Are you binge eating?
So what?
Understanding and managing your binge eating, you will:
- Feel less guilt about bingeing; and
- Take the first step to your goal (i.e. management or cessation).
Disclaimer
This blog post is about managing binge eating and not about cessation. I also would like to point out that I’m not a health expert. I’m sharing my personal experience on this topic. The focus of this post is about taking the first step of managing binge eating.
What is bingeing?
Bingeing is defined as “an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence or act of excessive and compulsive consumption”. As it relates to binge eating, it is the consumption of large amounts of food in one sitting which is followed by feeling out of control.
Why is bingeing bad?
Unmanaged binge eating leads to a slew of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and etc. There are other factors that make binge eating undesirable and harmful. Binge eating that is due to hidden and/or unmanaged biological, psychological, social disorders may magnify and exacerbate the underlying issues, symptoms and causes.
How do you stop bingeing?
To be honest, I don’t know yet. I’m in the process of managing and dealing with binge eating. I’ve yet to come up with a solution to the cessation of bingeing myself. What I can say is that anything worth achieving takes time and effort. And what I do know is that a viable approach, in short of cessation, is to manage and limiting it.
My experience
As I mentioned, I binge eat. I’m an emotional eater. I eat or have an urge to eat if I’m happy, excited, sad and anxious. For me, trying to stop bingeing always led to eating more. Once I acknowledged and accepted that I had a problem, I looked for ways to manage and limit my binge eating as opposed to attempting to stop my behaviour. What has been working for me in the last several years has been intermittent fasting whereby I limit my meals to two times a day within an 8-hour window.
What now?
- What do you binge on?
- Is your bingeing good or bad?
- Don’t feel guilty about your bingeing.
- Start managing it by accepting and acknowledging your binge.
- Consider checking out Allen Carr’s book on emotional eating, Easy Way To Quit Emotional Eating, to help you manage it.