1. Don’t Cut Out Food Groups

Foods aren’t good or bad. There is a place for all types of foods in a healthy diet. Some foods are great every day, some at every meal, some once or twice a week, and some are good once in a while.

It’s best not to try to cut out foods or entire food groups completely out of your diet, unless you have a medical condition or an allergy. Making food forbidden makes you want it more and sets you up to feel guilt and shame when you eat these foods, which often leads to bingeing on them and then even stricter dieting to undo the damage of the binge. This cycle can go on for years and cause great emotional and physical damage.

2. Practice the 80/20 Principle.

If you eat healthy most of the time (80%) then you can allow room (20%) for treats, birthdays, holidays, and other indulgences. This philosophy helped me to move away from the strict black and white diet thinking that helped cause my own binge eating problem many decades ago. I still practice this today.

3. Know Your Triggers.

If you’re prone to bingeing, the first step is to become aware of what is triggering your binges. You need to keep a mood journal to track your emotions and responses. If you binge, you need to reflect on the thoughts, feelings, and events that led up to the binge. 

4. Stop dieting.

If you have a bingeing problem, your focus shouldn’t be on trying to lose weight. Your focus needs to be on normalizing your eating first and working with your triggers, emotions, and relationship with food. Most people lose weight as a result of doing this anyway because they are no longer taking in large quantities of food. Don’t try to restrict your food after bingeing. This will only serve to keep you in the restricting/overeating cycle.

5. Learn to tolerate and process difficult emotions.

Many people binge because they are overwhelmed by strong emotions. It takes practice to hang out with uncomfortable feelings. When you do, you learn that feelings are temporary and they will pass. You realize your world won’t end and you’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for.

If you’re triggered by uncomfortable feelings, you can sit with them and breathe until they dissipate, or you can process them by writing in a journal, or by talking to a supportive friend. Some may be so strong that you may need to distract yourself: by going for a walk, or doing something on the computer, or some other activity until the feelings pass.

6. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is being fully present in the moment. It’s only by practicing  being mindful in the moment that you can learn to be aware of what you’re feeling and needing in the moment. Mindfulness gives you the chance to pause and choose another response.

When you practice mindfulness, you can decide if you’re actually hungry or if you’re wanting to eat in order to meet an emotional need. Eating for emotional reasons never leaves you satisfied and it keeps you stuck in a vicious cycle of always wanting more. You need to become willing to meet your emotional needs in a more constructive manner.

7. Practice Surfing Your Urges

Practice riding out urges and temptations. Urges to binge will pass (usually in about 20 minutes). The urge will crest like a wave, then subside. When you ride out the urge, you see that just because you have an urge, you don’t have to act on it. Surfing your urges teaches you to separate the urge from the behavior which gives you much more control over food and your impulses.

8. Practice Self-Compassion

Beating yourself up for your bingeing and/or overeating leads to shame, guilt, and more overeating. When you’re compassionate with yourself, it’s easier to move on and move forward quickly without getting bogged down in a spiral of shame and guilt. Bingeing is a misguided way of taking care of yourself. Until you become more practiced with better coping skills, it will be your default behavior.

When stressed, we humans tend to regress back to our default coping behaviors. Be kind to yourself. You’re doing the best you can with what you know how to do. Beating yourself up only makes the problem worse. Get curious about your binges: what triggers them, and find better ways to respond to the situations that provoke the binges.

Bingeing and food obsession is a terrible waste of time and life energy. That energy could be better spent on creating a life that nourishes you on all levels. I have found this is what allows you to leave emotional eating behind for good. Creating a nourishing life is the ultimate goal of my work and my wish for everyone I work with.