The Part of You That Binges Isn't the Enemy

What if the part of you that binges isn't broken and isn't something to be eliminated? 

In this episode, I'm sharing something that changed my own relationship with food, and that I've watched change so much for the people I work with. 

If you've ever hated that part of yourself, felt ashamed of it, or wondered why fighting it so hard hasn't made it go away, this episode is for you.

What You'll Discover:

• Why fighting the part that binges tends to make it stronger not weaker
• What that part is actually trying to do for you even when its strategy creates more pain
• The fear that keeps people from trying a different approach and why it makes sense
• What becomes possible when you stop fighting and start listening to what's underneath 

If you've ever thought you'd be a better, more lovable person without this part of you, I understand. I thought the same thing. This episode is where that starts to change. 

Ready to do this work with support? Book a Breakthrough Call today.

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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What if the part of you that binges, that wants to eat lots and lots of food, isn't the problem you think it is? Today, I want to talk about a shift in how you relate to that part of yourself. One that changed so much for me and that I've watched change so much for the people that I work with. It might be one of the more counterintuitive things you've heard on this topic, and it might also be one of the most important. Welcome to Binge Eating Breakthrough, the podcast to help you stop feeling out of control around food and build trust with your body. If you've tried everything but still feel stuck, you're not alone. I've been there too. I'm Jane Pilger, and I'm here to help you see binge eating in a new way so you can finally break free. Each week you'll get the tools and insights to create peace with food and your body. Your breakthrough starts now. Hello, trusted listener. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you're open, even just a little, to hearing something today that might go against everything you've believed about your struggle with food. I trust that even if part of you pushes back on what I'm about to share, you'll stay with it long enough to really let it land. And I trust that you're here because some part of you knows that what you've been trying hasn't been working and you're ready to consider something different. So today I'm gonna talk to you about the part of you that binges. We're not gonna talk around it. We're not gonna talk about strategies to control it, eliminate it, outsmart it, or make it go away. I'm gonna talk directly about that part, what it is, what it's doing, and what becomes possible when you stop treating it as the enemy, as something that needs to be eradicated, that needs to go away. Now, I've talked about this idea in different ways across different episodes. So if some of this feels familiar, stay with me. Because today and next week, I'm gonna go deeper than I usually do. And I'm gonna start with my own story. I hated that part of me. For so long, I hated the part of me that binged. I don't mean that I disliked it, that I just wished it was different, or I felt frustrated with it. I mean I genuinely, deeply hated it. I wanted it gone. I believed, I truly believed that I would be a better person without it. More acceptable, more lovable, more worthy of the life I wanted for myself. I used to think if I could just remove this one part of me, everything else would fall into place. My relationships would be easier, I would feel more confident, I would finally be the person I was supposed to be, that I could imagine myself being. The binging felt like evidence of something fundamentally wrong with me. Not just a habit I was struggling with, something that said, you are different from other people. You are broken. There is something wrong with you. You are less than. Something that had no place in a life I was proud of. I thought going to treatment would make it go away, but not for any extended period of time. And I'm gonna guess that so many of you who are listening right now know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you use different words, maybe it's shame rather than hatred, maybe it's exhaustion, maybe it's helplessness, hopelessness, or like a quiet resignation that this is just who you are, who you've always been, and who you will always be. But underneath those feelings, however you describe them, is a relationship with that binging part that is likely adversarial, that thinks that part is the problem. That part is what stands between you and the life that you want. And if you could just get rid of it, everything would be different. But I get it. I lived that for so long, and today I want to offer you a different perspective. Now, here's what I noticed. Even before I actually understood why, what was very clear was that the harder I fought that part of me, the stronger it seemed to get. The more I tried to eliminate it, the more it pushed back. The more I restricted and controlled and white-knuckled my way through, the more urgent the desires, the cravings, the urges became. The more contempt I brought to it, the more power it seemed to have over me. So there's this phrase that I come back to again and again in this work. And if you've been listening to me for a while, you may have heard me say it before. Certainly, if you are a client, you know what I'm about to say. What you resist persists. And I think this is one of the most important things to understand about why fighting this part of yourself hasn't