The Power of Choice When Healing Patterns of Binge Eating

When you feel the urge to binge or emotionally eat, it can feel like you have no other option but to do it. The urge to self-soothe with food can feel like someone else has inhabited your body, you have disappeared and taken a vacation somewhere else. As you eat more and more and your body sensations grow of perhaps feeling bloated, uncomfortable, and overly full, is when you might come back into your body and wonder

What just happened, where did you go?

You have maybe been engaging in this food coping mechanism for decades of your life and so it will take time to shift this behavior. It has been supporting you in so many different ways.

Many of you have heard my story of how my first year of Graduate School for my Masters in Somatic Psychotherapy was an intense experience that I found myself leaning on food to process everything that was coming up at that time of my life. The summer after my first year of school, I met my now-husband Ethan. He was dropping me off at my apartment one night after a date and so many emotions were arising. I turned to him and told him I wanted to eat an entire jar of almond butter. And yes, I literally meant a whole jar of almond butter.

In my previous tellings of this story, I have never explained, why almond butter? When I worked at an outpatient eating disorder clinic there was a rule that when in groups a person was not supposed to say the foods they engaged in their patterns with. This could lead to comparison or shame or guilt for another individual around things like "should" they be eating that food or wow they maybe engage in their behaviors with such different foods. So I've always been a little apprehensive about naming the foods I would choose to support myself emotionally. If you follow me on social media, I often say in my posts, fill in the blank food here, so that you can insert what it is that you're navigating in your relationship with specific foods.

At that time my binge eating was at its peak, I was also trying to heal my gut and I knew there were some foods that resonate with my body more than others. I want to normalize how complicated it can feel when you're in patterns of utilizing food to self-soothe and then trying to support your body in digesting that food with as much ease as possible when you sense your digestion is struggling.

It can feel confusing and I want to name that if this is you, you're doing the best you can.

Anyways, Ethan looked at me with compassionate understanding and said, "what would happen if you didn’t reach for the almond butter jar?" At that time, choosing to binge on food almost every night had simply become a pattern. I had no other choice but to engage in this behavior. It honestly felt weird on nights that I didn't do this food behavior like something was missing. In sharing this story recently, it hit me that I have been teaching those I work with for a while now how important it is to remember that you have a choice in the midst of your binge eating or emotional eating urges. What Ethan offered me that night was a choice, something that I had forgotten that I had.

Binge eating or emotional eating might have come into your life to give you the sense that something was in your control. This can sometimes be a response to past trauma or situations that took away your experience of control, safety, and choice. So what can be perceived as in your control? When you eat. How much you eat. What you eat. Food can be a powerful placeholder to experience everything that was disrupted in your body the moment your body encountered a traumatic event and was not supported in processing it through your body. This is also why changing patterns of binge eating can feel so hard because eating has supported you and protected you in so many ways. You wouldn't have continued this behavior if it wasn't at some point really effective. What you may notice over time though, is that these food behaviors aren't leaving you how you want to feel long term.

So, a part of healing these food behaviors is reminding yourself that you have a choice.

Choice can be empowering. You're the one who gets to decide how you want to respond to your food urges. Choice can be curiosity producing. Curiosity can provide space for you to explore what food or non-food actions are going to leave you feeling safe. Choice is regulating. Reflecting on your possible choices can bring you into a closer relationship with yourself, something that you may have been looking toward food to do.

If you have some time right now, take out a piece of paper, a journal, a word document, or a new note on your phone, and start writing out your possible choices of what leaves you feeling safe, connected, regulated, calm, relaxed, peaceful, at ease in non-food ways. When you notice that the urge arise to go reach for food when you're not physically hungry, practice pausing and reminding yourself that you have a choice. You can reference this list and experiment and try something new. It may feel uncomfortable at first not binge eating or not emotionally eating and that is alright. You can keep showing up for yourself again and again and practice choosing something new. It will feel different over time.

As a reminder, you don't have to navigate this journey on your own. If you're ever looking for more support, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime.