4 things I’d Never Do (Again) as a Recovered Binge Eater
Ever thought about what exactly might be the reason for you having problems eating freely and without all the mental stress?
Today I’d like to share four things with you I wouldn’t do again or wish I hadn’t done in the first place as a former binge eater and bulimic.
When I decided to recover, I changed all the below and was finally able to heal my relationship with food - within weeks, after almost 10 years.
So let’s dive right in.
Following Meal Plans
Following meal plans for any other reason than health reasons. I wouldn’t follow them because I was trying to heal a condition or was heavily obese and didn’t know how to eat adequately.
No, the reasons why I followed meal plans were look related. 10 Day Detox plans, summer shred plans and so on. Plans that promised me to reach my “goal” quickly without taking my individual taste and lifestyle into account.
But even after I realised that I had to eat the things I liked and created my own meal plans, the binge eating attacks and guilt wouldn’t stop.
A meal plan never allowed me to freely eat what I was in the mood for in the moment. And years of following them took my availability and confidence to know intuitively what my body really wanted and needed.
Something I had to re-learn, practice and am doing with ease today.
2. Rushing Things
I must confess, creating unrealistic plans and wanting things right away is a weakness of mine. It’s my personality. I’m working on it :)
Luckily I’ve finally noticed and stopped trying to lose a big amount of weight in a very unrealistic amount of time. It would always work on theory and in my calculator app, it never worked in practice however.
The perfectly mapped out plan did not quite work as I hoped. And when I once again binged “one last time” I got more frustrated and thus motivated to be even more strict - well, and more unrealistic.
I’m not here to say, give up fitness goals. That’s none of my business. But what I can say is: be realistic. And when you’re already stuck in an overeating-diet cycle, ditch all those goals for now and make your relationship with food a priority until you’re doing better.
It worked for me, although I was 12 kilos heavier the day I chose my mental health over my looks and ditched diets. The weight came off eventually, the side effect of healing my relationship with food.
It took much longer, than I hoped at that time, but it worked without strict rules, and unrealistic plans. My body settled at its ideal weight, naturally, without force.
3. Trying To Compensate
Since we can’t travel back in time, we tend trying to change the past in the present. When I would eat too much of the wrong food, I would try to compensate the day after.
It seemed “logical” and working in theory but made everything even worse. I’d skip meals the following day or choose low calorie options over normal food. Only in hope to save the calories that day to make up for having too many the day before.
Little did I know that this exact behavior kept me in the vicious cycle of binge eating and restriction.
I had no idea, that heavy restriction, physically and mentally, would only trigger another overeating attack. Once I decided to leave the past in the past, I was able to break that cycle.
So my advice, if you had “too much” because the dessert was delicious, try to move on with life and don't try to change the past by making dangerous decisions in the here and now - because that can cost your future.
4. Following Health Principles
The internet is full of people sharing their advice on what’s best for a healthy diet. Health principles.
I would follow them and some were great, but some seemed to be more of diet rules in disguise that claimed to be “health principles”.
Food combining for instance. Might work for some people, didn’t work for me.
Today I’d never follow any of these rules again, especially just in hopes to get or stay in shape. Because very often they made me stress about not being allowed to eat certain foods even more.
Instead I found my very own ways to live healthy and balanced - realistically and without lifestyle changes that simply won’t work for me.
If you can relate and found this inspiring or perhaps helpful, make sure to read my other posts. Here on my blog, I share my findings with you so that things can finally change for the better for you, too.
Because eating should be joyful and carefree :)
Samira ❤︎
