This is a very natural and understandable question that I hear a lot:
How do you get through feeling a powerful binge urge without just giving in to it?
I get this, because I asked this exact question for many years. My mind wanted The Answer. It wanted The Right Steps. It wanted to know exactly what actions to take in order to get through urges “successfully” (i.e., without eating everything in my path).
The most honest answer I can give you is one a mind will initially reject:
I don’t know.
I know that seems unhelpful, but allow me to explain…
I don’t know what you will do. How could anyone know what will happen? Believing you know what will happen based on "evidence" from the past is understandable, but it is purely made of imagination. Isn't that the case with anything?
Your brain is not my brain; your body is not my body; your experiences are not my experiences. Or at least that’s how things appear to me on a relative human level. We all create entirely unique versions of the world through our thinking. An action that looks and feels helpful to you may be entirely useless to someone else. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be one single strategy-based formula that extinguishes a habit like binge eating.
With that in mind, I can tell you (briefly) about my own experience with how habitual binge eating exited my life. Please do not hang on the details; see what resonates, leave the rest:
🔸I ensured my basic nutritional needs were being met as not to set up a situation that may result in compensatory eating behaviors. Protein was very important.
🔸I developed an experimental plan that made sense to me at the time. Like a curious scientist, I kept data out of curiosity.
🔸I developed a simple set of post-binge guidelines to enact at any point a binge had occurred.
🔸 I immersed myself in the study of the brain and how habits like binge eating are formed and why they persist.
⭐️ I explored (and continue to explore) even further re: the nature of thought and who I really am. My understanding of how life works and what is available to me has fundamentally shifted. Words cannot adequately express this, but this shift feels like it has occurred on an energetic level.
🔸More practically, if/when an urge arises, because I understand exactly what it is, why it is happening, and that it is transient by nature, the urge itself doesn’t have the same charge it once did. I might eat. I might not. Either way, it doesn't feel like a huge problem or a huge victory.
But when urges felt VERY charged and EXCRUCIATING…
🔹I found that bringing my awareness INSIDE my body was very helpful.
🔹I focused my attention on my breathing. In and out. 😮💨
🔹I utilized various different breathing techniques to physiologically calm my body and tap into the parasympathetic nervous system. 🧘♀️
🔹I allowed my CURIOSITY about what feelings and sensations were showing up to guide me, as opposed to simply believing the panicked “I know EXACTLY what this is, and I HATE IT,” narrative my mind was playing.
🔹I welcomed in whatever feelings were there. I gave them explicit permission to be there and be felt. Why not? They were already there anyway!
🔹I realized, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is not possible to know exactly what’s going to happen. Ever. Being in a state of “I don’t know” is the most honest and powerful place from which to experience life.
🔹And if, after all of that, I ate, then I ate. Nothing personal or meaningful. Just years of habitual behavior playing out.
Look, I am not an expert on anything. I am simply someone who struggled for decades with binge eating who no longer struggles with it. I have shared some of my story, but it is just that, a STORY, told through the lens of my current thinking. It is not YOUR story, but take from it anything that is useful at this time.