5 Things That Makes Binge Eating Worse

Almost every time that someone comes to me looking for help with their binge eating, they tell me, ‘They've tried everything’. And in the end, the problem has only gotten worse. 

You may be struggling like this, too, wondering why everything you try and do to help your situation never truly gets better.

After working with many clients and digging into it, I’ve teased out what I feel are the top five things that almost everyone who struggles with binge eating has tried at some point. Whether you’re trying low carb or macro counting, maybe it’s who you seek help with. I’m not just talking about these reasons but explaining WHY they aren’t helping you.

Make sure to tune in. You’ll be interested in hearing point 5, which could make your binge eating worse.

If you learn something new in this episode or have a request for an upcoming episode, send me a text message (the button is up at the top)!

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Point 1 (03:42)

Point 2 (09:45)

Point 3 (19:06)

Point 4 (25:43)

Point 5 (34:49)

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Transcript

Michelle 00:00:00  We're back with Nourished and Free, the podcast. If you're new here, my name is Michelle Yates. Welcome to the show. I'm a registered dietitian with my Masters in Health Psychology. Be sure you do subscribe to the show. If you want to learn more about how to create a nourishing and balanced, healthy relationship with food, your body, and fitness while being free from the things that just aren't necessary and make life a lot harder like food, stress, misinformation, fad diets, yo yo dieting, and things like binge eating and emotional eating. Today we're going to zero in to that topic of binge eating. This is one of my, I would say, one of my specialties and probably the number one thing my clients come to me for. And one of my favorite things to talk about. And I realized with my last episode that I forgot to explain why I'm in my closet. If you're watching on YouTube or seeing a clip of this, I am actually in the process of moving or moving this weekend.

Michelle 00:00:54  And with the last episode that I recorded, there was work being done on the deck outside. There was just nowhere safe to record except for in here. And I wanted to give you good sound quality and everything, and this seemed to actually do the trick. And then all of my stuff is just already in here. So I'm going to go ahead and do another episode in here because we're about to move it all anyway, and I'll be in my, my office space, which I'm going to try and turn into a little bit of a podcast recording studio. But anyway, welcome to my closet. It's not going to be in my closet much longer, so don't get attached. And I'm honestly, I'm quite sad because this is an amazing closet, as you can probably tell. and I'm downsizing. So it is what it is, though. You know what? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made when you want to have a true office space. square footage has to be moved around anyway. So let's get into the topic for for today.

Michelle 00:01:49  Almost every time that someone comes to me for binge eating, they tell me, you know, they've tried everything. And in the end, the problem has only gotten worse. Or maybe it's even shifted. There's been periods of their life where they were more along the lines of somebody who struggles with anorexia, or they really did struggle with anorexia, like clinically fit the diagnostic criteria. And then at some point it shifted, and now they're struggling with binge eating. And what I want to do today is really tease out what I feel are the top five things that most everyone who struggles with binge eating has tried at some point in their life, and I want to break down why they actually may have made things worse instead of better. I can't wait to hear what you think of this episode. Especially point number five, I think is going to be really surprising to you, but it's probably the most crucial of all. Let me know your thoughts when you're done by sending me a text through the link in the show notes.

Michelle 00:02:48  Just a heads up. I don't have the ability to respond to those texts, so it's purely just for you to send me your feedback. Maybe request a future episode. But yeah, I'd love to to hear your thoughts and see if you learned anything. You know, send me your light bulb moments or the things that really stuck out to you about this episode. And speaking of feedback, if you do love the show in general and you want to support the mission of more people becoming nourished and free, I'd really love for you to leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. It's so, so helpful for this show. It helps to kind of boost us up, to be recommended to more people who maybe need to hear this message. So if that aligns with you and that sounds like something you want to do, I'd love for you to do that. And if you already have, thank you so much for your support. All right, let's dig in with the first thing that has potentially made your binge eating worse.

Michelle 00:03:46  And it's something that is recommended all the time if you struggle with binge eating, which is intermittent fasting, because binge eating is this issue of overeating in a short period of time. There comes a point where a lot of people are like, oh, well, what if I just limit the window of time that I can eat? Like, let's say that somebody normally binges around 9 p.m. at night. It's not unreasonable for them to think, well, what if I just didn't eat after seven? Then I can't binge because I'm not supposed to eat after seven, right? Problem solved. no problem. Not solved. Problem now worse. Here's why this ultimately doesn't work for most benders, binge eating was never about the time of day, never about the time of day. It's not even about the food. Binge eating is more about an issue of unmet needs, including psychological or mental needs and biological or physical needs. Let me kind of give a few examples so you know what I mean here. And you're not just like, what are you saying? Like, let's try and clear up what I mean by that.

