Do you ever find yourself feeling a little too full to the point of feeling physically uncomfortable?? Or feel like you can’t help yourself from eating even though you’re not hungry? Or perhaps there are times when you feel a loss of control around food and you can’t stop yourself from bingeing? Over eating and binge eating can feel like one of the most frustrating and defeating experiences. A constant loss of control around food can leave you feeling disconnected from your body. Not to mention the negative self-talk that comes after. The good news is there’s a way out of this cycle! Here are 6 tips to help stop over eating and binge eating.
The words overeating and binge get thrown out a lot. I’ve heard a lot of people refer to an eating experience as overeating, when they mean they’ve eaten an amount of food that’s more than an amount they believe they should’ve eaten. So I think it’s important to clarify the true definitions and characteristics of what it means to overeat and binge.
What is considered “over eating”?
Overeating is consuming more food than your body needs, making you feel physically uncomfortably full. What it’s NOT is thinking you ate more than you “should” based on how much you think you “should” be eating, like a suggested serving size. Remember, that “should” is stemming from a diet belief picked up somewhere in life, which suggests you can’t trust your body to control itself around food or trust it to be able to self-regulate. So, therefore you need to rely on rules and portion sizes.
We all overeat at times. And here’s the thing – overeating is not a crime! It’s very normal to overeat on occasion. Despite it being an uncomfortable and maybe an unpleasant experience, it’s going to happen from time to time. Why? Because we are human and we are not perfect. Maybe you’ve misjudged your hunger. Or maybe your meal at a fav restaurant was so tasty that you wanted to experience a couple more bites even though you’re already full. This doesn’t make you a bad person or a failure, it doesn’t mean you will automatically gain weight, and it doesn’t make or break your health (which is too often what wellness culture wants you to believe).
What is binge eating?
A binge is characterized by recurrent episodes of eating large quantities of food (often in a discrete period of time and to the point of feeling physically uncomfortably full) and it’s accompanied with feeling of a loss of control during the binge (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating). As well as intense shame, distress and guilt afterward. A binge eating disorder diagnosis may be made if someone experiences a binge on average at least once a week for three months. However, it’s possible to experience binge eating without a diagnosis. And it’s possible for an eating experience to end in physical discomfort without is turning into a binge.
Regardless, if you’re struggling with binge eating or consistent overeating, these 6 tips will be helpful no matter where you fall on the spectrum.
6 Tips to Help You Stop Over Eating & Binge Eating
1. Eat Forbidden Foods
Do you have foods that you avoid? Maybe ice cream is off limits? Or perhaps cake is only reserved for special occasions? The issue with these scenarios is when there are restrictions and set limitations around certain foods the more exciting those foods become. And the more you make a food “off-limits” the higher up on a pedestal it goes. This can make you increasingly more hyperaware, hypersensitive and focused to the allure of those foods. And it becomes EXTRA rewarding and exciting when you allow yourself to eat it. And when restraint is broken, all bets are off. Any intentions of “being good” go out the window and all or nothing eating sets in. Better eat as much as you can while you can – tomorrow begins a new day to make up for it and the forbidden foods will be off limits once again.
It’s this all-or-nothing pattern of eating that contributes to overconsumption of food. And it’s not until those “off-limit” foods become normalized as just another food in your eating world, that it becomes less exciting and enticing. So how is this achieved? You have to eat them. This might sound scary for a lot of reasons (another post for another TBD time), but try to intentionally incorporate these foods into your eating. And try eating them at times when you’re not overly hungry. For instance, after you’ve had lunch try eating a cookie. Or have some chips with your planned snack of carrots and hummus. Legalizing food choices through this practice removes the thill and urgency of eating forbidden foods. And with any practice, it takes time, patience and self-compassion.
2. Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Overly Hungry
When your body is not adequately nourished with energy and carbs, you can trigger a primal drive to eat and then overeat. Regardless if going too long without eating is intentional or unintentional, when your body is underfed eating becomes an experience where you’re going to shovel it down and eat anything in front of you, feel overly full and then likely feel guilty about it after. It becomes very unlikely to eat in an intentional, moderate and conscious manner when hunger reaches a monstrous state.
Tune into hunger: One of the most important skills in learning to nourish your body is to learn how to listen to your body’s hunger and fullness signals. It’s through getting to know your body’s cues that will help guide you on what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. The first step is to get to know what the nuanced levels of hunger and fullness feel like in your body. Check in with your body many times throughout the day. And not just your stomach. Hunger can show up in many ways: energy level, mood, thoughts about food, cloudy thinking, etc.
A helpful tool for understanding your hunger is a rating scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is painful and extreme hunger and 10 is painful fullness. Try rating your hunger levels based on hunger cues to help you determine when you should eat.
For example:
Maybe you start thinking about food, which could indicate you might be subtly hungry and ready to to eat a meal soon. Or perhaps your stomach is feeling very empty and your thoughts are a little cloudy and scattered, which might give you insight into what it means to feel very hungry. And perhaps you noted these feelings but did not eat in a timely manner. So you experienced eating in an urgent manner to the point of feeling overly full.
