To start with a disclaimer: If you are diagnosed with binge-eating disorder or suspect you could be, please see a doctor and work with them. I am not a doctor. Medical school is way too expensive for me.

Binge-cycles. Even if we aren’t diagnosable binge eaters, most of us who struggle with our weight and eating also struggle with binges. Be it an entire pizza, or supersizing the McDonalds meal we are getting for lunch, and then going back home and eating a few slices of cake, something about eating way too much can be cathartic, satisfying, and even heavenly. It doesn’t matter if the food isn’t actually good for me or if consuming enough calories to out-eat Michael Phelps isn’t going to serve our health goals- that food, in that moment, is all we want.

And even if this doesn’t happen to us often, a slip-up by slipping an entire pizza into our stomachs can really trip us up on our journey to better health and lower weight. In the past, I’ve looked at a binge-day and thought, “well, the next few days I’ll just cut my calories further and work out extra.” (Not a good idea). Or, I’ll feel my stomach’s uncomfortable fullness and think, “I’ve already messed up. Again. No point in trying to salvage this.” (Also not a good idea).

Regardless of what your instinct is in the aftermath of the binge, there are some real ways to combat this and reshape your relationship with yourself (and food) so that these instances happen less often, and so they don’t derail you to one extreme or the other.

First: Do not make big changes to your plans because of a binge.
I’ll just make up the calories by eating 800 cal/day the rest of the week. I’ll workout on my usual off day. No snacks. No eating out.

In theory, this could make up for the calories consumed. In practice, it does nothing to actually help you maintain your goals and build your good habits. And, after restricting your calories further and working out extra hard, you know what you’re gonna feel? That’s right, hungry. You’re gonna be so hungry. And if anything is going to trigger more binge-eating, it’s feeling like your starving. Also, guilt is a trigger for tons of people. Punishing yourself (even if you’re not thinking about it that way) doesn’t help you build positive habits that will combat these moments of weakness. Let’s be honest; if it didn’t work last time, it probably won’t work this time either. That’s okay. Overeating isn’t a sign of moral weakness. It’s a bad habit that we’ve developed for one reason or another, and it isn’t a sign that you’re a bad, weak, cowardly person because you’re following learned behavior patterns. It means you’re a human, not a robot. (If you’re a robot reading this, please tell me how you got past the captcha?)

Second: Do not give up just because you had a bad meal, bad day, or bad week.
I’ve eaten 3,000 calories for lunch. I hate myself. I disgust myself. I will never succeed in weight-loss. I might as well just eat this donut because I’ve already blown my day. Hell, I’ve already ruined my week. I’m fat. I will always be fat. Diets don’t work for me.

Stop right there, self-loather. You’re right, you ate too much. As previously mentioned, this is not a sign of weak moral character. It’s a signed of a bad habit that was learned because of any number of or combination of reasons. If you struggle with your internal monologue being very negative, that’s another issue that I’ll address in another post. Right now, we’re going to zero in on that “all or nothing” thinking.

Someone on Reddit once said something like, “If you drove over a nail and got a flat tire, would you try to patch the tire up or would you slash the other three?” Of course you wouldn’t slash the others. Tires are expensive. But that mindset of sabotaging your chances of getting out of a bad situation with relative ease is just going to leave you stranded. This is a delay on the way to your goal, not a reason to change destinations. Like I said before, don’t change your plans. Eat your dinner as normal. Work out as normal. Ingrain in yourself the positive habits you’ve been working on by keeping at them in the face of a mess-up. You ate 3,000 calories? That’s not even a pound! You’re gonna be losing way more than one pound on this journey. Eat your broccoli, drink some water, get some sleep. Even after you work your way to goal weight, you will have days that you eat over maintenance. It’s much better to develop a healthy/normalized way of dealing with those instances now so that when you reach maintenance (and you will), you don’t have to suddenly re-invent yourself and your habits.

Third: Don’t ask yourself why you couldn’t stop the binge. Ask yourself what happened in the days leading up to the binge.
Did I eat three burgers because I just felt like it? Or did something else go wrong before I ordered three McDoubles? How did I get here?

How did we get here? Not ” how did we literally end up at McDonalds scanning their dollar menu for a quick fix?” But what happened today, yesterday, the day before that may have contributed to the sheer amount of grease I’ve just consumed.
For me, lack of good sleep, lack of hydration, and social outings (that usually included alcohol) were all factors that I could both identity and work on changing. Feeling emotional stress, being around foods my lizard brain can’t say “no” to, and monthly cycle were factors I could identify but that weren’t totally in my control to change.

The thing about binging is, as we try to combat it, it doesn’t do us any real long-term good to focus only on the physical act of eating more than we should. Even if, through tyranny of our willpower, are able to stop ourselves, just stopping the binge doesn’t really build our life up in a healthy way. It doesn’t give us good habits to replace bad ones with. And it doesn’t get to the root of the issue that got us to that point anyhow.


Fourth: I’ve made note of the issues. I know I have issues. Now use this knowledge for good.
Great, now I feel dumb for not sleeping, and not drinking water. And I feel bad for eating so much. If I couldn’t get a handle on these problems before I felt like a beached whale, how am I supposed to now?
Here’s the cold, hard, and unhappy truth: You will not solve these problems quickly. If it was easy to make these changes, you’d probably already have done it. Not to mention, we identified issues that we can’t control. So how does knowing the triggers for a binge do anything but make me feel more guilty that I have apparently set myself up for?

So here is where a mantra of “I’m not just doing this because I don’t want to be fat. I’m doing this because I want to be better.” comes in handy.

Drinking water, eating enough good food, and getting enough sleep are all important, dare I say vital, parts of really living healthily. And maybe this is all about weightloss right now and you figure you’re going to get right on the “healthy living” stuff once your weight is where you’re wanting it. But the reason so many people succeed in losing weight but are not succeeding in keeping that weight off is because when they hit goal weight, they don’t have the habits or skill set to transition a period of cutting calories into a lifetime of maintaining weight. If you want to go through the effort to hit the weight you want to be at, give yourself a fighting chance at actually surviving past your initial success by figuring out how to support weight-loss and weight maintenance with your lifestyle and your choices.

We can talk about how to implement these changes and how to outsmart ourselves when it comes to these ingrained poor habits, but the tips and tricks only work when we do the work. If there was a quick easy fix, you’d have done it already. Everyone would have.

But what about the things we can’t control?

The best advice I have for the things we cannot control is to take some advice from the annoying serenity prayer, and accept the damn things we can’t change but change the damn things we can. I didn’t say accept your reaction to those things! I said to accept the things.

You’re gonna have bad days at work. Breakups will happen. Pets will pass away. And no amount of Taco Bell is ever really gonna to make a difference. The part we have control of is our reaction to the sad, depressed, frustrated feelings. It will not happen overnight, but if you can find something that isn’t food and that does make you happy, learn to rely on that. Take note of Elle Woods who gets her nails done when she’s feeling down. Go to Barnes and Noble and buy yourself a new coloring book and a latte. Do a face mask and take a nap. Anything that has made you happy that isn’t food. The further away from food you are when you try to pick yourself up this way, the better. You deserve better than to drown out the bad feelings with carbs. Don’t hurt yourself just because you are hurting.

Last: Even if you change your habits, you will not be able to implement these skills in every binge-potential situation.

Sure, I can give myself non-food related mood-boosters and I can prioritize sleep. But what happens next time I’m invited to a game night and I am surrounded by potato chips and pizza? Is that when I try that will-power stuff?

If a conversation about will-power is ever going to happen, now is the time. Yes, this is where will-power around food becomes a little more important than in the situations mentioned before. However, I’m not gonna lie to you and say you’ve just got to power through these events and hope for the best. You can give yourself some lifelines to give yourself a fighting chance.

If you’re gonna eat it all in one sitting, don’t buy it. You will not control yourself this time.

If most of your social outings revolve around food, think through a game plan before you show up. Look at the online menus, decide not to get the appetizer, the fries, and four drinks. If you’re bringing snack to a game night, bring snacks that you like and that you can eat tons of without hurting yourself. If you can’t stop yourself from eating 50 potato chips, after you eat one, don’t eat one.

Even better, find social events that don’t involve food. FB is a treasure trove of things happening that you can drag your friends to. My local state park does monthly guided hikes. There are art studios that do painting nights. I don’t live in a big city and I was floored at how many non-food related social options there.

Last: There is no magic cure. Do your honest best and be kind to yourself.

I was doing really well for months and then I just snapped and felt right back into my old habits. I feel like I will never really get a handle on this.

Maybe you won’t ever completely fix the issue. It might not ever stop. But the more space you can put in between binges and the more positive habits you can build up as you work on it, the better off you will be in the long run. A healthy life is not compiled of perfect control over every bad inclination we might have. It’s doing our best to improve ourselves and learning to love ourselves through our own shitty choices.

If you hate yourself for making bad choices and mistakes, you’re not gonna suddenly love yourself just because you fixed one bad habit. No one ever loathed themselves into an better place.

You can do this.

If it was a quick an easy fix you would have done it already.

It isn’t about the binge. It wasn’t ever really about the binge. It’s about sustainable and healthy habits that can be developed to off-set our moments of weakness so that those moments simply matter less.