I’m preparing for my monthly webinar on How to Manage food urges and cravings and thought it ties in well with today’s episode. You can find out more about my monthly webinar and catch the replays at webinar.wholesomelifestyleproject.com/
I recently had a conversation with a professional woman who was so frustrated with her overeating, she felt like she had a handle on everything else but just could not get her eating right. She didn’t understand why she kept going back to the same pattern of binge eating.
We often feel so frustrated when we think we have a handle on food but then something happens and we feel like we are back in the self-sabotage loop.
It took me years to figure out what was causing my binge episodes and today I will be sharing this with you so get comfortable and let’s get straight into it
Listen to the episode here
For many years I thought food tempted me into binge eating but……
A binge is caused by an urge, an uncontrollable desire to eat, as much as possible and right away. Without the urge, there won’t be a binge.
The part of the brain responsible for an urge is the hypothalamus, sometimes called the “lizard brain” or “animal brain” or “lower brain”. My clients have lovingly started referring to this brain as the food zombie!!
The hypothalamus controls hunger body temperature, thirst, fatigue, and sleep. This is the primal selfish part of the brain that wants you to overeat, it wants you to binge eat because its main job is to keep you alive and it hates discipline!!
Your food zombie will rationalize, It will tell you things like: “oh well, you’ve eaten one cookie, you might as well buy more binge food” , “I just need to get over this day, a binge will make me feel better”, “Your day is already ruined, you may as well finish the Oreo sleeve so you won’t be tempted tomorrow”. “nuts are healthy, one more handful won’t hurt”. This is called an urge.
What causes an urge? There are 3 reasons why you start feeling urges to eat ….
1. Hunger
If you have been chronically dieting or you forget to eat because you are so busy during the day for an extended period of time, your body will need food and lots of it
When engaging in calorie-restricted diets, the hypothalamus thinks that the body is facing starvation and will create the urge to eat. The hypothalamus’s purpose is to keep us alive and away from possible threats, starvation is a major threat to survival. The more we restrict our food intake the more urgent the urges to binge will become.
2. Emotions
If you have not listened to episode 2, I recommend going back to listen to why guilt triggers more binge eating
The food zombie prefers pleasure over pain, often we will seek out food instead of dealing with emotional situations. The temporary pleasure food provides us can serve as a distraction from what we are feeling. Emotional experiences can bring on the urge to binge.
3. Habit
Some urges are caused by habit. Once we have dealt with hunger or emotions by means of a binge, our brain is convinced that bingeing is the answer. We will continue to use bingeing as the solution to our problems. Eventually, we are no longer bingeing because of hunger or an emotional experience but rather out of habit. Our brain starts thinking, ” it’s Tuesday morning, time to binge” , ” it’s 3 p.m., time to binge”.
Download my Quit binge eating for good guide by visiting quit.wholesomelifestyleproject.com
Can’t wait to see you in the next episode where I will be sharing some drivers behind overeating
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Stel Coombe-Heath: Binge and emotional eating recovery specialist 
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