Michelle 00:05:02  So if they now limit the window of time that they're allowed to eat, it's making it even harder to get all of those nutrition needs met. That was kind of egging on the desire to binge in the first place. Now our desire to binge might potentially be even stronger. So, for example, a lot of the women that we work with, they they don't necessarily struggle with getting enough like calories or carbohydrates in. But when we take a deeper look, we see that maybe there's not enough protein and healthy fats and fiber being included in the diet. And so when there's those key components missing, or that we're just not getting enough of, your body continues to drive you towards food. And being intentional about the composition of your meals and snacks is so crucial to prevent binging that is really being brought on by nutrient deficiencies because it's ensuring that we aren't deficient to begin with. So like I said, it's not really about the food, but in some ways the food can still be a key player. It can be a part of what is making things harder, and it can be a part of the kind of prescription, so to speak, to help.

Michelle 00:06:17  And by the way, if you want to be sure there are all your bases are covered and you feel like you're not sure if your meals are balanced enough or that you're getting enough of the right things. My guidebook for guilt Free nourishment is specifically designed to show you how to structure your meals, your snacks, and the timing of it all so that you can eliminate, or at least drastically reduce, the binging and overeating that may be induced by things like not eating enough or not eating enough of certain things, or eating at weird times. Sometimes that can cause it to. This is also a great guide if you're just needing help with generally building healthy meals, and you're not really sure how to go about that without all the mental gymnastics of what we see online. So I'll add a link to that in my show notes. For anybody that's curious and anybody that feels like they would benefit from that. I'll also say that many women, they aren't getting enough calories during the day. It's just like a general overall.

Michelle 00:07:15  There's not enough food, there's not enough calories. And that's why they feel this magnetic pole towards food at night. The time on the clock doesn't make that pole, that magnetic pole magically disappear. It doesn't make the fridge stop talking to you when you're starving. It doesn't matter what time of day it is if you haven't had enough food. Your body just wants food doesn't care about the clock. You can have all the best intentions in the world to stop eating at whatever clock, but at some point, biology, it kicks in and those survival instincts are nearly impossible to override. Aside from the physical, there's also the mental needs. Let's say that someone is struggling with binging every night as a way to wind down from a stressful day, or finally have some time when they've been a mom all day and an employee, you know, like changing the eating window when that's the reality. And that's the reason we're turning to food, isn't solving the problem of helping that individual get that meantime or truly wind down right.

Michelle 00:08:23  It's potentially actually making the problem worse because now they've got this added stress of, well, I'm not supposed to eat right now, even though I really want to, and it's only a matter of time, you know, before something snaps and they eat outside of that window anyway, because they were desperate for the relief that binging or food used to provide. Only now they've added, on the distress of breaking a promise they made to themselves to not eat at night. So now there's guilt and shame and potentially even more bingeing to cope with with now those feelings. So it's I mean, you can see how this just gets wrapped up into a cycle of a never ending horror story. So to wrap things up with this first reason, fasting ultimately, in a lot of cases, can make binge eating worse because it's not an issue of what time of day we're allowing ourselves to eat. It's an issue of unmet needs, which can be physical needs through food and the composition of what you're eating. And changing the eating window isn't going to change the fact that you might be missing certain things, or it could be the result of some emotional and more psychological type needs that.

Michelle 00:09:34  Again, changing the eating window still isn't getting to that core issue. And ultimately somebody's going to throw in the towel at some point because that issue never got solved. Moving on to our second reason eating low carb. This is probably like the worst thing that somebody can do if they struggle with binge eating is trying to not eat carbs. It's just like a nightmare waiting to happen or a disaster waiting to happen. For ages and ages, there's been this. This belief that eliminating carbs is is healthier and will help someone finally lose the weight that they've been dying to get off. Which, if you're somebody who struggles with binge eating, there's probably been at some point some version of weight gain that's been distressing for you and you want to get it off. And so this low carb option, it seems promising, you know. And now I'm not going to say that people never lose weight as a result of eating low carb. Of course they do. A lot of times when you go low carb you end up naturally eating less calories.

