26/05/2021
I want to make one thing clear here. NONE of these is something to be ashamed of. Binges are your body’s natural response to restriction and we are taught that restricting our food makes us virtuous and better humans and that regardless of our size we should all be pursuing weight loss (I mean let’s face it, we all know really thin people who are constantly on the pursuit of losing “just 5 lbs and then I’ll be happy”). But I write this post to show that we have a very narrowed idea of what a binge looks like and therefore we may not always realize we are doing it and that there is a problem. A binge is a signal that your body is not getting enough food. It doesn’t mean you’re “bad”, but it does mean might want to take a look at whether your relationship with food is “healthy” if health is your goal. When I was binging , I didn’t know it because I wasn’t just sitting there with a bag of chips, a box of cookies, a whole pizza, and a pint of ice cream. To me, that was the picture that was painted. Binge = eating everything “bad” at once. But my binges were more subtle (although equally uncomfortable). Mine looked more like going out to dinner and saying “I’m only going to have a salad but I’m going to indulge on a dessert” and then eating my dessert and everyone else’s. Or needing to stop at the store on the way home from my “light cheat meal” to get more things to eat before bed and then when that wasn’t enough, making a last minute quesadilla. Or sometimes it was taking a few cookies and stuffing them in my pocket to eat them in the bathroom after I had deceivingly “stopped myself” from overeating at dinner. They didn’t feel like binges because they weren’t “all in one sitting” or because some of the food I ate was still “allowed” but the level of physical discomfort I felt was VERY much binge-level discomfort. But because it wasn’t all at once, I didn’t think it was that big of a problem. I didn’t think there was a need to identify the cause. I felt like I just needed “more willpower”. If any of these less obvious forms of binging connect with you, feel free to reach out.
