The Key To Success Quickly Recovering From Mistakes Binges And Benders
If you learn just one thing from this entire guide, this should be it
To successfully stop binging, stick to your diet and lose all the weight you want, theres one skill you need to master recovering from eating mistakes!
Why recovery is so important
Working with well over a thousand clients showed me that, by far, the most dangerous and critical point in the recovery and weight loss process is the time immediately after youve made and eating mistake
See, if you believe a binge is the end of the world, that youre somehow broken and/or incapable of following your food rules, that youre out of control, or that some mysterious power inside you has taken control of your hands, arms, legs, mouth, and tongue, forcing you to overeat well, this becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I know, when I describe it this way, the whole thing seems a little silly. Of course we can control what we choose to put in our own mouths! Of course we can control what we choose to chew and swallow. Yet, after a serious overeating mistake most people hear an extremely negative voice inside themthe voice of the reptilian brain weve been talking about throughoutwhich says they are a loser, a failure, and are doomed to a life of overeating. You might as well just give up and become a happy fat person it will say.
More detail on what causes the downward spiral after a mistake
Why eating mistakes are so discouraging
How to recover from a binge, bender or a mistake
Not Listening To Your Body
One of the biggest causes of overeating due to stress is simply not recognizing that you are stressed. In other words, youre not eating mindfully.
One of the best paths to avoiding this type of eating is to get in touch with your hunger quotient. This is a tough task at first, but learning to understand how truly hungry you are can be super important to controlling your eating due to stress.
Ask yourself: How hungry am I? And rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being that you’re so full you need to unbutton your pants, and 10 that you’re so hungry you might pass out. Your goal should be to keep your hungry between a 4 and a 6 at any given time. You do not want to be starving or stuffed.
Work On Your Coping Skills
Every time you eat in response to stress, its just a reminder that you cant cope with your emotions. When the urge to stress-eat strikes, try asking yourself, Whats the worst thing that will happen if I dont eat?
Yes, your stress level might rise a bit for a minute, but the feeling will pass, and its probably not nearly as bad as you thought it would be. Practice tolerating your emotions or finding other ways to deal with your stress.
If you feel the need to eat, try hard, crunchy foods they help relieve stress by putting tight jaw muscles to work. Try snacking on a handful of almonds, soy nuts, or baby carrots.
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Bring Out Your Inner Chef
Some good things come along with being stuck at home. Not having the option to eat out at restaurants makes you cook more meals yourself, which has been shown to improve overall health.
For example, a study in 11,396 people found that eating home-cooked meals more frequently was associated with a greater intake of fruits and vegetables.
Plus, it found that people who ate home-cooked meals more than 5 times per week were 28% less likely to be overweight and 24% less likely to have excess body fat, compared with those who ate home-cooked meals less than 3 times per week .
Whats more, planning your meals a few days ahead can help you kill time and has even been shown to improve diet quality and reduce obesity risk (
15 ).
To combat dehydration, add a few slices of fresh fruit to your water to boost its flavor, which may help you drink more water throughout the day without adding a significant amount of sugar or number of calories to your diet.
What To Do When Not Binging Feels Very Uncomfortable
Strong urges to overeat can often become very uncomfortable when you attempt to restrain yourself. Many of our clients THINK the only way to make the uncomfortable feeling go away is to overeat. In fact, virtually every binge eater Ive worked with feels this way at some point. Its extremely common because of the powerful nature of the bingeing habit. Once the mind experiences the trigger stimulus, people feel compelled to execute the habit and receive the reward. When they dont follow through a very uncomfortable feeling ensues. That discomfort is just millions of years of evolution trying to get you to execute established behavioral chains. Habits have tremendous survival value, the only problem in overeaters is that the survival drive has been misdirected by our modern world.
The trick is to look at this discomfort as a good thing! Its a signal the Lizard-Brain has activated an old pattern we wish to extinguish, and the only way to extinguish it is to experience it in the active state without rewarding it. If you persevere and avoid the indulgence, two very good things will happen:
If the answer is yes then go for it! You now have the tools to conquer your binging habit!
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Swap Out Your Worst Snacks
If you dont have a giant bag of greasy chips at your fingertips, you cant eat the whole bag. Thats good, because overeating processed snacks can raise your levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
If you need a salty snack, stock popcorn instead. Youll get the whole grains that are one important source of the feel-good hormone serotonin. Youll also get antioxidants to boost your immune system and far fewer calories than chips. Roasted chickpeas are another great crunchy option with protein and fiber to fill you up.