Take note of these experiences and use them to guide future eating. Remember, instead of going down the doom spiral of shame for eating too much, use these eating experiences as opportunities to learn.
I use a hunger discovery scale guide when I’m working with clients. You can download it for free by clicking below. Use it to help you get to know what varying levels of hunger and fullness feel like to you.
Plan to have food available: Have you ever come home hungry from a busy day at work to an empty fridge and pantry? There’s no time to go to the store so you order out. But even that takes time for delivery. And by the time it gets to your door, you’re ready to face plant into it’s goodness? There’s a whole lot to be said about being prepared for hunger. This could mean making sure you have readily and easily preparable food at home, making sure you take enough food with you to work or school or packing snacks for longer road trips or flights.
Balance your meals: Each macronutrient (fat, protein and carbohydrate) serves a purpose. Whether it be for providing energy or helping keep us full. If we continuously eat a diet that is too low in energy or low in nutrients that help with satiety, then satisfying the body becomes unlikely and overeating becomes more likely. This is because if the body is being fed foods low in energy and nutrients, it can take way more food to fill that energy and nutrient void it seeks.
A balanced plate also helps with regulating blood sugar. A diet lacking in carbs can lead to fluctuations in blood sugar, not to mention sugar cravings. Including balance (protein, fat and fiber) at meals helps slow the release of glucose from carbs into your bloodstream, which is helpful for keeping the mechanisms that control blood sugar healthy and functioning.
What this doesn’t mean is that every single meal has to be balanced – try not to turn it into a rule. Because the reality is not all meals will be balanced and not all days will have balanced meals. Balanced eating is about aiming to meet energy and nutrient needs, satiety, and satisfaction at most of your meals. And it’s about being flexible and consistent over time – it’s not about eating perfect all of the time.
3. Minimize Distractions When Eating
One of the simplest reasons you might be overeating is distractions. Where is your mind at when you’re eating a meal? On your phone? Zoning out on the TV? At your work desk? Ruminating over thoughts? Rushing from one task to the next? It’s hard to be present during an eating experience when your mind isn’t in the present with you.
When you remove distractions from your meals, you’re more conscious of the experience of the food – how it tastes, how it feels in your body, how you’re enjoying it, how it’s hitting that satisfaction spot, and how it’s affecting your hunger and fullness.
While it’s not always easy or even possible to remove ALL distractions from eating (because let’s get real, life), start by removing one or two distractions during the week so you can practice being fully mindful and present. And possibly work towards removing more as it makes sense for your life.
4. Stop Labeling Food as Good And Bad
Have you ever had thoughts like “I shouldn’t eat that but I’m going to be bad anyway’“ or “I want a burger but I’ll be good and order a salad instead”? Those are examples of mental restriction. Labeling foods as good or bad is born out of food rules that we have created or picked up over time through our diet culture. These thoughts reinforce that we can’t “trust ourselves” around food because it leads us to anticipate restriction, and therefore we binge or eat past comfortable fullness.
Even if you’re not physically restricting food and are adequately nourishing your body, any type of mental restriction around food can still cause cravings, overeating and binge eating. A lot of the time we don’t even realize there’s mental restriction going on. This is because a lot of it happens in the subconscious. A good way to know if there’s mental restriction going on is if you feel stress or guilt over food and eating.
5. Meet Your Basic Needs
Are you getting enough sleep? Do you manage stress okay? What are you doing to take care of yourself? These are important questions because it can be difficult to hear hunger cues, let alone respond to them in a timely manner if you are living a chaotic and demanding life. It’s easy to be swept away with lots of daily obligations, juggling work projects, chasing toddlers, etc. Stress can shut down hunger and if you’re chronically sleep deprived whether from stress or staying up late on social media – it can affect your ability to be in touch with your hunger and fullness.
What can you do to attend to your most basic physical, emotional, relationship and spiritual needs? How can you get enough sleep? Do you need to change the shape of your daily routine? Could you benefit from processing emotions with a therapist? Do you have helpful coping tools you can draw from? Do you take time for reflection? What about saying no to extra projects or responsibilities?
There’s a broad range of activities that could be included in basic self-care. Explore different areas in your life that could benefit from some attention. What positive actions could you take that could help to serve you?
6. My Number One Tip? GET CURIOUS! And Leave Judgment at The Door!
The absolute number one key to understanding your overeating and bingeing is to get curious. What led me to eat this way? What happened before I started eating? Before I started eating what thoughts were going through my head? What might I need in that moment?
And before you judge or engage in negative judgmental self-talk after overeating or bingeing, don’t! Easier said than done, I know. This will only blur your ability to understand what led you to this eating experience. Use whatever info and data you’ve gained and use it for next time.
And remember you’re human! There is no “perfect”! You’re figuring it out and doing the best you can with the information you have and that’s amazing.
If you’re feeling really stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out to a HAES (Health At Every Size) aligned Dietitian and/or therapist to help process these challenging things! You don’t have to go about it alone.
I work virtually with clients across the US who are frustrated and struggling with their relationship with food so they can find balance, make peace with food, and find their version of health! Book a free discovery call and we can chat more about it and how I can help you.
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