Michelle 00:10:34  But that's the thing. It's not because they eliminated a carbs, it's the eliminating carbs created this side effect of now having fewer calories, which is what you need in the first place to accomplish weight loss. Weight loss at the end of the day comes from a calorie deficit. End of story. It doesn't matter what you're eating if you have carbs or not. If there is a calorie deficit, that's what produces weight loss. It has nothing to do with what those calories are made up of. There was actually a really fascinating study done in 1997 that exhibits this reality of doesn't matter what you're eating, as long as it's a deficit. That's what produces weight loss. And so I'm going to kind of explain to you how this study was set up, because I just once I heard about it, I heard about it in the last like year or so. And I was like, how have I never heard of this before? This is like insane. But it hasn't been replicated because, you know, the ethics of research are a little bit more strict these days.

Michelle 00:11:31  But anyway, so this study tested the effects of a diet that was low enough in calories to produce or to induce weight loss. They call it a hyper caloric diet, but made up of just over 70% of the total calories. They were coming from carbohydrates, they were coming from carbs. So this is a high carb diet, and they actually compared two diets against each other, the same composition in terms of how much of it was carbohydrates versus fats versus protein and the same, you know, calorie density of everything. But the difference was that one of them was almost half of the carbohydrates were coming from sucrose or straight up table sugar. So these people were having cereal that was like double frosted, while the other group was having cereal that was lightly dusted with some artificial sweetener instead, the group that was having a high amount of table sugar would have, like, these super sugary drinks to try to, you know, like it was difficult for them to accomplish having that much table sugar. But they wanted to see like what happens when the macronutrient distribution is the same, but the carbohydrates are different and quality.

Michelle 00:12:58  And interestingly, both groups lost weight. So it didn't matter that they were a eating high carb or b that half of the carbs and one of those groups was just straight sugar. They still lost weight and improved biomarkers, even like blood pressure and body fat percentage and LDL and more. Now, obviously, just because they lost weight doesn't mean it was done in a healthy way, right? Like, this is why the study hasn't been replicated, because we know that that's not a very wise thing to do to put somebody on a diet where they're having that much sugar every day. but keep in mind, our societal expectation is that if somebody eats a lot of carbs, they won't lose weight Or people who are larger are that way because they've eaten a lot of carbs. There's just this weird belief system that we have as a culture that carbs are bad. And this study directly denies that and shows that even with a high intake of carbohydrates, as long as someone's in a calorie deficit, then they'll lose weight.

Michelle 00:14:03  So, bearing this in mind, let's consider why carbs can be a beneficial part of our diets and why we don't need to be afraid of them, and why you don't need to go low carb because it's just going to make your life worse and miserable. And honestly, you'll be hard pressed to find a dietitian who isn't in support of having carbs in your diet. Number one, carbs are your body's favorite fuel source. I feel like I've said this a million times. You've probably heard it a million times, but carbs are like adding gas into your car. Gasoline is obviously your car's favorite fuel source, right? Like you don't put water in your gas tank at the gas station, you put gas in there. But when we try to give our body energy without giving it carbs, it's kind of like we're filling up our gas tank with water. It's just not the same. It's not what your car actually wants. It's not what your body actually wants for a fuel source. Now, our body does have ways to compensate for a lack of carbohydrates and create its own glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis, but that doesn't mean it's preferred, and that doesn't mean that you're going to be functioning optimally talking about it, you know, being a fuel source.

Michelle 00:15:20  This is why many dieters feel exhausted when they start a diet, especially a low carb one. It's hard for them to exercise or engage meaningfully. And the things that they used to enjoy, and they ultimately are pretty hungry. You know, at some point this can wear them down where they throw in the towel and they say, you know what effort I'm going to have all the carbs now. And there we have a binge. Maybe multiple carbs are actually so important and desired by our body that we have a special chemical called neuropeptide Y that is specifically designed to drive us towards carbohydrates. When carb intake is low. Neuropeptide Y, or NPY, is a chemical that belongs to a family of gut brain peptides produced in the brain. It's triggered in response to a caloric deprivation and increases the longer that we've fasted. It's another reason why intermittent fasting has potentially made binge eating worse, because it's just like triggered so much neuropeptide Y, which drives us towards food and can lead us to binge. But even in low carb situations or low calorie situations, this happens as well.

