In this episode we discuss the 6 root causes of binge eating and how to overcome them.
This is the ultimate way to overcome binge eating.
Unfortunately most people focus on 1-2 roots over and over again completely unaware of the remaining ones. In this episode I try to increase your awareness to the different root causes of binge eating.
In this episode we discuss the 6 root causes of binge eating and how to overcome them.
This is the ultimate way to overcome binge eating.
Unfortunately most people focus on 1-2 roots over and over again completely unaware of the remaining ones. In this episode I try to increase your awareness to the different root causes of binge eating.
Hello and welcome to another episode of beyond the bench. My name is Mo, I'm a registered dietitian and behavioral Training Specialist. Then every episode I take you closer to discovering a life, free of benching so you can live your best life physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually without having to worry about benching again, all the problems that come along with it. And in this episode, we are going to discuss the six roots of binge eating the six root causes that contribute to binge eating. I promise you, you haven't haven't seen this anywhere else before. Listen to the end, because this can definitely resonate with you. Binge eating is one of the most persistent mental disorders out there. The majority of people who struggle with binge eating, have been doing so since their early years as children and continue to do so well into adulthood. The persistence and like the struggle makes it difficult for some to believe they can be free from it. And this is something I experienced a lot firsthand when I talk to people before they commit to working with a professional myself is that they are very pessimistic when it comes to believing they can overcome it because they've been struggling with it for so long. It is very normal to think so because with binge eating the struggle sometimes 20 3040 years seems difficult, but you can overcome it in eight weeks. But with the right approach, you can as we're going to learn today, so frustrated with the condition, some resort to medications, but quickly realized no pill ever makes it go away. While medication might work for a small percentage, it doesn't work for the majority for reasons I will dive into later in another podcast and in this one. Specifically, I will talk about different medications and how they work in the body to help you overcome benching. What makes binge eating different and trickier than other mental disorders is that it is a hybrid problem. It involves both nutrition and mental well being your relationship with food and your eating habits, as well as your thought patterns are important here. This is precisely why many excellent therapists psychologists and registered dieticians registered dieticians fail at properly helping their clients, an excellent therapist might be able to help with the thought patterns. But now with the nutrition and weight loss component, a good Registered Dietitian might be able to help with nutrition and weight loss, but not with the thought patterns. Doctors are not trained in both, which is why there are only two solutions is to refer to other professionals or to prescribe medications. Unfortunately, mostly they prescribe medications or dismiss the problem as a weight loss issue. Because many are not educated on binge eating disorders and nutrition. And so if you've ever seen a doctor who's told you while you just need to stop eating and whatnot, trust me, they're not aware of what binge eating is. I've worked with many, many doctors therapists and even dieticians who struggle with binge eating disorder behind closed doors. That's how much of a serious problem it is. Many healthcare professionals struggle with it, because they actually among the highest professions to experience stress, and depression. And sometimes as we learn it is used as a coping. If you're familiar with my story, you will know that I struggle with binge eating for 10 years until I was able to overcome it. My expertise and knowledge as a registered dietician and behavioral change Polish specialist gives me unique insight into binge eating, which combines what therapists and dietitians both address separately. And today, today, I want to share my unique perspective of the reason why binge eating is so persistent and difficult to get rid of. We are going to imagine binge eating as a weed with six different roots. How can we remove this weed once and for all. If we rely on willpower and stop binge eating for a while, by cutting off the weed we might be successful for a little bit, but the routes are still there, and eventually it will grow again. What if we remove all six routes completely? Well in this scenario might be finally free of binge eating once and for all. So let's take a look at the six different root causes of binge eating and how we can remove them. The first root cause is dieting. It comes as no surprise that Benjen causes weight gain, unless you have a very fast metabolism or something which a lot of people do. So these are people who can who seem to eat a ton of food but never gain weight. But most who eat or suffer from benching and complain about it, do have weight weight issues as well and are trying to lose weight. It took me a few benching sessions to gain a handful of pounds, sometimes in less than 10 days. So I know how it's like to gain weight quickly, because I've been training. Society teaches us that if we want to lose weight we diet and so most people who struggle with binge eating think dieting is the answer. And they base which diet they should do according to what they hear others were successful doing. And nowadays with social media, there's tons of information out there on the jet stories of what worked for people. So