What to Do After a Binge

During my journey with binge eating, I googled "what to do after a binge?" so many times. I felt like a failure and felt so much shame and judgment. 

If you are listening to this podcast and this resonates with you, I assure you that you are not alone. Nothing is wrong with you, and the sooner you can put these steps into action, the more you will be able to learn from the experience.

The moments immediately following a binge are critical. What you do next will create pathways in your brain for the future.

Save this episode for the future so you can refer to it again if needed.

You may think that you don't want to binge and you don't want to focus on this part, but I'm here to tell you that it's so important. As you create new patterns after a binge, you will set yourself to develop new habits during and before. 

Think about the last time you binged. How did you feel? I share some of the most common feelings I experienced after a binge-eating episode. 

Next, think about what actions you took. What did you do when you were feeling this manner? Do you eat more and hide the evidence? Do you make a plan and try to distract yourself from the physical discomfort?  

Did all of this type of behavior help you stop? 

 Albert Einstein famously said: "We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." 

Bingeing is a behavior pattern that doesn't stop when you stop eating. 

Here are 5-key steps to implement after a binge: 

Step 1 - Decide you are done (close the loop)

Step 2 - Suspend the shame

Step 3 - Choose Curiosity & Compassion

Step 4 - Learn the Lesson

Step 5 - Put it into practice

I encourage you to work on adopting any of these five steps. You will notice a difference. If you adopt all FIVE, you will change your life. 