Michelle 00:16:34  And it drives us specifically to foods high in carbohydrates Because that's what our body wants for fuel is carbs. One of the last things I want to say here about carbohydrates and then I'll move on, is that fiber rich carbohydrates can also help us feel satisfied and full with our meals. A meal that's rich in fiber will fill you up more quickly, with a smaller amount of calories than a meal that doesn't have fiber. So when we try to avoid carbohydrates, a lot of times we naturally end up reducing our fiber intake because fiber is a type of carbohydrate. So for those who are trying to eat low carb, not only are they hangry and tired and probably constipated now because they're not getting any fiber, but they're also primed for a binge episode as their body will eventually fight back with a vengeance to drive them towards the fuel source that's been missing. And they're just not getting as full as as they potentially could have been. Now, I know there's some people who are on a low carb diet do say that they feel really full.

Michelle 00:17:38  This can totally happen too because of protein and fat. Those can be very filling as well, but at some point something comes up, whether it's the fatigue or the hunger or the thoughts of food or whatever it is that that really drives us towards carbohydrates. Now, this is a lot of positive talk about carbs. Obviously carbs are great, carbs are awesome. So is protein. So is fat. There's so many things that we can have in our diet that is valuable. There's really no nutrient that's better than another. They just all have their own purposes in their own functions. So that's something to remember that carbohydrates aren't good or bad, protein isn't good or bad, dietary fat isn't good or bad. They just all have their different functions. And the context, of course, is always what matters. Low carb diets sometimes are a good idea for somebody if they have insulin resistance, or in the case of PCOS, a lot of times a little bit lower carb than most people seems to be really helpful.

Michelle 00:18:47  For example, I typically eat a little bit on the lower end of carbohydrates, but I'm still not like, I don't know, like I still eat sandwiches and stuff like that. You know, there's people who are just like, nope, I'm just going to have chicken and broccoli for dinner because carbs are bad. And that's just like, that's not a way to go. Okay. Moving on to number three. The third thing that has made your binge eating worse is calorie counting. And I would also add macro tracking into that as well. They're kind of like same same but different. And before I give my reasons for this, I do want to say I am not anti calorie counting. I'm not anti macro tracking, just like I'm not anti low carb and I'm not even anti fasting. It just depends on the context. It depends on why we're doing that thing and that individual's lifestyle and what the goals are and what just it's it's all contextual, like the context matters. But if you are someone who struggles with binge eating, calorie counting or macro tracking or both might have made things worse, or it might have even been a key player in what started the binge eating in the first place.

Michelle 00:19:56  The reason for this is some individuals are fine, you know, with tracking their intake and monitoring their data and doing all that. Some find it super helpful, but there's plenty of people who also don't, and it ultimately ends up doing more harm than good. And the common denominator that I always see with somebody who's found something like calorie counting or macro tracking to be more harmful than helpful, is that they are more inclined to this all or nothing perfectionist, black and white mentality. Calorie counting and macro tracking is almost certain to go badly. If that's a mentality that you're very inclined to have when you have a specific goal or limit that's being recommended for your macros or your calories, the perfectionist or the black and white thinker will take that and run with it. It becomes a hyper fixation to keep that goal as the ultimate ceiling. We do not pass go. We do not go above this line here, right? And the problem is, it is really easy to crash into that ceiling, especially if you have a super low calorie goal or a very strict macronutrient goal.

Michelle 00:21:23  And when you crash into that ceiling, the effort mentality strikes again, right? Well, I've already screwed it up, so I might as well eat more now. I remember when I was tracking calories religiously. And My Fitness Pal. The numbers were always green as long as I hadn't hit that like goal number yet. Like my goal calories for the day. Once I hit that and I had tracked enough food that it got up to that number of calories, the number would turn red. There would be like this allowance at the top of the screen of like how many calories I had left. And so then it would be red because I didn't have any left, or I was in the negatives and it's like, it's so silly to say it out loud now, but the the psychological distress that I experienced once those numbers turned to the color red was undeniable. Like green is just so like we we correlate that with good. We correlate that with go red. We correlate with bad. You've done bad.