worked. It's not because you weren't trying hard enough or you're doing something wrong, it's because fighting is exactly what keeps it in place. I'm gonna say this again: what you resist persists. So think about it this way: if someone in your life was trying to tell you something important, and your response every time was to shut them down, push them away, ignore it, tell them you didn't want to hear it. What would they do? If it was important, they would get louder. They would find other ways to get your attention, they would become impossible to ignore because the message still needed to be delivered. That's what the binging part is doing. It has something to tell you. And every time you fight it, shame it, or try to eliminate it, it has to get louder to be heard. So I have often talked about this idea that a binge, a time where you eat a lot of food, you show up with food in ways that you don't really prefer, it's like a light on the dashboard of your car. When that light comes on, the light itself is not the problem. It's information. It tells us something is happening under the hood that needs us, that needs attention. And most of us, when we struggle with binge eating, with feeling out of control around food, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to turn the light off, trying to stop the urge, trying to control the behavior, trying to fix and change what we're eating, how we're eating, how much we're eating, when we're eating, without asking the key questions. What is this telling me? What is happening underneath? The binging part, the part with the food is the light. It's the signal. It is not the problem. It's pointing to something that needs your attention. And when you spend all of your energy fighting the signal, the light that came on on the dashboard, you never actually get to find out what's happening under the hood that's making that light come on in the first place. So here's something that I resisted for a really long time because it felt impossible to believe. That part of me that I hated so much, it was trying to help me. Not in a way that made sense, certainly not in a way that I would have chosen, and not in a way that didn't create very real consequences that I did not like. But it was trying in the only way it knew how to take care of me. When I was too tired and I had nothing left, it showed up with food. When I was overwhelmed and I couldn't feel my way through what was happening, it offered me a way to go numb. When shame about my body was running so high that I could barely stand to be in my own skin, it gave me somewhere else to put my attention. When I felt hopeless about my situation, it offered a moment of relief. It was doing what it could with what it had and what it had repeated for years and years over and over again. Now, here's the part that really got me when I finally understood. That part didn't even like doing it most of the time. It didn't enjoy the aftermath, it didn't want the shame spiral that came after. It just didn't think there was any other way. It didn't know another option existed. Now that changed something for me. The hatred started to soften. Not because I suddenly loved binging, but because I started to see that part differently. Not as the enemy, but as something that was scared and exhausted and doing its best with a very limited set of options. Now, I want to name something because if you are anything like I was, there probably is a part of you right now that is pushing back. It might sound something like this. If I accept this part, does that mean that it just wins? If I stop fighting it, does that mean it never goes away? If I try to understand it instead of eliminate it, am I just making excuses for something I should be stronger about? I had every one of those thoughts. And I want to address them because they are not irrational at all. They make complete sense given everything you've been taught about how change works. We live in a culture that tells us discomfort is weakness. Struggle means you need more discipline. The way to fix a problem is to calm down hard on it. So the idea of responding to the binging part with anything other than force or willpower or determination or grit feels counterintuitive at best and dangerous at worse. I remember thinking: if I stop hating this part of me, if I stop being so angry and just not liking what it does, doesn't that mean that I'm just okay with it? Doesn't it mean that I'm giving myself permission to keep binging forever? If I'm not fighting it, what's stopping it from completely taking over? There was also something else underneath my resistance that took me longer to see. A part of me had been fighting for so long that the fighting had become part of my identity. That battle was exhausting, but it also felt like evidence that I cared. That I wasn't just giving up on myself, that I was still trying. And if I put down the sword, what did that say about me? Now, I want to be really clear about something because this is where the misunderstanding often lives. Understanding why a part does what it does is not the same thing as agreeing with its strategy. You can have compassion for why something developed without endorsing the behavior. You can stop fighting a part of yourself without surrendering to it. Let me say that again. You can stop fighting a part of yourself without surrendering to it. Those are not the same thing, even though they can feel like the same when you are in the middle of it. Accepting that this part exists and is trying to help you is not the same as saying what it's doing is okay or that you want to keep doing it forever. It's saying, I'm willing to understand this. I'm