Change Binge Eating Habit Once and For All - By: Natalia Staniszewska
“I did it again. Why can’t I even feel satisfied, no matter how much I eat? What is wrong with me?
I’ve been trying so hard, but I can’t control myself.”
Does this sound familiar?
It is estimated that 8 million Americans have eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating.
And yet we feel alone when we are going through it.
We're embarrassed to talk about it, and the more we hide, the more isolated we get. I know this because I was a binge eater! It felt like some weird sorcery shit where my body went into zombie mode and at least every night I'd find myself in the kitchen with a mouthful of cookies or bread with ungodly amounts of peanut butter and jelly.
The most frustrating part was that I knew exactly what to eat and how to exercise to look and feel my best. So how can a rational, functioning adult totally lose control of their impulses?
I was puzzled.
Binge eating seemed to me to be the most nefarious of addictions because we still NEED food to live. So how was I able to rewire my brain and heal my binge eating? (Keep reading, freedom is closer than it seems!)
Firstly, I needed to dive deeper into brain science to figure out what’s really going on in the brain of the binge eater.
I discovered that there are 2 main factors that play into the development and maintenance of binge eating:
1) Survival Instincts (restrictive diets or mentality)
2) Habit (conditioning)
Binge eating typically begins in response to food restriction and becomes a habit formed in the brain. When we repeat a behavior, it is encoded in particular habit circuits involving the brain's striatum. The striatum (the nucleus of the basal ganglia) is present even in primitive vertebrates, which means that some of your behavioral patterns (like binge eating) are rooted in the primitive brain structures.
One of your primitive brain’s main jobs is to keep you alive by sending out powerful impulses for anything it thinks you need to live—and that includes food. In other words, your survival instincts come from your lower brain that thinks you’ll die if you don’t down a whole platter of cookies.
You’re not broken or flawed.
Urges are not you. They arise automatically from a more primitive part of your brain. Urges are only faulty brain messages.
Please, see that the machine in your head is just doing what the machine does.
Acting on urges to binge eating can feel inevitable if you view your impulses as relevant and powerful signals. But what would happen if you start seeing urges to binge as neurological junk that you don’t need to give too much attention to?
I can't stress enough how feeding your body the appropriate amount of calories and nutrition will allow you to develop the ability to dismiss binge urges faster.
I hope you’ll see the binge eating habit in a new light that will allow for more profound and personal insight.
Good luck,
Natalia Staniszewska
FOLLOW NATALIA:
Website: https://bingeproofbrain.com/