What to Do After a Binge (Without the Guilt, Punishment, or Shame)

Did you overeat this Thanksgiving? Feel like you “fell off” again?

This episode is your honest, no-BS guide to what to do after a binge—without guilt, punishment, or spiraling. Whether it was stuffing, wine, or sneaking snacks after bedtime, this is not your starting-over moment. It’s your comeback. 👊

I’ll walk you through the exact post-binge plan I give my clients (and use myself) to reset your nervous system, reconnect to your body, and rebuild consistency with compassion, not control.

You’ll learn:

• Why bingeing is a nervous system response (not a moral failure)
• 7 steps to reset your body + mindset after overeating
• What not to do the day after
• My personal Thanksgiving rock-bottom story
• How to reframe this moment as a turning point—not a spiral

💙 If this episode resonated, share it with a friend or tag me on IG @annejonesfit

📣 Ready to feel strong, confident, and consistent year-round? Join the Muscles & Mindset coaching program here → https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/coaching

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution, the podcast for ambitious women who want to build strength, feel confident, af, and lose fat for good, without counting calories or BS quick fixes. I'm your host, Anne Jones, certified life coach, personal trainer and mindset expert. After 15 plus years in the fitness industry, I know the real key to lasting change isn't just what you do, it's how you think. If you're ready to shift your mindset, build a lifestyle you love and get confident, af you are in the right place. Let's dive in. Hey, friend. Happy Thanksgiving Monday. If you're listening in Canada in real time and if you're tuning in a little bit later, maybe on your walk or driving to work, first of all, I really appreciate it, and second of all, I really hope that you had a great weekend full of whatever you needed the most. Whether that was pumpkin pie, peace and quiet, a nap, family chaos. Skipping your workouts, doing your workouts, hitting the gym, or just lying on the couch. Rewatching Gilmore Girls, it's all good. I know that for a lot of women, especially high achievers, perfectionists,. Anyone who's ever dieted ever before, or maybe not even called it dieted, but just tried to watch what they're eating Thanksgiving weekend can stir up some serious and mental noise around food, your body, and then subsequently getting back on track. I'm using air quotes if you are listening to the podcast and not watching it. So today I would like to walk you through exactly what to do after a binge or what feels like a binge, because we all do it sometimes. Most of us do it on Thanksgiving or Christmas, even healthy eaters, right? And it doesn't have to be in a bad way. It's like we're just gonna eat a lot of things'cause it's fun and it's delicious and they're all here. So let's just remove the shame from whether it was pie or stuffing or chocolate or wine or whatever This episode is for the Tuesday morning spiral, right? Monday or Tuesday, whatever. So we are not here to beat ourselves up or to start a shame spiral. We are here to get grounded, to get honest and to make empowered decisions from presence Now, not from fear. So let's start here. If you binged, you're not broken, nothing about your needs fixing. Even if you went all in, whole hog, ate till you were uncomfortable, skipped your workouts, maybe even snuck a few things after everyone went to bed, it doesn't mean that you're an a-hole or you've ruined anything. Okay? That's not a character flaw, it's a coping mechanism. Food is so emotional, especially around holidays. Listen to my previous episode on emotional eating. It is not just about mashed potatoes, it is about comfort, family dynamics. Oh my goodness, grief, tradition, celebration, being out of routine, burnout, nervous system regulation. It's all of these things. And if you have been restricting your food, either consciously or unconsciously. Your body is supposed to want more. That's normal. If you have been holding yourself to an all or nothing standard, you are supposed to rebel eventually. That's normal for your brain to seek safety. This is a very normal human response to very human circumstances. So if you're thinking, oh, why did I do that? I always do this. The first thing I want you to do is try shifting to like, yeah, of course I did that. that makes so much sense. Now what? And that's what we're gonna talk about. Because here's where we really mess ourselves up. It's not actually the food that ruins your progress. It's the way you react to it. It's the frantic I have to undo the damage response, the panic, cardio, the starvation, Monday or Tuesday, the for the love of God, the January juice cleanse, the I'm skipping lunch and having a salad for dinner and I have to work out every day this week. Panic plan. That is what screws your metabolism, your confidence and your consistency. That is what reinforces the cycle where food feels scary and you're always bouncing between chaos and control. So if that's where your brain is this morning, take a deep breath with me. Put down the macro calculator. You don't need to tally up how many grams of sugar or how many glasses of wine you had. You don't need to punish yourself into being a good girl again. You just need to come back to your body. I'm going to tell you what to actually do in a couple of minutes, but first I wanna share my personal story with you. So the reason that I know all of this is yes, because I have coached hundreds of women since. 2009, 2010, and I've seen all the patterns. I've heard all the things I've had my online coaching business now for seven Thanksgivings. I know exactly what comes before, during, and after Thanksgiving. I have heard it all. I know what you're thinking. I know what you're saying to yourself. I know what you're saying to your girlfriends and your husband. Okay, because I've heard it all and I have been there. So if you don't already know my story, you can listen to the very first episode of the podcast. I share sort of my history with disordered and very much binge eating. One of my most powerful rock bottom moments is a Thanksgiving. A Thanksgiving when I was in university. So I went to university in Toronto. My family lived in the Northwest Territories at the time, I believe, and that's a long ways to go every holiday, right? And my parents were awesome and brought me home most of the time. But one Thanksgiving of university, I was invited to a friend's house in. Winnipeg. So I flew to Winnipeg for Thanksgiving. It was super fun. Her family was like super lovely. I had this beautiful Thanksgiving dinner and I was totally in my binge and restrict era at this point. So I literally ate so much at Thanksgiving dinner. I could not move. I could not like, I'm like at someone's house for company. My