Mindset Shift for Binge Eating That’s Rooted in Curiosity and Compassion

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. I’m your host, Kate Johnston, and this is another mini Monday mindset shift episode. These are in addition to my normal Thursday episodes, and I’m not sure that I’ll keep them going, but for now, I’m really enjoying doing these mindset shifts with you.

Listen to the episode here (or read it below):

So please let me know if you are enjoying them or finding them helpful by leaving a rating or review. If there’s another way that you connect with me, then send me a message to let me know. The more feedback I get that you’re enjoying these, the more likely I will continue them in addition to those normal Thursday episodes.

All right, so let’s dive into the mindset shift for binge eating that’s rooted in curiosity and compassion. And then stick around for after the quick mindset shift because I will be telling you about a very special and time-limited offer if you have been interested or curious about my one-on-one coaching program, Eat with Intention.

So, binge eating can result in some very negative thoughts and very negative feelings, which then perpetuate more binge eating or lead to restriction, which can really be a form of punishment for the binge eating. Unfortunately, this continues that binge eating cycle and strengthens it, so that it feels harder to get out of.

To help get out of a binge eating cycle and break this habit, focusing on the thoughts is key. Because if you manage the thought, the emotion changes, and then the behavior or action changes.

One of the common thoughts that can keep you in the binge eating cycle or the binge-restrict cycle is, “Why can’t I just stop? I have no willpower.”

This thought is going to lead to an emotion of frustration or shame, maybe disappointment or disgust in oneself. This thought is going to create different emotions in people, but typically it’s going to be a -1 and something similar to the ones that I listed.

And let’s just say that the emotion that that thought creates in you is shame. Shame can then lead to an action to either try to make up for the binge, like restriction, or it can lead to more binging, because binging really is a form of emotional eating.

So that negative thought is going to create a negative feeling, which just perpetuates the cycle.

But what if instead of judging yourself and shaming yourself with the thought, “Why can’t I just stop? I have no willpower,” we shifted it to: What triggered this urge to binge? What am I feeling or needing right now?

So we’re going from judgment and maybe even shame or frustration or disgust to curiosity and compassion. These feelings are going to be so much more useful to you, and these questions are going to be so much more useful to you.

Because really, the reason why you binge eat is because of an underlying need. Maybe you haven’t been getting much sleep or rest, and your body is trying to tell you something. The only way it knows how to is to binge.

Maybe you’re stressed, and that emotion is leading to wanting to escape from that emotion by doing the action of binging.

Maybe you’ve been depriving yourself so long of your favorite foods, thinking that they’re bad or that you shouldn’t have them, and your body and brain are just revolting against that. It’s kind of like a child who’s not allowed to have any treats at all and they’re surrounded by them.

So seeing your binge urges in a curious way allows you to really understand the underlying emotions or unmet needs, like fatigue, stress, loneliness, or a need for some pleasure in your life. This allows you to have the space to actually address those root causes without the blame game and without the shame.

The first time you ask yourself these questions out of curiosity and compassion, you may not find the answers right away. But if you ask yourself a few times, you definitely will start arriving at some answers. I know this, because this is exactly what happens with my clients. We finally get down to what it is so that we can address that. Oftentimes, it is multiple things, but not always.

All right, so that’s the mindset shift for binge eating that’s rooted in curiosity and compassion.

As promised, if you are curious about my one-on-one coaching program, Eat with Intention, then you are in luck.

From now until December 20th, if you book a free consultation with me, and after me learning about you, your struggles, your deepest desires, and telling you exactly what the solutions are and how to get you there, you decide that this is something you would like to go ahead with for your future self, I will gift you my 8-week Confidence Continuum program, which follows the normal 1:1 coaching program.

The 8-week Confidence Continuum program is essentially a transition program so that you feel super confident ahead of time that you can easily maintain all of your results on your own and keep creating even more results.

What I mean by “ahead of time” is that during the normal one-on-one coaching program, my clients leave feeling very confident they can maintain the results and keep creating more results.

However, that’s after they’ve been working with me, so they develop that confidence along the way. You have not started working with me yet, therefore, it’s nice to have that confidence ahead of time that there is an extra transition period to really strengthen the belief that you can do this and maintain.

And many times, we can just work on some other fun confidence-boosting things and other goals that you have because I am certain that you will feel very confident already about maintaining your results.

So, what you need to do to take advantage of that is to book a free consultation by Dec. 20th…

Then, if you decide after talking together during your consultation, that you like my process to get you to where you want to be, and say yes to coaching and have your first session by the end of 2024, then I will gift you that 8-week Confidence Continuum program for free to follow the normal program.

All right, take care, thanks for listening, and remember to utilize curiosity and compassion with binge eating to start breaking that binge eating cycle. And don’t forget to book your free consultation here.