Michelle 00:22:27  Stop. You've messed up. And it's stressful. Right. Like there's been studies on like color psychology, and the way that green makes you feel is vastly different from the way the red makes you feel. And anyway, to try and cope with the unwelcome red numbers for me, like I would try to edit the portion sizes, I'd be like, well, maybe I didn't have two tablespoons of that. Maybe I actually really only had one and a half and and I'd try to, you know, bring the numbers down so that it wasn't red anymore. Or I'd spend the following day trying to make it up, you know, trying to make up for my quote unquote mistake with over exercising and under eating or I'd just say, screw it, you know, and go eat some more. It'd be one of those three things. So in the end, calorie counting felt like a rule that was just crushing for me, you know, like it was hard to live my life. And what I want you to hear out of that is that it created a mental strain.

Michelle 00:23:29  It created psychological distress. And there will always come a time when we try to get away from discomfort. And that's strain if you have it. For many women, that's been cheating when we're experiencing something that's undesirable. Our nature is to try and run from it. And so what we do sometimes is we binge as a form of getting relief from that psychological distress or that mental strain, you know, as human like, we seek pleasure all the time. We're constantly trying to feel good and feel better, do better in calorie counting if it's not pleasurable, especially if you feel like you're not doing good enough. Therefore, it can trigger this response where we need to cope and find a way to feel better. And for some, that that automatic choice is to cope through food. And the same goes for tracking macros. Macro counting can even be more distressing in a sense, because it does tend to feel more complicated and more overwhelming. Now you've got multiple things that you've got to look at on the nutrition label.

Michelle 00:24:36  And again, I'm not saying it will always trigger binge eating for some people. For some, they may actually find that it caters to their lifestyle really well and it helps them in a big way. However, in some cases it does make things worse. Perhaps you've experienced that overwhelm of trying to follow the rules, weigh food out, track and micromanage everything. And and then it's just like this huge mental load and one that not everyone is suited to take on. All right, quick summary of the third thing before we go into the fourth thing. And I totally forgot to do a summary of the second, but the second was low carb. I don't I don't feel like you need a summary of that. You're fine. So anyway, the third thing is, is that calorie tracking or macro counting? And the reason why this can make binge eating worse is because for a lot of people, they have that all or nothing perfectionist, black and white mentality which can just ultimately trigger the effort. You know, the effort or screw it mode when you inevitably don't follow those goals.

Michelle 00:25:38  Or there's those guidelines perfectly. So we trigger revenge. All right. The fourth thing that I see that makes binge eating worse in a lot of cases is when individuals work with a coach who has no idea what they're talking about, specifically, when it comes to disordered eating and fostering a healthy relationship with food. A lot of self-proclaimed coaches out there also have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to nutrition in general, so that definitely doesn't help either. But the issue is that so many people don't have any idea, they don't know anything about disordered eating, and it can just exacerbate or even cause these issues to arise. I was talking with somebody last month who shared with me that she had recovered from binge eating disorder, lost over £150, maintained it for over five years until she was talking with someone who she knew that was a coach, not a registered dietitian. She was a certified macro coach, whatever that means. It's like a, I don't know, two hour online course. She took advice from her that she said she never should have.

Michelle 00:26:59  Stuff like, you can control yourself, you just don't want to. Or the food didn't just leap into your mouth like that was the type of stuff that this coach was saying to this woman. And because of it, her binge eating disorder came back. After five years and losing £150, it came back. I've also heard a lot of stories about therapists who completely inappropriately recommend their clients try a diet. So the problem is that your average coach or nutritionist or therapist, even dietician, doesn't understand the intricacies of disordered eating or eating disorders, which is what binge eating is. It's a form of disordered eating. When you get trained in the field of eating disorders, which dietitians do not at a baseline, get trained in it. Like for me, when I went to school to become a dietitian, I had one class on eating disorders and it was an elective. I elected to take it. So think about all the people who go to school to become a dietitian, and they don't elect to take any class on the field of eating disorders.

Michelle 00:28:11  So a lot of dietitians are graduating without any training in that, which is a huge issue, and it needs to be corrected. But anyway, there has to be an effort for health professionals or wellness coaches to better understand eating disorder. It doesn't come to them automatically. They have to go and seek it out. They have to go get additional training. They have to do shadowing. They have to take courses. They have to do things that are outside of the normal lines of education and communication. What you learn when you do get specialized in that field is how much the recommendations change. What we think is common sense is actually like kind of flipped upside down on its head when you start talking about eating disorders and what works for the general population no longer works for an Ed, it might even exacerbate it, right? Like calorie counting, macro tracking like these might work for some people, but then it could exacerbate disordered eating for others, you know? So you have to pivot. And most of these coaches just simply they don't know what they don't know.

