Bites & Body Love (v)

I Just Binged. What Do I Do?

• Jamie Magdic

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A binge can feel overwhelming, confusing, or shame-filled — but it doesn’t have to spiral. In this episode, I share the exact steps I guide my clients through to break the cycle and move toward full recovery: how to eat consistently, include all foods without guilt, release post-binge shame, and get curious about triggers instead of judgmental. Learn how to turn a binge into an opportunity for growth and build a healthier, more trusting relationship with your body and food.

If this resonates, you can explore more support, my signature program to reach full recovery, courses, and resources on healing your relationship with food and your body on my website.

My website: https://www.jamiethedietitian.com/

My Instagram: @jamieRD_

✅ Apply to work with me: https://www.jamiethedietitian.com/application-page

SPEAKER_00:

Hello everyone, welcome to my car again. I'm doing some traveling for the holidays and so we have a full house and a shared space. So um my YouTube for the next couple months when I'm traveling is going to be maybe from the car, some random places. Um but I really wanted to hop on to chat with you today about binging and specifically what to do post-binge. So if you were my client, what would I advise you to do post-binge to support your mental health and support your well-being, support your physical health, and to reduce, continue to practice reducing binges and eliminating binges in the future. So here are my tips on what to do post-binge. Number one, do not stop eating consistently. I know that post-binge you feel extremely uncomfortable and you're terrified of the weight gain that it's going to cause, and you are scared of continuing to allow yourself to feel out of control with food. But the last thing you want to do is stop eating consistently and stop eating enough. So you do not want to move on from the binge with restriction. You need to consistently eat. Even if you're feeling full, I want you to eat something. So let's say you had a binge episode the night prior. You went to bed the next morning, you are wanting to skip breakfast, potentially even skip lunch, skip morning snacks, eat less for breakfast. What I want to challenge you to do is eat consistently breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between. So eating every three to four hours and making sure you're eating enough in those meals. And the next thing is I want you to make sure, well, we'll add that in another tip. So eating frequently and eating enough. So every three to four hours. And when I say enough, what you can use is like the I like to use the rule of threes. So every three hours, and three things on your plate. So if you're having breakfast, um let's do three things for that breakfast, whether that's yogurt, berry, and granola, that's eggs, toast, and orange juice, um, banana, peanut butter, and oatmeal, three things, okay? Every three to four hours. The reason for this, again, I know it feels very uncomfortable, but the reason for this is because most likely one of the things that can cause those binges is that you have gotten yourself so overly hungry. Um, and because you frequently restrict, you get to this place where you're overly hungry, you need food right away, and then you say, Oh my gosh, screw it. I just ate these things that made me feel guilty. You know, let's say you just had a donut, you're saying, well, I might as well have the whole box of donuts because I wasn't, I didn't want to eat the one donut in the first place. I'm never gonna eat donuts again, so I am going to eat all the donuts right now, and then I'm going to be perfect tomorrow, right? And so restriction is that actually the enemy. And that that leads me to the, and that's why you do not want to follow up a binge with restriction with the thing that caused it in the first place. So, in addition to the restriction and the not eating uh frequently enough, or sorry, in addition to making sure you're eating frequently and you're eating enough, the other piece is I want to make sure, or what you need to be doing is you need to be eating something that's satisfying. And so it might be a binge food. I want you to make sure you're incorporating that, the the different binge foods, the different off-limit foods, the the different foods that you um like enjoy but you say are not okay. Um, I want you to incorporate that into your day. And the reason for that is because again, if you take that off and you say, You can I cannot have that, and you go two weeks without binging and eating clean, well, what's gonna what is gonna happen is you charged up that food so much, you took it off limits, and so it's going to feel very appealing. There is that reward, there is that that um off-limits appeal to it that are is going to attract you to it. So put it on limits. And what I want you to do there is for each meal, make sure you're not only eating enough, but make sure you're eating something that is actually making you happy and satisfied, right? So if you're having for breakfast oatmeal, bland oatmeal with water, um, and you know, some dry eggs or whatever, those might be fine and satisfying in some way, but let's make sure you get something in addition with those two items that is going to like make you excited. Um, so make the whole meal exciting, something you truly enjoy, and add that satisfaction factor in and add that um that binge food in as well. So let's say, let's use a different example. Let's say that you binge on your like your go-to binging is on chips. Well, I want you to put chips in one of your snacks, have an apple and some chips, um, put chips into your lunch alongside, you know, maybe your your um salad bowl. Um, and have chips alongside your meal, even if it doesn't make sense for dinner, have it alongside what you're having. Because again, what you're doing is you're saying this is on limits. I can have these frequently in amounts that don't make me feel bad because I'm eating too much of them and you're putting them on limits. You're putting, you're, you're giving yourself permission and you're practicing allowing yourself to have it outside of binges and you're not saving up. Um, because I know the mentality is, hey, I'm going to give this up forever and this time I'm never gonna go back to chips. But that's very unrealistic. It's very unrealistic. The more things you put off limits out of shame and restriction and control, the harder it's going to be to have a relationship that is neutral with those items, which is what we want because we're not gonna binge on things that are neutral. They just don't have that same appeal. And so you can neutralize food by having it as part of your day and building a new relationship with it. And I always think of, you know, I have a lot of clients that I helped be who have are now binge-free. Um, but one of the clients that stick out to me is a client who is just really charging up donuts. Really, really just it's so fearful. Um, and when we brought it back in, would would binge on them. Um, and we kept saying, you know, I kept saying, well, we're gonna get donuts again and incorporate it into the week. And this client was terrified. But as we continue to do that, that she came to this place where she one day was like, Wow, they are just donuts. I don't want them anymore. Like, I'll still have them. Um, and she still incorp incorporates them and has them sometimes. But one and once upon a time, this food that just was so charged that she could