If you want a download of the 5-steps - janepilger.com/after

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 design to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck feeling out of control about food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Helker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. I'm here to show you how to use therapy, eating disorders treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the second cycle of restricting and binging and how I was able to see it all from a new perspective. 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 whether you are listening to this podcast for the first time or you are coming back and you've been with me for a while, I trust that you are listening to this very episode at a time where you are going to receive the insight, the support, and the guidance that you need to understand more about your journey with food, to have your own personal interior breakthroughs. And so that you can know that you are not broken. There is a perfectly good reason why you do what you do with food. And I want to just help you understand that it all makes sense. And especially on this topic. So today we are talking about what to do after a binge. Now, I Googled this statement more than probably anything during my journey with binge eating, especially later on when Googling things and trying to find answers on the internet became more um just more mainstream. I can remember driving around in my car, listening to podcasts about binge eating while also binging, eating, driving around from store to store, feeling like a failure, feeling so ashamed, just ashamed in general of what I was doing. But I think I also added this extra layer of shame and judgment because I was listening to these podcasts, but I was also eating while I was doing this. So if this is you right now, if you are listening to this podcast while you are eating, while you are driving around, if this is you, I want you to know you are not alone. You are not the only one doing this. There is nothing wrong with you. And the sooner you can put the steps that I'm going to share with you in this episode into action, the more you will be able to learn from this experience, to find the treasure in it, and to begin to change this pattern for the next time. This is such an important topic because the moments immediately following a binge are critical. As you unwind your binging, you will have times that you binge or overeat. What you do next will literally create the pathways in your brain for the future. So I want to invite you to come back to this episode anytime you have had a binge, you've had an overeat to remember, oh yeah, there was that one podcast I listened to. If you find this helpful, come back to it and understand while you're listening to this episode, understand that what you do next will literally create the pathways in your brain for the future. Now, you might be thinking, I just don't want to binge. I don't, I don't want to think about what to do afterwards. I don't want to focus on this part. But I'm here to tell you it's so important. As you create these new patterns for after a binge, you're going to be setting yourself up to create new patterns during while you're eating, even before you start eating in the first place. Establishing these patterns now. This is part of how change works. We go and we can we can assess and start to look at things after it's already happened. Then as you create more awareness and more understanding of what's going on, you'll be able to start catching yourself during while you're actually eating and putting some of these concepts into place. Then you can start noticing before you even want to eat. This is the process of change. So it all starts with what you do after the binge, after that period of an overeat. Okay. So I want you to think about the last time you binged. For some of you, it may be right now, and that's okay. I want you to think about this. I want you to close your eyes if you are in a safe place to do so, and just picture the moments after. It could be minutes afterwards, it could be hours, even days afterwards. Just picture this time. I want you to think about how did you feel? I'm gonna give a few suggestions based on how I used to feel. Maybe disappointed. You might have felt disgusted, ashamed, angry, hopeless, out of control, depressed. What were you thinking? You might have been thinking things like, I can't believe I did it again. I'll never figure this out. I should know better. I hate myself. I can remember thinking, I hate myself. I have no willpower. I've ruined my progress. I'm broken. Alright, so those may be the things that you were thinking. And then what did you do? If you were feeling this way, you're thinking these things. What did you do? Hide the evidence. I used to do this. Don't tell anyone. Research ways to stop. You might even eat more. Maybe you make a plan to make up for it by either not eating again until the next day, only having uh juice or salads or maybe over-exercising, maybe making up for it through purging. Maybe you zoned out, just complete zone out. That's what I used to do. Sit on the couch, zone out on social media. I actually used to do all of these things. I used to feel all of these feelings, think all of these things. Try to avoid the discomfort, the physical discomfort that I was feeling. And I would do that by through the zoning out, the researching, um, anything to just keep my mind off of it. Now let me ask you this. As you think about this, the last time that you binged and how you were feeling, what you were thinking, what you were doing, did any of this help you stop binging? I'm gonna say no. Because think about it, it's full of shame and judgment. I always go back to this quote that I love. It's Albert Einstein, and he says, we cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Often, shame and judgment create our problems. The thinking that creates the feeling of shame and judgment creates our problem. We need new thinking, thinking that's going to create feelings other than shame and judgment. And the shame and the judgment are going to keep you binging. I believe that curiosity and compassion will allow you to respond to your binges differently. And it's that different thinking, that different approach that is going to help you solve your previous challenges. Now, binging, it's a pattern of behavior, but the pattern itself doesn't just stop when you stop eating. This pattern continues on for hours and sometimes days. So a lot of times some people might think like, okay, I'm done eating, that's it. Like I'm done with the binge. Well, I want to say that's actually not the case because what you do next, and we've already kind of visited what did you do last time? Hiding the evidence, you don't talk to anybody, you uh make these plans, you do all of these things. This can be part of your pattern. I want to help you create new patterns, new patterns, because the patterns that you have, they can continue on for hours and sometimes days. Think about when you binge, how long is it until you feel like you're kind of both physically and emotionally back to what you might consider more um just more connected, more kind of yourself. For some people, it can be days. Some people don't ever get out of that pattern. They stay in that cycle of shame and judgment where you stay in it the entire time. So I want with this episode to help you create new patterns. These new patterns can start after the bench. Okay, so we're gonna dive in what to do after a binge. We're gonna create new patterns here with five key steps. Step number one is to decide that you are done, done eating. Now, I call this closing the loop. The brain loves to um, it loves to close loops. If you have an open loop in your brain, it kind of means like, ooh, maybe we'll do that. Maybe I'm not sure. We kind of leave things open, like a maybe. So, for example, let's say I'm driving around and I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm gonna buy, you know, a box of cookies. And then I'm driving around, I'm eating the cookies, and I think, ooh, okay, what else can I eat? Then I'm gonna go to the next place and I'm gonna buy some candy at the convenience store. Then I'm gonna eat that as I'm driving to the bakery. And each time I'm thinking, even as I'm thinking just how full I am, I'm thinking about the next thing. What else can I eat? That is an often, that is a thought that would often come to me during a binge. What else