Many people who are in recovery from binge eating, food addiction or emotional eating stay at the superficial level, as in not obsessing about food or not bingeing. While it is important to overcome binge eating, to get food addiction help and to find freedom from emotional eating, but your unwanted behaviors can also be seen as the gateway for a deeper understanding of yourself and your eating addiction—not just an end result.
The ultimate goal of healing from binge eating, food addiction or emotional eating is to find soul satisfaction, to awaken to who you truly are—seeing yourself, your flaws, and your mistakes with compassion.
In this podcast, you will learn:
1. What it means to be conscious / woke and what that has to do with binge eating.
2. 3 Steps you can take to improve your physical well being.
3. How to stop focusing on being perfect and start living again.
More from Dr. Ross:
Check out my TEDxPleasantGrove talk on Intergenerational trauma here: https://youtu.be/ljdFLCc3RtM
To schedule a free consult with Dr. Ross – https://findingyouranchor.as.me/consult
Hi everyone it’s Dr. Carolyn, today I’m bringing you part 2 of why am I binging more during the quarantine. We’re going be talking about some of the ways to show up and things you can do about it. Stay tuned!
Okay. So last week I talked about prioritizing your mental well-being as a way to reduce the binging you’re having during the quarantine, the pandemic binge. So we know many people who are in recovery from binge eating disorder, food addiction, and emotional eating tend to stay more at the superficial level, as in not obsessing about food and not bingeing. And while abstinence from behaviors is really important, it should be seen also as a gateway for a deeper understanding of yourself and your addiction. Not just an end result. So in other words, it’s about using the things that are in your life to take you deeper into understanding yourself and your bingeing behaviors.
The ultimate goal of healing from binge eating disorder, food addiction, or emotional eating is to find soul satisfaction to awaken. As I say, to awaken, to who you truly are, your authentic self. Being able to really see yourself with your flaws, your mistakes, everything with compassion. And if you think about it, that’s not something that many people with eating and body image issues do. They tend to see themselves mainly as their flaws. In other words, see themselves as being the person who is not the size. They want to be the person who is continues to have bingeing behaviors it’s not perfect and what they eat. So it’s all about what you’re not, and I’m really talking about finding out who you are, not who you are not, and being able to accept and see that person with compassion.
So one of the hallmarks of addiction is that that substances. That are put in front of everything else, whether that be food or alcohol or drugs. Now you may feel like, or behaviors, I should say too. You may feel like you’re putting yourself first by obsessing about food and about your body. But actually it’s more likely that you’re putting your appearance first and using food to satisfy cravings first. What would it look like to prioritize your own wellbeing first? Well, last week we talked about, prioritizing your mental wellbeing.
And today we’re going to talk about prioritizing your physical wellbeing. Now you may not have thought about what makes you feel good physically for a long time. From the medical standpoint, it’s pretty simple. The physical body needs to feel good needs to have enough energy needs to have nourishment.
So it’s not running on fumes, some type of movement and rest and relaxation, pretty simple, huh, but not necessarily easy. So think about how your body feels when you’re stressed out and exhausted. I can tell you for a fact that I’ve had that extreme it’s the lately last week I had a day where my neck was so tight, I could barely move my neck, I’m sorry, where my neck was so tight, I could barely move it and my shoulders felt like rocks. So maybe for you, you have the same symptoms or you might have heart palpitations or your muscles may feel tight. These are just examples of your body not feeling so good. Another example is how your body feels when you’ve skipped meals all day. Do you get a headache or feel dizzy or lightheaded? Do you feel tired or irritable? So, I know many people that I work with in the anchor program, have the habit of either consciously or unconsciously skipping meals. So what I mean by unconscious skipping meals, that’s like, Oh, I worked straight through lunch. I didn’t even remember that I was supposed to eat lunch or I was rushing so much in the morning to get everything done. I didn’t have time for breakfast. And a lot of people feel that that’s an okay behavior or that’s something that is supportive of them and really what it is, is diet thinking.
It’s the diet mentality that thinks if we can just eat less and just skip meals, then maybe things will change for us. So what I’m trying to refocus you on is not that number on the scale, not that desire to continue to live from the diet mentality, hoping that this time it’ll work or this time things will be different. But really to refocus on what’s happening in your body and prioritizing your physical wellbeing. So this, so this will help you learn important skills and be more aware of what’s going on in your body and this awareness will enable you to make choices that will assist your recovery and improve your physical wellbeing.
So here are some tips that you can use that will help you with that:
First of all, get enough rest.
Now lack of sleep is by itself associated with emotional eating and food cravings. Most people need seven to nine hours sleeping or sleep a night. But I have so many of my patients in the ankle program who are proud of the fact that they only sleep four or five hours a night, where you may be able to get away with that for, I don’t know, years. But at some point, you’re going to have to pay the Piper and how you pay the Piper is your body will have a lot of wear and tear. You may get sick more frequently. You may not have the energy. You need to do all the things you want to do, but somehow your body will let you know that it needs more rest. So why not just give it what it needs? Huh? I can’t tell you how much you need, but I can tell you that the studies show that 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night is about average for what you need to be healthy. But you need to pay attention to how you feel physically when you wake up in the morning. And then that will give you a good idea of whether you’ve gotten enough sleep or not. And also if you’re waking up feeling tired, even after you’ve slept enough, you should definitely consult with the health care provider or ask for a referral to a sleep specialist. And the same goes, if you’re having trouble falling or staying asleep. So getting enough rest I know it sounds stupidly simple and yet very, very few of my patients in the anchor program take it seriously and I can’t tell you enough how big of a difference it will make in your ability. It’s even not an ability to resist binging It’s really more in your body reaching a balance where it doesn’t really require binging.