not stop thinking about, that she couldn't just have one without binging, she couldn't just have a bite without binging. Um, now is just a normal food in her life that sometimes she has and just doesn't think about it, like all the rest of the foods. So that would be my second uh thing that I would say to do. Number three. I want you to think about what led you to that binge. I want you to do some analyzing about what maybe led to that binge, what fueled it. I named a few things that can fuel it, right? Not eating enough, not eating consistently, not eating, allowing yourself all foods and giving yourself permission for all foods. Those are all very big things that lead to binges. The other thing that's going to lead to a binge is if you're not getting your needs met in other ways and you're maybe coping with food and binging as like a way of coping with with your emotions. And so one thing you can assess, there's many things you can assess, but one thing you can assess is how was I feeling that day? What were the emotions I was going through? What was I experiencing? How was I feeling overall? How was I how was I speaking to myself? What needs were unmet that I had? Maybe did did I sleep enough? Did I feel like I had enough connection? Did I feel like I was aligned with my values? Did I feel like I had something fun to look forward to? Um, and that also says, like, you know, not only unmet needs that day or how you're feeling that day, but just in general, um, because if the if food, strictly like being good on a diet or allowing yourself these binges are what your life is revolving around and how you're coping, well, it's gonna be hard to get rid of them if we don't replace them with new coping mechanisms and new um ways of outlets of of how you're you know living your life and um where where your energy's at as well. And so I would get very curious. And with my clients, I get so curious. We we I am asking for their thoughts consistently throughout the day when they are um working toward having a healthier relationship with food and stop binging and stop restricting and just be free. I really want to know what what is the chain reaction of these different things? What is happening underneath? What are you saying to yourself? What do you think? What are you thinking throughout the day? I want to hear all of those things that lead to those choices to eat the thing or not eat the thing or hop on the scale and shame yourself and what that leads to. It's all connected. And so I I want you to get really curious about starting to learn what impacts you and and and um impacts those binges and impacts your choices and impacts how you're feeling about your body and just impacts your your relationship with food and body. We want to get really curious. So, next thing is I want to have you ask yourself, how are you speaking to yourself post-binge? A huge thing that fuels this cycle is shame. And what comes with binging is a lot of shame. You blame yourself for these behaviors um and not being able to have the willpower or not being able to stop binging, but there are these real psychological and survival and um physical things that are driving this. You have these drivers that really are complicated and are that you have to get to the roots and he and heal. But one thing that you're hurting yourself with is shame. Shame is gonna fuel this all. So we need to get compassionate. We need to, after a binge, we need to speak to ourselves like our best friend, right? So I want to give you this metaphor I uh this example I use with a lot of my clients. So so let's say you are on a date, and the person you go on a date with, you're super excited, and they get to the date and um they leave in the middle of the date and they say, you know what? I don't, I don't want to be here. I really don't like you. Um, I'm not attracted to you. This isn't fun, and like they leave, and you're heartbroken. You liked them, you were excited, and you call a friend and you and you tell the friend, oh my gosh, guess what just happened to me? And that friend says, Well, yeah, of course they left you. You're boring, you're not fun, yeah, you're unattractive, I would leave you too, and that's how they speak to you, right? I want you to consider that that is what you are doing to yourself when you are post-binge and you start to shame a hard experience rather than get curious and get compassionate because you need to be your own best friend. It is not helpful to take a binge and the struggle with the binge and then to shame yourself for it. What is helpful is to show up like a compassionate friend and get curious together. Say, hmm. What happened there? What led to that? How am I feeling right now? What am I needing? Am I needing to just have some deep breaths? Am I needing to put it off my mind for for a bit and not try and figure it out figure it out? Am I needing a a a bath? Am I needing to talk with a friend? Am I needing a walk outside and to breathe fresh air? Am I needing to journal about what am I needing? And take care of yourself like you would a friend and speak to yourself that you would a f the way you would a friend, saying, Oh gosh, that's so hard. I really want to stop binging. That's so hard that we just went through that. It's so uncomfortable. I know we really don't want to do that. It's it's so hard trying to figure this out. But and be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself because what I can tell you is the shame that my clients experience this experience, the shame that I experienced when I had episodes of binging is it's just so intense. And if you treat it, if you tr treat that with shame, you are going to make decisions that are not going to help you to reach recovery from binging. That's for sure. You're gonna be make making decisions based off shame and fear, not getting curious, just going back to following rules, and not giving yourself the the space and patience that is needed to understand binging. You want to be open in those moments and say, what happened? That's okay. I'm learning how to not binge. It's gonna happen again. Most likely, this is gonna happen again as I figure this out. But I'm I'm here with myself, being kind to myself, and I'm figuring it out. And I and and that's okay. So yes, all in all, those are, you know, there's lots of other things to do that we can do for sure, but those would be my top top things I would say to do post-binge. You want to make sure you're eating consistently, make sure you're eating enough, make sure you're eating those off-limit foods in ways that feel uh uh manageable for you. Because I know all these things are hard with depending on where you're at and um the support you have and all of that. And I would recommend support. I would recommend working with a provider um for sure who has been there before, who understands, who can walk you through and hold your hand and say, let's keep let's get another box of donut of donuts. Um and number four, get curious. Get cu get curious about what led to that binge, what led to that feeling of being out of control with food. And number five would be to be your own best friend in those moments and take care of yourself. Do not hop on the scale, do not go body check, do not plan your next d diet that you're gonna be just hungry and miserable on. How can you be kind to yourself, be patient with yourself, get curious with yourself and be your own best friend in those moments? So let me know if you have any questions. Happy to expand on these in other videos. And I hope you all are having um a peaceful week.