mom would be like, mortified. I was so full. I went upstairs. I think I just went to bed. Like I could not do anything. And I didn't know any different. But the worst part is I felt so much shame about it after and I tried to joke about it and like every, it was fine. But I knew that I was out of control at this point. Right. And it was very much the result of not having any connection with my body, my hunger or fullness cues, but also being in a place where I had been trying to restrict my eating for over a year and given the opportunity to go back wild. I took it every time, right? Like really took it so I know I've been there. here's what to do after a binge or holiday weekend that felt like a binge. Number one, regulate before anything else. Regulate your nervous system. You cannot make a next grounded decision when you're in fight, flight, or freeze. Take a long walk without headphones. Do some box breathing. Take a cold shower, do some V I have all these on my YouTube. Put your hand on your heart. Take five deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth. Feel your feet on the floor before you do anything else, regulate. Number two. Hydrate. No, not just as a detox to pee it all out or whatever, just because it helps you feel better. Water supports digestion, energy, mood, subsequent cravings. Add some electrolytes if you need to. If there was a lot of alcohol involved, you're feeling depleted or puffy. Number three, eat protein at your next meal. Do not skip meals, please. Okay? Don't do it. Just make your next meal. Simple. Balanced protein forward. That's it. You don't have to cleanse. You don't have to reverse it, earn it. Just nourish yourself. This is the best thing you can do, I promise you. Number four, move gently. If you're feeling bloated or sluggish, movement will help. Walking is probably the best thing you can do. Yoga, do not jump into a workout or a new program or something from a place of punishment, go for a walk. Do some strength training if you're up for it. Stretch. Do some mobility work. Reconnect with your body without trying to erase the whole weekend. Okay, number five, skip the scale. Just don't, just don't do it. The scale will reflect food volume, water retention, digestion, hormonal fluctuations. It will not reflect the truth and it will not help how you feel. You do not need that energy today. Okay, number six. Reframe. This is not a fall off the wagon story. Do not let it be a fall off the wagon story. I refuse even that story I just told you. I refuse to let that define me as my fall off the wagon story. I will admit it was a low moment. And I needed it, right. I needed it to learn to know how that feels and to share it with you. Now, make this your, my body was trying to protect me. Like I'm obviously looking for something story. This is, I learned something about my patterns and now I'm coming back to Make it that story, okay? Not, I'm a jerk. I suck. I always do this. I fell off the wagon. My body works perfectly. She was trying to protect me. I learned something about myself and my patterns, and now I'm coming back to myself because I deserve it. Okay, reframe number seven. Reconnect to your why. Why are you, why is that something that's not of service to you? Binge eating. Why does strength, consistency, confidence, nutrition. Why does it matter to you? You don't need motivation. That's temporary motivation is fueled by the binge sustainability and results. Are fueled by reconnection to your body. So reconnect to your why. Why the heck would you ever strength train again? Why would you eat vegetables? Why is consistency matter? Do you want to feel good in your body? Do you wanna have poops every day? Do you wanna be a good role model for your kids or your girlfriends, your mom even, who probably went through her own diet, culture experience, or your vineyard dad? Like why does it matter to you? What do you want them to see and learn? Journal it out. Put your vision somewhere visible where you can see it. Recite it, rewrite it. How do you wanna feel? Why? Why are you a different person than the person who temporarily binged on Thanksgiving? Remember a weekend, a meal, even a week does not define you. Consistency is not built by being perfect. It's built by how quickly and compassionately you come back to yourself after a little wobble. How quickly can you bounce back and the sooner you can interrupt the shame spiral, which is, I suck. Here I go again. Why did I do that? The sooner you can come back into integrity and actually do something about it, it's about the, it's about the comeback baby, right? So if this weekend didn't go how you hoped, it's okay. It's okay. Let this be your turning point, not your reason to start over from scratch. You are not starting over from scratch if you keep bumping into this or any other little wobble, right in your progress in your life. if you're listening to this podcast, I'm making a circle with my finger like a spiral, right? Like a spiral. Like you will keep circling this one spot till you work through whatever this is. You will keep repeating the binge until you work through the reason that you are binging. it's not linear. It's not like you are following a straight line. You fall off and you have to start back at the beginning. Life is just a spiral. You keep bumping into this lesson until you learn it. Okay? I will leave you with this. Your body doesn't need more punishment. She gets enough of that from life, from lifestyle, from pollution, from. All the sensory overload that she's experiencing every day. She needs your care. She's been trying to protect you through cravings. Yes, through stress, through dysregulation, through anxiety. This is your body speaking to you. It's a symptom, not as something is wrong with you. You don't need to just be better. You just need to come back home. Hey, before you move on from this episode, I wanna leave you with three simple journal prompts. You can pause and write these down, or just think through the mono walk. Number one, what did I need this weekend emotionally that I didn't get or physically? Number two, how can I show my body care today instead of control? And number three, what does the strong, grounded version of me want to do next? You are not broken. You are becoming. If this episode landed, I would love to hear from you. Come find me on Instagram at@annejonesfit or share this episode with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're looking for actual tools to reset your habits, regulate your nervous system, and build consistency without perfection, you know where to find We have space inside the muscles and mindset, one-on-one coaching program for women who want to feel confident, strong, and grounded all year long, not just when the conditions are perfect, come join us. that's a wrap for today's episode of the Muscles and Mindset Revolution Podcast.