The second thing is to nourish your body.
Another wak wak. Oh, we’ve heard this before. Okay. Well, let me tell you my take on it. You’ve learned a lot about eating from many of the podcasts I’ve talked about. What I’d like now is to point you to what the future of eating in recovery can look like. Now this is based on my experience of working with people in my anchor program who have food addiction, emotional eating, binge eating disorder, and I’ve worked with some of them for extended periods of time. I had one group in the anchor program that we’re together for five years. So I have an and many who were together for a year or more. So I have a fair amount of experience in this field. Some people even call me an expert. So here are some of the observations of what people do to nourish their bodies when they’re in recovery. Number one, people who are well into recovery eat because they are hungry. Okay. Now this one is a landmine because, again, many patients in the anchor program come to me and say, well, I didn’t eat breakfast cause I’m just never hungry in the morning. I’m just never hungry in the morning. Your body will not give you hunger cues if it knows you won’t respond to them, it’s kinda like, the body is knocking on that brick wall over and over saying I’m hungry and eventually it just says, she’s not going to give us anything, we might as well just shut up. So in order to restore your hunger cues, you really need to eat on the clock. So every four hours or so three meals and one snack, even if it’s just a small thing you say you’re not hungry for breakfast. Okay. Just have coffee and a piece of toast with peanut butter on it. if you’re, if you don’t want that, just have a yogurt with some fruit in it, just choose something small to give your body hope that it can start to trust you again.
The second thing is longterm recovered people eat foods they really love and foods that make them feel good, physically. Now you may need to have some structure around what you eat, as I just mentioned when you’re new in recovery, but over time you can learn to listen to how the food you eat makes you feel. Do you feel tired after you eat certain foods or do you feel energized? Do you feel light and free when you eat these foods or do you feel bogged down and sleepy? So this is all a process, obviously. It’s not perfect. I’ve said that many times. But it does call you to wake up to what is going on below the neck. Another thing is people in longterm recovery no longer choose what to eat based on calories. What makes them fill up fast or whether food is quote unquote good or bad? The physical body is an amazing organism. Honestly, it’s an, I’m a doctor. You can trust me. That’s a physical body can tell you everything you need to know. If you’re paying attention, you will learn how to work with instead of against your body’s needs.
Okay. So, so far we talked about getting enough rest and nourishing your body. The final one is another one I’m sure you’ve heard many times. Move your body, move your body. Your body wants to be in motion, doing something it loves you may or may not consider yourself an athletic person, or maybe you considered yourself an athletic person when you were younger.
But someone told you that because of your size, you couldn’t be an athletic person. So this is where again, we’re going deeper and asking ourselves, do you still believe something, someone told you when you were 9 or 10 or 13 or 15, do you still believe that instead of value that fits for you. You didn’t have a choice to believe many times when you’re a kid, but you do have a choice now as an adult. So can you walk to get your coffee in the morning rather than driving when you’re at work? Can you take the stairs rather than the elevator? That’s all simple stuff, people, but beyond this. The most important thing is to stop either punishing yourself with exercise or rewarding yourself with exercise. The punishment is, or I had a binge so now I’ve got to work it off in the gym or the reward is, well, I was good today. So, you know, maybe I can skip exercise or maybe I can exercise a half hour or less. Anyway the main thing is it’s not about what you do. It’s about doing, finding something to do that you really enjoy, and it may be something weird that you never even thought about. I don’t know if Itold you guys, but when I was a little bit younger, my son got me interested in Taekwondo and I ended up getting a black belt in Taekwondo. I never would have expected to love Taekwondo, but I did and more recently, I really love Pilates. So these are things I do because I love to do. And because I love to do them and they’re easy for me to get myself to do. So it’s, it’s really important. You know, I have friends who do aerial silk workouts. You guys probably know about that. I didn’t know about it. It’s a great workout apparently. I’ve also done boxing, which by the way, wow. What a workout, sweaty city and really cool. So think outside the box, don’t keep going to the Stair Master again, find something you love. Think about what you love to do as a kid, did you used to like to swim or ride a bike around your neighborhood? Whatever moves you, whatever you feel attracted to, you should try. And if you’re worried about maybe being self-conscious or embarrassed, maybe you can get a friend to go with you, or you can take a one on one class first. Whichever makes you more comfortable. The goal is just to sit less, move more. And during this time , I know for myself, I’m not even close to getting my steps in because I have to sit mostly so the day to do my work. So it’s really important to during this period of time to find things, to do that make you feel good.
Being about being healthy is about having a body that supports you in everything you want to do. And for this to happen, you do have to pay attention to your body. Your body needs those things I’ve mentioned nutrients arrest and some type of movement. It’s not asking for much, but just wants to be provided with the chance to show you how great it feels to take care of yourself. So your homework, if you choose is to accept it is to imagine a future you living life without food addiction, binge eating or emotional eating. So just think of what does that person look like? How do they dress? What kinds of things do they do for fun? Who do they hang out with? What career are they in? Just let your imagination go wild and imagine that future you, cause it’s coming.
To help you we have a new anchor program coming, and if you’re interested, you can look in the notes for this podcast to click on the link and get a free consult to find out whether the anchor program is right for you. The next program coming up will be. Did you plan for your next relapse? And that’s kind of a hot, hot topic because a lot of people don’t want to think that they’re ever going to have a relapse, but relapse has happened, you know what they say? So I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope you’ll think about the things that will help you to go deeper and if you need the help reach out and explore the options available to you in the upcoming anchor program. Dr. Carolyn signing out. Thanks.