If stress, anger or sadness trigger your sweet tooth, remember this: The sugar high comes with a low afterward. This low can lead to increased cravings later. And, sweets and processed foods can even make certain mental concerns, including symptoms of depression, worse.
As an alternative to your favorite candy, cake or pies, Kippen recommends keeping a bowl of sweet fruit out in the open. .
I also suggest keeping frozen berries on hand that can quickly be throwninto a blender to make a healthy sorbet, she says.
How To Lower Cortisol With Deep Breathing
When youre under stress, your chest gets tight and your breathing becomes fast and shallow.
These are automatic reactions that are part of the stress response.
Unfortunately, this unnatural breathing patterns has now become normal for most adults.
You can learn to minimize your physical reaction to stress by consciously breathing from your diaphragm.
A few minutes of diaphragmatic breathing will lower levels of cortisol and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system to induce a state of calm.
To breathe from your diaphragm, focus on keeping your chest still while expanding your stomach.
You can place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach to monitor your breaths.
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How To Use Tulsi In Your Life
Use tulsi regularly to help balance your body and support its response to everyday stressors.
Some ways to use this herb:
- As a tea
- In cooking
- As a capsule or tablet
- In a powder form
According to herbalist Rosalee De La Foret, tulsi may have an antifertility effect. Therefore, pregnant women or couples who want to conceive shouldnt take this herb.
Important Considerations About Herbs
Herbs can be surprisingly useful in helping you to reduce your stress at home and at work. But you cant use herbs to singlehandedly make up for a lack of sleep, poor diet, lack of exercise, or being stuck in toxic relationships.
So, if youre experiencing negative effects of stress, its important to consider not only how to recover but also what you can do to best minimize the factors that are causing you stress.
In herbal medicine, herbalists often use multiple herbs in combination with each other to achieve greater effects. You can find tea blends to reduce your stress, or you can make your own.
And keep in mind that sometimes, herbs can occasionally trigger side effects and interactions with prescription drugs. This online database can help you to find interactions between drugs and natural medicines.
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Choose Filling Nutritious Foods
Stocking your kitchen with filling, nutrient-dense foods can not only help improve your overall health but also combat the tendency to stress eat highly palatable foods.
For example, filling your fridge and pantry with foods that can help fill you up in a healthful way rather than foods rich in empty calories like candy, chips, and soda is a smart way to prevent the chances of noshing on unhealthy choices.
Filling foods are ones that are high in protein, fiber, and healthy fats. Nuts, seeds, avocados, beans, and eggs are just some examples of nutritious, satisfying choices that can help fill you up and prevent overeating (
Stress Eating Hormones And Hunger
Stress also seems to affect food preferences. Numerous studies granted, many of them in animals have shown that physical or emotional distress increases the intake of food high in fat, sugar, or both. High cortisol levels, in combination with high insulin levels, may be responsible. Other research suggests that ghrelin, a “hunger hormone,” may have a role.
Once ingested, fat- and sugar-filled foods seem to have a feedback effect that dampens stress related responses and emotions. These foods really are “comfort” foods in that they seem to counteract stress and this may contribute to people’s stress-induced craving for those foods.
Of course, overeating isn’t the only stress-related behavior that can add pounds. Stressed people also lose sleep, exercise less, and drink more alcohol, all of which can contribute to excess weight.
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Reduce Cortisol By Monitoring Your Thoughts
One of the most insidious sources of stress is your own mental chatter.
The average brain has 70,000 thoughts each day and, for most people, 70% of them are negative.
The negative impact of stress is not due to the events in your life as much as it is due to your thoughts your automatic negative reactions and cognitive distortions about these events.
Positive self-talk and thinking can effectively reduce cortisol.
Meditate
One of the best ways to gain more control of your thoughts is through meditation.
Research confirms that trying to multitask is stressful and actually makes you less productive.
Even the seemingly innocuous habit of frequently interrupting what you are doing to check emails increases cortisol levels.
So, stop multitasking and start focusing on doing one thing at a time.
How To Manage Stress Eating
Coronavirus-related anxiety and changes in your routine may have turned your usual eating habits upside down. Here are some tips to help.
- Read in app
The coronavirus pandemic is unlike anything most of us have ever experienced.
One of the many things changing: How we eat. A lot of us are either eating more than we usually do, or not at all.