willing to get curious about it. I'm willing to try a different relationship with it than the one I've been having. That's it. That's all it requires at first. Just a crack of openness, just enough willingness to consider that there might be something here worth listening to. And what I've found in my own experience and in the experience of so many people that I've worked with is the fighting keeps you stuck. What you resist persists. And the moment you stop fighting and start listening, something that wasn't possible before becomes possible. So when I stopped going to war with that part of me and I started getting curious about it instead, something shifted. I could actually hear what was underneath. Before, all of my energy was going into the battle, into suppressing the urge, shaming myself for having it, trying to outrun it, run it, focusing on don't eat, don't eat, don't binge. There was nothing left over for curiosity. I was completely and utterly focused on the food, what I was eating, when I was eating, how much I was eating, what was happening to my body. There was no space to ask, what is this really about? What is this part actually trying to tell me? The noise of the fighting drowned everything else out. And when the fighting stopped, even a little, when I approached that part with something closer to curiosity than contempt, I started to hear things I hadn't been able to hear before. What the part needed, what it was afraid of. That the urges showed up most often after days when I had been everything to everyone and nothing to myself. They were louder when I had been eating in a way that felt restrictive, even if I hadn't consciously decided to restrict. That they spiked when I was sitting with shame that I hadn't named yet. Shame about my body, about my work, about feeling like I was falling short somewhere. The part was responding to all of that. It was pointing directly at what needed attention. I just hadn't been able to hear it because I was too busy trying to make it stop. I see the same thing happen with the people that I work with. So a client I worked with recently, she described it this way. She said, when she stopped trying to fight the urge and instead asked herself what was really going on, she realized that she was furious. Not about food, but about something that had happened at work that week she had pushed down and told herself it wasn't a big deal. The binge urge wasn't about the food at all. It was about anger and frustration. She hadn't given herself permission to feel. And once she saw that, the urgency around the food dropped. Not because she fixed anything, but because she finally heard what was actually there. And this is what I mean when I say that the binge is a light on the dashboard. When you stop trying to turn the light off or just put some duct tape over it, and you actually look under the hood, you find out what's been there all along, what's making the light come on in the first place. And when you can see it, then you can do something about it. Not by forcing yourself to change, but by actually responding to what is there. Now, this is where the missing pieces often show up. Sometimes what you find underneath is an emotion that needs to be felt that hasn't been. Sometimes it's a need that hasn't been met for rest, for connection, for comfort, for something that has nothing to do with food. Sometimes it's a belief that's been running quietly in the background that you didn't even know was there. And none of that is accessible when you're in the battle. All of it becomes accessible when you stop fighting and start listening. And that is when things start to shift. Not because you finally got strong enough to defeat that part of you, but because you stopped needing to. Now, I know this might be a lot to sit with, especially if you've spent years, maybe even decades, in a battle with this part of yourself. The idea of putting down the sword can feel terrifying. It can feel like weakness, it can feel like giving up on yourself. But what if it's actually the opposite? What if putting down the sword is the bravest thing you can do? What if the willingness to say, I am going to stop fighting this and start listening instead is what finally creates the opening for something to change. Now, I don't expect you to get there in a single episode. This is a practice. It takes time and it takes support. And sometimes it takes someone to help you hear what that part is saying when you can't quite hear it on your own. Now, next week, I'm going to go even deeper into what this actually looks like in practice, what it means to work with this part rather than against it, and what that relationship can look like over time. Now, if you know, if you're listening to this and you are like, I am ready, I want to do this work, I am ready to stop fighting, but I don't know that I can do it on my own. Reach out, schedule a breakthrough call. I will put the link in the show notes. This is the work, and a lot of times it does take support to do it. Now, until next week, I want to invite you to try one thing. The next time an urge, a desire, a craving shows up, before you fight it or give into it, see if you can get just a little bit curious. No judgment, no analysis, just a moment of what are you trying to tell me? You just might find that you get surprised at what you hear. That's what I have for you today. I'll see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you love my little eating breakfast. My food isn't a problem, and what really is. Discover my problem isn't the answer. I restricting certain foods often flavors, and my understanding of brain and body is the key to lasting.