Your Binge Eating Isn't Self-Sabotage

Are you trapped in a cycle of binge eating, constantly battling what feels like self-sabotage? This episode challenges everything you thought you knew about your relationship with food. Discover why your binge eating isn't actually self-sabotage but a misunderstood attempt at self-protection.

Learn how this perspective shift can transform your journey, replacing frustration and shame with compassion and understanding. Uncover the hidden reasons behind your eating patterns and gain powerful insights to break free from the binge cycle.

Whether you're struggling with binge eating or supporting someone who is, this episode offers a fresh, empowering approach that could change everything. Tune in for a game-changing conversation about food, emotions, and the path to true healing.

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, the podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control around food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Hoker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. And I'm here to show you how. After years of therapy, eating disordered treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I was still stuck in the on-igan-on-igen cycle of restricting binging until I was able to see it all from a new perspective that changed everything. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you are listening to this podcast for a reason. I trust that you are going to hear something today that is insightful and impactful on your journey with food. Have you ever found yourself saying, I'm sabotaging myself and I don't know why? Or maybe you've asked, why do I keep doing this to myself? If so, you are not alone. And today we are going to challenge the very notion of self-sabotage. And we're going to explore a perspective that might radically change how you view your relationship with food. Now, what I'm about to share might be controversial, but I believe that it's crucial for anyone struggling with not only binge eating, but really with any behavior they view as self-destructive. Anything that you do where you think I'm harming myself. I'm doing this to myself. I'm sabotaging myself. All right, so let's dive in. Now, before we challenge the idea of self-sabotage, let's define it. So self-sabotage is often described as behaviors or thought patterns that hold us back from what we consciously want. It's seen as intentionally undermining our own goals and well-being. Now, there are countless books, videos, blog posts, podcast episodes on how to stop self-sabotage. It's a term that gets used frequently, especially when it comes to behaviors like binge eating, procrastination, or even self-destructive relationships. Now, if you know me, you know that I love to use the resource word hippo when I am looking up words, trying to figure out definitions. Even uh I started using word hippo when I started learning about how to name my emotions. So if you ever want a source for looking up words, word hippo is a great source. Now, when I looked up sabotage in word hippo, I noticed there's typically an intentional and destructive component to it. And when people talk about self-sabotage and that I am sabotaging myself, there is very often this intentional and destructive component. And so this caught me thinking: do we really intentionally try to harm ourselves? I don't believe so. And here is my controversial opinion. I don't believe in self-sabotage. At least not in the way that it's commonly understood and that most people talk about it. So think about this. Have you ever woken up and just decided, you know what? Today I am gonna eat as much as possible until I'm in tremendous physical and emotional pain. Forget all those other things I was planning on doing today. I am just going to spend the day either driving around town, eating what's in my house, having food delivered, whatever it is. I'm just gonna do that until I just can't do anything else anymore. No, that's not how it works. We also don't just wake up and say, you know what, today, I'm just gonna scroll the internet all day long instead of working on this project, so I can set myself up to have to stay up all night in order to get it done by the deadline. That's not how it happens. We don't do this intentionally. Even in the extreme cases, when we talk about self-dest what people call self-destructive behaviors, like self-harm or even suicidal thoughts at the at the most extreme, people are not trying to willfully harm themselves. What's really happening is that they're looking for relief. And in that moment, they don't see any other way to find that relief. Now you might be thinking, but what about those times when I say screw it? And I decide, I decide intentionally, I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna buy all that food that I haven't allowed myself to eat. I'm gonna go buy my forbidden foods, forget it. I'm just gonna go to the bakery, I'm gonna go to the drive-thru, forget it. I don't care. Isn't that self-sabotage? I argue that it's not. Now, this might seem counterintuitive, but I believe that these actions are always protective. Your brain, your nervous system are always trying to protect you. Always. Now, they might not always get it right, and the behaviors might end up being harmful, but they are not willful or intentional acts of self-destruction. So if these behaviors aren't self-sabotage, then what are they? They're protective mechanisms essentially gone awry. There are many reasons for these behaviors: trauma, a dysregulated nervous system, the inability to deal with internal or external conflict, a critical internal voice, or patterns that we learned when we were younger. So you might hear that list and think, oh, yeah, yeah, that's me. Well, that that makes sense. It does not mean you are sabotaging yourself or that you are intentionally harming yourself. Most of our binge eating likely started as a way to protect ourselves from something, it began as an adaptive response. And over time it became maladaptive. But here's the key: it's maladaptive, yes, but it's not self-sabotage. You are not trying to hurt yourself, you are trying to protect yourself. So let me share a personal story. I used to push myself a lot. I was always going. I expected a lot from myself, and I never allowed myself to rest. And when I would inevitably end up binging, I would get so mad at myself. And I was mad for a lot of reasons, but I would also be mad because I was spending hours on the couch doing nothing but scrolling for answers on how to stop binge eating. And only later, when I really began to understand what was happening, to understand the behavior and understand what it was doing for me, was I able to reflect back and see that my binges were a way of giving me rest. They were protecting me by allowing me to finally slow down because I would not slow down on my own. It was a way to put the brakes on my revved up nervous system. Now, this whole perspective on self-sabotage is not limited to binge eating. So consider procrastination, for example. Often some people think it's about laziness. Oh, I'm so lazy. But it's really about protecting ourselves from potential failure or judgment. That is the potential risk that the brain sees. I might fail, I might be judged. So I'm not going to do the thing so that I won't have to experience that. Or think about staying in an unhealthy relationship. It might be about protecting ourselves from the fear of being alone. So recently I was sharing this perspective about self-sabotage and why I don't believe in self-sabotage with my cultivate group, our group coaching program inside cultivate. And as we talked about it, several of the members let out audible