Why Binging Has Little to Do With Food

I help women overcome overeating. We talk about their thoughts, about the benefits they get from food, about their triggers, and patterns, and what they're really looking for, and parts of themselves they've been ignoring. We create an hour each week where they get some perspective, focus on their needs, tap into their resourceful and creative state instead of powerless ones.

We don't talk about food.

I would like to suggest they eat more whole fruits and vegetables, cut out the processed foods, stay away from sugar. But binging can't be solved by controlling food, or writing out a meal plan and 'sticking to it' (as one doctor suggested I do, as if I wasn't trying that daily already).

Because before we can talk about food we have to let go of the belief that if we just ate better, we'd find peace. We have to agree that using willpower and control will not solve binge eating, nor is it the missing piece. Counting calories and adding greens to our diet will not fulfill the deeper cravings we have inside of us to feel secure, safe, protected, connected, and loved.

In the beginning, your binging started as a way to find peace within a chaos you couldn't manage. And now it's a habit, a strong pathway in your brain that is wired for repetition, seeking a reward that is no longer rewarding. It's not that you messed up, or lost control, or chose the wrong foods again. It's that you're caught in a pattern that is so deeply rooted in your brain, because at some point it worked for you and gave you what you needed.

But it doesn't serve you any more, or give you the reward it once did.

So please, let's not worry about the food. Let it go. Let's instead tap into what benefit you once got out of binging, appreciate that, and move on to the strategies to overcoming the habit of it. Because you're not flawed, or unmotivated, or weak. You're just caught, still looking for peace, in the way you once found it.