can I eat? If you can hear in that thought, that's an open loop. What else can I eat? It's an open loop. It puts the brain to work on what else? What else is there? What other food can I go get? Can I consume? When you decide that you are done, you close the loop. You basically tell your brain, I'm done eating. I'm not going to eat anymore. I'm done eating. Now, this sounds much I know this sounds very straightforward, but there really is power in this. If you are in a position where you do have somebody in your life that you do talk to about these things, it can be incredibly powerful for you to let that person know. Not so that they can hold you accountable or not so that they can like make sure that you actually didn't eat. I know for me it was helpful because I said it out loud. Like, okay, well, I said I was done eating. So it it gave me just a little bit more incentive to actually keep that loop closed. Because I noticed that if I would stop in my mind, if I did would decide to stop in my mind, but I wouldn't actually tell anybody, then I would come in and think, oh, well, I didn't tell anybody. Like nobody really knows that I decided to be done. So it became much more powerful, powerful for me once I had somebody that I could talk to and just be like, okay, this happened and now I'm done. So that is step number one. Decide, make the decision. Okay, that happened, I'm done. Step number two, suspend the shame. Shame and judgment will keep you binging. I love Brene Brown, Shame Researcher. Any one of her books are incredible. She has a quote that I love: if you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. So what that quote says is the three things that are going to make shame grow: secrecy, silence, and judgment. Isn't that what so many people do, myself included, after a binge? I would hide. I would hide all the evidence. I was silent, I wouldn't tell anybody, and I was so judgmental of myself. So suspending the shame is so important because if we douse it with empathy, it can't survive. Shame thrives in the darkness. If you have someone that you can talk to about your binge eating, this is it can be so powerful and so helpful. Step number three, choose curiosity and compassion. Here's a couple of sentences, a couple of questions you can ask for yours, ask yourself. So curiosity might sound like, what do I need right now? Was anything different this time? I love this question because sometimes we can look and just think, okay, well, I binged, therefore it's a failure. And if I don't binge, then it's this, it's a success. That's not how the process of unwinding binge eating works. We look at it, it's a process. So if you can look and see, huh, what was different? Maybe I actually stopped sooner. Maybe I had more awareness while I was eating. These things are amazing. And that shows progress is being made. New patterns are formed if you're doing something different in your binging. So what do I need right now? Was anything different? Another question that I love. How does this make sense? How does it make sense that I'm binging? Oh, right. I am exhausted. I really just need sleep. It makes sense because my brain and my body are trying to get energy and they're they're thinking that additional food will give me more energy. That makes sense. Compassion. Here's what compassion sounds like. What would I say to a dear friend right now? Asking yourself that question can come up with help you come up with something a little more kind. You can also just say to yourself, this is really hard. This is really hard for me right now. I'm having a hard time right now. Another thing you can say to yourself is let me be kind to myself in this moment. What is the most kind thing I can do for myself in this moment? If you are listening to this podcast after a binge, you are being kind to yourself in this moment. You may not be able to come up with those kind, curious, and compassionate words, but if you can find someplace else to bring them in, that's amazing. And you can do that with this podcast, with this episode. You can come back. Let me be kind to you in this moment while you are in the process of learning how to be kind with yourself, how to get curious with yourself. Okay, that's step number three. Step number four is to learn the lesson. I believe there is treasure in every single bench. Here are questions you can ask to find the treasure. What can I learn from this? What does this have to teach me? Where do I still have opportunities to grow? This is such a great one because you can think when where I still have opportunities to grow. Oh, I have opportunities to grow in waiting, maybe giving myself a little bit more time before I start. Before I start eating in the first place. I have opportunities to grow in maybe finding that place where if I've already started eating, maybe stopping a little bit sooner. Where are their opportunities? It can also kind of help you set yourself up and set your mind up for where you can work on those opportunities the next time. You can ask yourself, again, following up with that curiosity from last time, do I notice any progress, anything different from before? That there is treasure in that. Now, I want to tell you, you can't are not going to be able to find the treasure if there is shame and judgment. Shame and judgment will prevent you from even opening up the treasure box. You will not be willing or able to learn, to get curious, to get compassionate. This is why we have to initially suspend the shame, suspend the judgment, choose curiosity and compassion. Learn the lesson. Step number five, put it into practice. Whatever you learned in step number four, you apply to the next time. I love the statement that wisdom, the definition of wisdom, that wisdom is knowledge applied. You are getting knowledge from this podcast right now, especially if you are listening for the first time. If you are just listening right now, you're not really putting it into place in terms of it's not right after a binge. You're just gaining some knowledge. Wisdom is if you are listening to this after a binge, you are applying some knowledge. Just listening to this podcast after a binge can help you choose curiosity and compassion. All right, I'm gonna learn from this. I may not have compassion for myself right now, but I know somebody who does. I'm gonna learn from this. I'm gonna put that episode on. That is wisdom. It's putting knowledge into practice. You can think about, okay, next time, what will I do differently next time? That's where you can kind of decide right now. Think about it right now. So then you can put it into practice for the next time. Okay, those are the five steps. I want to review them for you one more time. Step number one, decide you are done eating. Close that loop. Step number two, suspend the shame. Step number three, choose curiosity and compassion. Ask yourself some really powerful questions. Step number four, learn the lesson. Step number five, put it into practice. All right, if you do any one of these five steps, you will notice a difference. Something will shift for you. Do all five of these and you will change your life. If you would like a download of these five steps, I've created a very simple one-page PDF that you can get them so you can have access to them. You can save it onto your phone. If you're not in a place where you can pull this episode up, you can pull up the PDF. Okay, what were those five steps again? You can get them at binge breakthrough.com forward slash after. That's binge breakthrough.com forward slash after. You will be creating new patterns, new pathways. This is so powerful. This change is a matter of changing the patterns, changing the pathways. This is not a flip of a switch. This will happen over time, but it's so powerful. You can shift, you can shift into curiosity and compassion, shift out of shame and judgment. That is the biggest takeaway that I have for you after a binge. Shift away from shame and judgment into curiosity and compassion. Learn the lesson, put it into practice, change those patterns over time, and you literally will change your life. All right, that's what I have for you today. I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. You can find the show notes and any resources mentioned at binge breakthrough.com. If you like this episode, subscribe to have future episodes delivered to you each Wednesday. And remember, your five star rating and review will help others discover these life changing concepts. See you next week.