Michelle 00:29:17  Right. And it's not their fault that they don't know better, but it is their fault if they choose to not acknowledge that and advise on things that they shouldn't. That is going outside of their scope of practice and it's just causing harm. At the end of the day, I honestly wish everyone had some degree of training on eating disorders because and I'm not even just talking about like, health and wellness professionals. I mean everyone because it's a concern for nearly one out of every ten people that you're going to come into contact with in the US. Now, not everybody needs to know how to like, treat and cure an eating disorder and do all that and and care for it. But at the very least, they should have like kind of a baseline exposure and understanding to know what stupid stuff to not say so that they don't directly cause one or make one worse. Something that I'm super proud of is that our clients continuously tell us that we're different than anyone else they've ever worked with, and I truly feel like it's because we're a team of highly trained and specialized professionals who understand the needs of our specific clientele.

Michelle 00:30:26  A lot of times people will go to see just a generic dietitian, and that dietitian in the same day will help somebody with cardiac issues, kidney issues, weight loss, and then an eating disorder. And I'm not saying that that dietitian isn't good at what they do. I don't like this is a made up scenario. Maybe they can handle all of that. But typically what I see is that it's better that you really focus in on one area so that you can really know what you're talking about and not cause any harm. So that's why we're we're so specific about who we work with is we've undergone the processes needed to make sure that we can be wise with the people that we work with, and our years of experience working with these clients only continue to strengthen that. So between me who, like I said at the beginning of the show, I'm a dietitian, I'm trained in eating disorders. I have my master's in health psychology. I got certified as a health mindset coach, plus our body image therapist on the team who knows her ish when it comes to body image and and disordered eating from the therapist perspective and the therapist lens.

Michelle 00:31:38  I mean, that's just like the golden combo. I'm like, so proud of what we have in our program, nourished and free, because our clients are getting the support that they I feel that they really need, and it shows because they come out of the process feeling so much better. And, you know, this is what I see all the time with quote unquote coaches is just that, that they don't understand what kinds of things lead to disordered eating or what can exacerbate them. And they also don't recognize the warning signs. You know, I have a lot of coaches who will refer people to me because they're like, hey, like, this person was interested in working with me, but they said they struggle with binge eating, and I don't want to step outside of my scope, which is awesome. Like I love when I see that. But in a lot of cases, I think that they're they're waiting for somebody because the again, like your, your standard coach or nutritionist or trainer or whatever, like your standard health and fitness pro is not used to or knowledgeable about the warning signs and symptoms of somebody struggling with their relationship with food.

Michelle 00:32:47  So they're really just waiting for somebody to come out directly and say like, hey, I have an eating disorder before they refer them out. If they refer them out, sometimes they continue to work with them and cause harm anyway. And that's not to brag on other coaches. Again, it's just like a you don't know what you don't know type of thing. But that's like, even if people don't work with us, if they relate to like the clients that I do work with, I always say like, be sure you see somebody who's specialize in eating disorders, don't mess around with like the gut health coaches or the trainers who are macro coaches or whatever because it's just a disaster waiting to happen. The last thing I'll say about this, that's kind of just like something that gets on my nerves, I guess, is that a lot of times clients come to us after working with somebody who didn't give them any idea of how to do things on their own, it was like they kind of set them up with this.

Michelle 00:33:39  Like they'll do well while they're working with the person, but they didn't get any real knowledge or tools to be able to stop working with the person, you know what I mean? And not everybody can afford to pay for a professional every single month for the rest of their life just to maintain the results that they got with that professional, you know? And that's why it's so important to me that my clients not only learn the tools needed to stay bench free, but that they practice them during our time together. And we and they get feedback about it, and we can chat back and forth about how things are going as they try these things out on their own, because I don't want them to feel like they need me around forever. I would feel like I didn't do my job right. And working with us is it's a little pricier than your average coach, but the difference is we don't want you to keep coming back for the rest of your life. You know, like we want it to be short term.