sighs of relief. It was like, oh, you mean I'm not doing this to myself? I don't have to believe in self-sabotage. They had believed for years they were self-sabotaging with food. And when you believe you are sabotaging yourself, it leads to feeling broken. Like something is fundamentally wrong with you. But this is not the case. So let's reframe binge eating. What if instead of seeing it as a deliberate attempt to harm yourself, you saw it as a misguided attempt to protect yourself? This shift allows us to approach the behavior with curiosity and compassion rather than with judgment and frustration. Remember that judgment, that frustration, that shame that often comes along after a binge, it's that 50-pound weight on the hood of our car. The binge is the lights on the dashboard. It tells us something's going on underneath. We need to look under the hood and see what's going on. You did not go and take a mallet to your car. That's not what happened. Something happened under the hood where your brain and your nervous system perceived some sort of threat. This caused the lights to come on. But if we're in shame, we're in judgment, we're in frustration about the binge, about what we've done, we can't get under the hood to see what's going on. But if we can really see, huh, what's going on here? What if this is an attempt to protect myself? Then with this shift, you can look at the binge with curiosity and compassion. And with curiosity and compassion, you can get under the hood of a car. And so instead of asking, why am I sabotaging myself? You can ask, what is this behavior trying to protect me from? So for instance, binge eating might be protecting you from feeling difficult emotions, from facing conflicts in your life, or from the discomfort of changing long-held patterns. It might be an attempt to feel safe, to self-soothe, or to assert control in a world that often feels chaotic. So by understanding the protective nature of the behavior, we can start to address the root causes. We can work on creating safety and protection for ourselves in healthier ways. So we don't need to turn to food for comfort or relief. Now, this shift in perspective can be transformative. When you stop seeing yourself as someone who is willfully self-destructive, you open the door to self-compassion and effective and lasting change. You're no longer fighting against yourself. You're working with all of the parts of yourself, acknowledging that even the problematic behaviors come from a place of self-protection. Now, this doesn't mean that we're condoning harmful behaviors, but it does mean that we don't resent them. We aim to understand them and to provide ourselves with other means of support and safety so that food can stop being the primary source of relief and comfort. Because we know what happens, that that relief is so short-lived. And the comfort is so short-lived. And then there is anything but relief and comfort. But if the brain and the nervous system are sensing a threat, there is the the logical brain is not on board to be able to have that understanding and that conversation about what happens later. It all happens in this moment. From this place of understanding, you can more effectively work on the internal shifts required to deal with the conflicts, to regulate your nervous system, to expand your emotional capacity, and to improve your self-talk. All of those things that are happening under the hood. This is where the work is. It's under the hood. It's not in changing the food and what and when and how much we eat. It's not in being upset with ourselves and being in shame and in judgment. It's not in thinking that we are doing this to ourselves, that we are harming ourselves intentionally and willfully. That's not where we are going to change. You will not change from shame and judgment. You will only change from curiosity, from compassion, from understanding. And when you think you're doing this to yourself, this idea of self-sabotage, willfully doing it to yourself, is only going to lead you to shame and judgment. This is why I don't believe in self-sabotage, because it will not give you the results that you're looking for. So where do we go from here? First, I encourage you to just notice when you use the term self-sabotage. Are you somebody who says this a lot? I'm sabotaging myself. Catch yourself. Notice it. Remember, we can't change what we're not aware of. So the very first thing we have to do is become aware. Am I a person who thinks and uses the language of self-sabotage? Do I think I'm doing this to myself? Do I think I am harming myself willfully and intentionally? So we want to notice that. Then we want to reframe. Ask yourself, how might this behavior be trying to protect me? Even something as it's not even little. What I think about happens for a lot of people in terms of how might this behavior be trying to protect me. One thing we haven't mentioned so far in this episode is restriction. If I am trying to go on a diet, I am trying to take a bunch of foods out of my diet, or I'm trying to lose a bunch of weight. And my brain and my body might be thinking, oh no, here she goes again. She's going on this restrict cycle. So it might be trying to protect you by not going through that starvation process again that you've done so many times before. There are so many things it might be protecting you from. So just start exploring what your binge eating or it's not just the binge eating, right? It's any other behaviors that one might consider self-sabotaging or self-destructive. Any behaviors that you wouldn't necessarily choose for yourself? Take a look at them. What might they be protecting you from? When you show up in ways that you don't love, why might that be? Are there emotions you're avoiding? Are there conflicts you're not addressing? Are there needs that aren't being met? And lastly, I encourage you to be patient and compassionate with yourself. These changes don't happen overnight. This is a process. But remember, you have always been on your own side, even when the outcomes haven't reflected it. Healing and change take time. But with this new perspective, you are already on your way. Now, if you are listening to this episode, when it comes out in July of 2024, I want to let you know that the Cultivate group coaching program will be open on August 1st. We'll be taking new members for a very brief period of time on August 1st. If you have wanted to get support through this, get support in what does it mean to look under the hood? How do I go about looking at these things that that I might need to explore? These emotions, maybe the conflicts, the needs, the things that the binging might be protecting me from. That's where the work is. So if you're curious about exploring that work with us inside cultivate, you can go to janepilger.com forward slash cultivate. And I'd love to see you inside. That's what I have for you this week. Thank you for joining me on Binge Breakthrough. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend. And until next time, remember, you are not sabotaging yourself. You're always trying to protect yourself. The key is discovering that potential threat and creating safety and trust with yourself so that you don't need to escape it or run away from it. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. If you would like personalized guidance, insight, and support to implement the tools, skills, and concepts you are learning on this podcast, I have just what you need. Cultivate an entirely new relationship with yourself and with food. Alongside other women who know and understand your struggles. Coaching, connection, and change are waiting for you. Spots are limited, so sign up today. Find out more at janepers.com.