Instead of overexercising post-binge, give your body rest so it can repair and regain balance as soon as possible. In the same way you wait to eat again when you’re naturally hungry, wait until your body is ready for movement and be gentle with it and do something you enjoy. This will help you break the binge cycle for good.
3-Purging
Many people believe that purging (vomiting), after a meal will basically just get rid of it and it’ll be like it never happened. The physical and emotional consequences of repeatedly purging can be severe – destroying your dental health, vocal cords, and digestive tract, cause dehydration, low blood pressure, uncontrollable mood swings, anxiety, depression, and more – but one of the absolute worst side effects is that it perpetuates the binge cycle because you are not getting enough calories or nutrients.
Purging is tempting after eating a whole carton of ice cream, I know, but the consequences are simply not worth it. Instead of skipping meals, overexercising, or purging, try practicing mindfulness, working with a skilled therapist, or other stress reduction techniques to deal with the fear and emotional discomfort that surfaces after a binge.
If you’ve learned anything in this post, I hope it is that your goal now is not to undo that last particular binge, it’s to start changing your behaviors to break the entire cycle for good.
I know that fear that surfaces after a binge, I know it with every cell of my body and the urge to undo it is just as strong as the urge to eat in the first place. But if you truly want to break up with binge eating forever, drop the post-binge restriction, over exercising, or purging. Your body and mind will thank you and you will be on your way to a healthy, balanced relationship with food.
All my love,
Cina
by Cina Hoey | May 6, 2021 | Binge Eating
The #1 Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge Eating…
Here is the ultimate list of what NOT to do, or what you must finally let go of, if you are ready to stop binge eating. This is a series that will include a total of 11 posts, so be sure to tune in for all of the tips!
Restrictive dieting is without question the #1 thing you must stop doing in order to stop binge eating! Not convinced? What if I told you that dieting is said to be the #1 cause of weight gain?
WHAT?! You might be outraged right now. Good. Keep reading…
First, let me clarify what I consider “dieting.” Dieting is any form of restricting your caloric intake, or the types of foods you eat, in order to lose weight. Here are some examples:
Atkins, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Optavia, South Beach, Zone, Cabbage Soup Diet (EW – literally WTF?)
And yes also ones considered to be “lifestyle” changes like…
Whole 30, Paleo, Vegan, Keto, Raw Food
…can also be quite restrictive when we are healing from eating disorder behavior and I would consider them to be detrimental to truly healing your relationship with food and your body for the long haul. Do they work for many people? Absolutely. Are they right for you as you recover from binge and emotional eating? Probably not. I’ll expand this point further in a later article in this series.
And most definitely under the category of dieting are:
Counting points, counting calories, counting macronutrients, intermittent fasting (hint: I’ll talk a lot more about this too in a later article in this series!), and juice cleanses.
The main problem is that these diets, food rules, or sets of guidelines and rigid styles of eating are what distort our relationship with food to begin with and ultimately lead to binge eating.
We are taught by the diet industry to be afraid of food and that we can’t trust ourselves to make our own food choices, so we are given a prescription to follow (a diet), which inevitably fails (99% of diets do) and then we are left with shame, frustration, and the overwhelming desire to consume all of the snacks that were “off-limits” while we were dieting.
Then once we inevitably gain weight, we go back to the source – a new diet! – thinking this diet will be the one. This will work. I’ll keep it off this time. Sure I can cut out pizza, bread, and chocolate for 3 months, no problem. Broken down, the cycle looks like this:
You “stick to the diet” for a while -> you become fed up and lose your precious control -> you overeat everything you’ve been restricting because you missed it so much -> you gain more weight -> you then seek another diet
Does this cycle sound familiar?! What are we doing to ourselves? Wake up, babe!
THIS. DOES. NOT. WORK.
I would know! I did this for a number of years myself. I put my faith in the “experts” to tell me what to eat, how much, at what times, in what ratios, etcetera. I suffered in this “on the wagon/off the wagon” merry go round for years before I realized that I wasn’t actually the problem. That’s right! It turns out I’m not an insatiable beast that can’t be trusted around food. I finally understood that I am only human. And when ANY of us restrict ourselves from eating foods that are satisfying and enjoyable, try too hard to “stay inside the lines” of a diet for too long, or eat less than what we need, our body and mind rebel against that by bingeing and overeating. Your body is so brilliant that it comes equipped with the ability to detect when you are not eating enough to ensure your own survival.
If you are on a diet, you are at risk for consuming less than what your body requires, mimicking starvation, and your intelligent body will let you know by sending you very powerful urges to eat.
This is a massive topic I could write a lot more about, and I expand on it deeply in my Binge to Balance Program, but for now just know that the bottom line is this: If you are under-eating, fighting off this life-saving mechanism will likely feel impossible.
The main message of this entire article is that if you are binge eating or eating emotionally, start here and ditch the diet.
You may be asking yourself, well if I’m not supposed to diet, Cina, then what the hell am I supposed to eat? I’ve got you covered, friend. Keep reading the rest of the posts in this series and your new relationship with food will begin to unfold.
I know this is scary. When I stopped dieting I was terrified. I thought I’d gain 40 lbs. just thinking about it. And my clients in my Binge to Balance Group Coaching Program usually freak out when I say this too (and later are completely in love with it). I promise I am not leading you down a free-for-all rabbit hole. Because not dieting doesn’t mean you “eat anything and everything you want.” Keep reading to understand more of what NOT to do so you can finally feel balanced with food.
All my love,
Cina
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