Avoiding Triggers: Does it Really Cure Binge Eating?
Does that bother you to never be able to eat your favorite sweets again? Just in hopes to avoid a binge attack...
If it does, you’re in luck because I’m going to share how to make “trigger” food history, so you will be able to enjoy it again – balanced.
Like a normal eater without fear of overeating on it.
Triggers are a good thing. Yes, you read correctly, I mean it. Triggers are a chance to recover.
Let me briefly explain what I’m talking about before we get into what will help you make your trigger food regular food again.
Avoidance just doesn’t work:
From what you read on the internet or heard in general, part of the conventional way to overcome problematic eating, such as binge eating or emotional eating, is to know your triggers.
Well, I've made lists, written down foods and even situations and feelings that have led me to overeat. Don't get me wrong: knowing your triggers is great, but the recommended solution doesn't work - at least it didn’t for me and many others.
The solution was to avoid the things that were on the list…
Not buying certain cookies, not following food accounts on Instagram or trying to avoid stress.
The first thing recommended is to avoid the triggers and then replace them with other things. Well, there I was, baking zucchini brownies and blaming people on social media for looking too good and thus tempting me to overeat…
As you can probably tell yourself, it never worked. Avoidance is not the cure, in my opinion.
I tried to stop binge eating by practicing avoidance for almost a decade, but was never cured. I never got rid of the actual problem, and that’s why I relapsed in January 2021.
Because my problem was only silenced, but the urge to overeat and binge was never completely erased.
The Real Problem
The urge to eat more than your body needs is a pattern created in your brain.
So the real problem are not the cookies, your trigger, much more how you react to certain situation.
Because you have associated certain foods with the act of overeating. This can have many reasons, for example, you label this food as "bad" and overeat out of guilt before you go on another diet, or you eat emotionally.
But no matter if you suffer from binge eating or emotional eating, avoiding food that makes you want to overeat won’t make the urge go away.
In order to erase that, you have to break the habit. That connection between your trigger and your response.
Let me explain in a couple examples:
Avoidance
Sandra is an emotional eater, and her trigger is boredom. So she keeps herself busy with two jobs besides school to avoid eating too much. But when she's on holiday, she can't stop eating...
Lisa is a compulsive eater. Once she starts, she just can't stop eating sweets. Because Lisa doesn't want to gain weight, she tries not to buy sweets in the first place. She believes in the principle: “Out of sight, out of mind”. But she always ends up in the supermarket late at night...
☞ These two women never learned how to deal with their triggers. All they are trying is to avoid them, but as soon as the avoidance fails, they end up overeating.
Changing the Behaviour
Sandra used to be an emotional eater. She broke the link between boredom and the compulsion to eat in response. Now, when she is on holiday and bored, she reads a book, watches a movie or does simply nothing. Eating cake no longer crosses her mind.
Lisa was a compulsive eater. She first healed her relationship with food and then broke the link between her triggers and the compulsion to eat all sweets at once.
Today, when she shops for groceries, she is able to buy sweets without the fear of eating them all in one go as she learned to live a balanced lifestyle. She trusts herself and former "trigger foods" survive in her kitchen for weeks as she no longer feels the need to eat everything at once.
This is how I and hundreds of other women I worked with made “trigger foods” a normal thing they no longer have to avoid or feel nervous around.
Are you ready to feel at ease around sweets again? Click below to find out how 👇🏽