With most people, the first thing to go when were stressed is self-care, said Jennifer Wegmann, lecturer in health and wellness studies at Binghamton University, and author of the audio series Resilience: The New Science of Mastering Stress and Living Well. When Dr. Wegmann says self-care, she doesnt mean things like massages and manicures, but the true basics: exercise, sleep and eating. We let go of those things first because we think we need to be better for other people.
Those affected by anxiety are the most likely to stop eating, said Debra Kissen, chief executive of Light on Anxiety CBT Treatment Center and member of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. This goes back to our ancient ancestors. When youre about to be eaten by a lion, and you either need to fight or take flight, its not really efficient for your gut to be digesting food. Its a waste of energy, she said.
This kind of reaction makes sense for an immediate threat,though it isnt the best way to handle food in the long term. Its a prehistoric way of surviving that for a modern life crisis can be ineffective, she said.
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Find Alternatives To Eating
Take a few moments to reflect on your feelings and think of ways you can solve your problem. Make a list of things you can do instead of eating. A brisk walk or a cup of herbal tea might work instead. You can also try listening to music, meditating, reading, or calling a friend and talk things over.
Healthy Lifestyle Actions To Reduce And Manage Stress
Stress is a normal response to dealing with changes and challenges in daily life. In the short term, stress can help you perform better under pressure, but constant stress can pose problems for your health. Stress causes the release of cortisol, the stress hormone, as well as adrenaline, which influences your blood pressure, heart rate, eating habits, sleep patterns, blood sugar levels, fat metabolism and your ability to fight-off illness. Long term stress can also increase your risk of heart attack or stroke and contribute to depression.
These lifestyle actions can help you reduce or manage the stress in your life.
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Dont Beat Yourself Up
Lastly, cut yourself some slack.
Yes, we want to try and eat our best right now so that we feel good and we keep our immune system healthy. But if you want a bowl of ice cream or some chocolate, that’s OK, Taub-Dix reassures. We want to try and avoid excessive amounts but definitely don’t beat yourself up for having a treat.
Try A Healthy Eating Plan To Reduce Stress
One reason busy, stressed people tend to gain weight is that they more often eat fast food, or go out to eat. This is understandable after a busy day running around, you may not have time to come home and cook something from scratch. But healthy eating at home can help you stave off extra pounds when stressed, as meals you make are usually much better for you. Cooking at home can save you money, too, which may indirectly decrease your stress level by putting you under less financial strain. It may seem like a daunting task to come home and cook something healthy or new after a long day, but its easier than you may think. Here are some quick and simple guidelines to help you eat more healthy meals at home:
There is a huge wealth of recipes for the Instant Pot, as well as online communities and recipes for those who are learning to use them.
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Managing Your Stress Level
If youre eating because of stress, then managing your stress will naturally help you manage your eating. Techniques you use to manage stress are called coping skills. Stress eating is one example of a coping skill we do it because it makes us feel better in the moment.
Coping skills can be healthy or unhealthy. Usually what makes them unhealthy is when we rely on a single coping skill too much. For example, most people can drink a beer now and then to relax, but if thats your go-to every time youre stressed, it will likely become a problem for you. Stress eating is the same wayits probably harmless every now and then, but if youre doing it every time youre stressed, its going to cause problems for you.
So dont beat yourself up over eating your feelings this time. But next time, try a deep breathing exercise, write in a journal, or do some yoga instead. The more coping skills you have in your stress management toolbox, the more balanced youll beand health is all about balance.
Unexpected Strategies For Dealing With Stress Eating
One of the following ideas might resonate with you more than the others. But we encourage you to try all of them.
Each does something crucial and different:
- #1 develops awareness around what triggers your overeating
- #2 provides tools to help when your triggers are activated
- #3 helps you understand that your behavior around food doesnt define you as a person
The result: A variety of methods that work together to tackle a complex problem. And hopefully, help put you back in the drivers seat when you feel out of control.
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Find Other Ways To Feed Your Feelings
If you dont know how to manage your emotions in a way that doesnt involve food, you wont be able to control your eating habits for very long. Diets so often fail because they offer logical nutritional advice which only works if you have conscious control over your eating habits. It doesnt work when emotions hijack the process, demanding an immediate payoff with food.
In order to stop emotional eating, you have to find other ways to fulfill yourself emotionally. Its not enough to understand the cycle of emotional eating or even to understand your triggers, although thats a huge first step. You need alternatives to food that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment.