Michelle 00:34:37  We're we're hitting this thing hard, and then you're done. Like, you don't need to keep paying us, you know? So anyway, that is the fourth thing that I see making binge eating worse in a lot of cases. Let's move on to the fifth and final thing. This one might surprise you. I think it's actually the most important one of all, though, which is why I saved the best for last. I feel like this is the biggest reason that we see binge eating get worse is when somebody is trying to lose weight. Now let me be clear it is not the weight loss in and of itself that worsens the binging necessarily, although there is some argument there, you can make an argument that the compensation and hunger hormones and appetite regulation that happens after weight loss is what induces. You can make an argument for that. But what I'm talking about in particular is the way we try to lose weight, as well as the psychological distress that occurs when we feel the pressure to shrink our bodies, that can create deeper issues, or even create the issue.

Michelle 00:35:47  In the first place of binge eating. You can probably already gauge what I mean by, when I say like the ways we try to lose weight because I've already talked about three of them, right? Like the fasting, the calorie counting and macro tracking, the low carb, these are all things that we we do to try and lose weight. And we've already seen how those can worsen bingeing. But more than that, researchers are thinking that the societal pressure to be thin is a big exacerbate for bingeing, maybe even causing it to begin with. And when we feel this pressure to look a certain way. And then we don't look that way. It can cause a lot of distress. And that distress is comfortable. And like I mentioned, we want to make it. Those feelings of discomfort go away. We generally try to to run from that. So how do we stop feeling discomfort that came as a result of being unhappy with our bodies? We try to change our body. We try to fix them and shrink them.

Michelle 00:36:52  That naturally leads to a heightened emotional state, particularly stress, which, if you remember from my recent episode about quote unquote normal eating stress down, regulates our ability to tap into the prefrontal cortex or access it, which is the part of the brain responsible for planning and considering long term goals and reasoning logic, etc. so with this part of our brain not working as well in our main frame of mind being, I don't like my body because it's supposed to look different and it doesn't look different, so I want to make it look different. we turn to anything and everything to try and fix that discomfort that we're feeling about our bodies. And what ends up happening is in the end, there's this really interesting negative feedback loop. The more weight that you try to lose, the more you actually gain. And this is exactly why I asked my clients to put their focus elsewhere. When they work with us and allow themselves to do the deeper body image work that's needed during our time with us. Body image is a core piece of our progress, because if we don't address that, then we end up shooting right back into that negative feedback loop of, well, I just want to get this weight off because I don't like it, so I'm going to do whatever I need to do.

Michelle 00:38:14  And then we lose the weight quickly, maybe only to gain it back. A lot of times with a vengeance. So this is one of the biggest hurdles that I see women have when it comes to overcoming. Binging is letting go of all those rules and regulations and expectations and judgments that they have about their weight. And I want to be clear to like, we want our clients to be healthy, right? Like that's why we recognize when that pursuit of weight loss is ultimately making them unhealthy and maybe making the problem worse. So for us, it's more important that we focus on, okay, if we peel back all of these layers of okay, my binging has gotten worse because I went on a diet and I went on a diet because I wanted to lose weight, and I wanted to lose weight because I had somebody make a comment about me when I was younger. And they made that comment about me, because there's this pressure in our society to look a certain way when we peel down all those layers and we really get to brass tacks, Then we can do some really, really cool work and we can make some really good progress.

Michelle 00:39:17  That kind of sets us free from all the other stuff that's been circulating, and making it harder and harder and harder to take care of ourselves. So if you're someone that struggles with binge eating and is scared of letting go of that pursuit of weight loss, especially if you've gained weight as a result of the bingeing, first of all, I hear you. I understand it is scary. It is really scary. But I want to leave you with this thought. What's the cause and what's the symptom in your story? What's the cause and what's the symptom in your story? Is binge eating causing the symptom of weight gain, or is waking causing a symptom of binge eating? Do you feel so distressed about the weight gain that you binge as a result? Maybe it's both. Maybe it kind of goes back and forth. It's like a ping pong tournament, right? And maybe you need a new approach so you can really dive deep into clearing out all those crossed wires. That's making binge eating seem like a lifelong battle to you.

Michelle 00:40:27  Trust me, it's not. You might just need a different approach. That's all I'm saying here. There's nothing wrong with that. So those are my top five things that I feel makes binge eating worse than I've seen with with the women that we work with. I hope that you found this episode enlightening. And if you're interested in learning more about working with myself and the team to overcome binge eating once and for all, or emotional overeating, I'll put a link in the show notes for you to learn more about our signature program, also called Nourished and Free. Quick reminder leave a rating and review on the podcast if you love it, and share it with a friend who you think might love it as well. Until next time, my friend. Stay nourished and free.