here's the thing, though. Number one, if it weren't for others, it doesn't mean it will work for you. And number two, and this is really important. Most of the time you are taking the advice of someone at a specific point in time when they're motivated and experiencing the high point of a dieting program, which almost always collapses but you don't see See them posting about that at all. So for example, Brenda can go on a keto diet and lose 10 pounds in two weeks, and post about her amazing success. Because that's what people do nowadays, they post the good stuff only in social media. But she will never post how she couldn't stick to it and gain 20 pounds back eventually, until you see her in person, which, let's be honest, might never happen, because you saw her post on some random weight loss group on Facebook, and you're never gonna see her ever again in the first place. So they ran a study once on the biggest loser, and that was a show where they saw who could lose the most weight. And they found that most of the participants had gained the weight back long after the show was done. But the show never show that these people gain weight back long after the show was done. So when you see diet x working for Johnny, and then you get excited and jump on diet x, but eventually fail, you're not the problem. Diet x is the problem. This root cause is fixed by learning how to eat in a flexible and consistent manner as part of a lifestyle. Because whatever gets you to lose weight, you have to keep doing for the word to stay off. And if it is restrictive and not realistic, then it just won't happen. And you'll be stuck in the either dieting or not dining mentality. And we both know that when we're dining, it can be very difficult and nice live willpower. And then when we're not dining, it is completely different. And that's where we gain a lot of weight. And this is what I like to say the high is not worth the low. So this is the first route of the weed dieting instead of building a lifestyle that suits you that you can do forever. I have been eating the same way for the past eight years since I stopped benching. I've lost the weight and never gained them back a certain joy foods like chocolate and pizza, but I do so moderation and never feel restricted. The second root cause to binge eating is a hormonal and chemical imbalance in the body, believe it or not caused by restriction and dieting. There are two parts of this route. The first is a hormone imbalance caused by failing to match our energy intake with our energy needs, which is also by the way referred to as the rate of metabolism. So the body responds to inconsistent energy intake by releasing a hunger hormone called ghrelin, which really sets us up for being vulnerable to binge eating. ghrelin has a long Half Life, which means it can stay in your system for hours. So here's a scenario for you on how it works out. larysa binge ate last night and woke up in the morning feeling bloated and tired. She tries to compensate by skipping breakfast in goes to her busy work. lunchtime comes and she goes for a small salad because she feels guilty by yesterday and is trying to compensate her body doesn't care about yesterday, it needs the energy now. So it starts to release the hormone ghrelin to motivate Larissa to go and find food. The restaurant is busy with work and so she manages to suppress the hormone by being distracted at work and relying on a little bit of willpower. The hormone is still there because it lives lives on for a few hours in the body. As larysa continues to not eat during the day, the body responds by releasing more ghrelin, the rest of it goes home, tired and sets for dinner, she has her dinner, but at that point and ghrelin has built up in her system, and no longer at work with distractions, as well as tired and vulnerable at night you find yourself eating nonstop and not being able to satisfy herself. Because ghrelin is a reward seeking hormone, the basically screams more fruit. To add on top of that, when ghrelin is released, cortisol, which is the body's stress hormone is also released and can play a role in fat storage and slower metabolism over time. And this is why often when restricting food for long periods of time, we end up not losing anything and sometimes even gaining weight. The key to overcoming this root cause is to meet your energy needs by understanding how to balance your energy intake and your food intake. This is actually the golden way to lose weight because as you meet your energy needs, your metabolism increases and normalizes and I discuss this in more detail in my metabolism fixer training which I can outline some link or link some somewhere below. In my programs, I teach that the metabolism is our number one asset and weight loss and how to eat to make sure we meet our energy needs to our metabolism can take care of the fat burning while we sleep. Unfortunately, when we eat a lot of food at night and we go to sleep, the body cannot burn the fat because it's busy burning what's in our stomach, which is sometimes too much for it anyways, and it ends up storing it as fat. The second component to this root cause is the chemical imbalances in the brain that cause us to lose motivation, pleasure seek and get stuck in negative thoughts. The two brain chemicals we want to focus on is dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine helps us stay motivated, focused and not thinking logically and constructively to low levels of dopamine are associated with depression, feeling hopeless and pleasure seeking behavior. And then benching definitely falls underneath the pleasure seeking behavior category. serotonin helps us stay calm, nonreactive and lowers anxiety and prevents us from being stuck on negative thoughts and this is huge as often sometimes we binge because of negative thoughts that are stuck on to low levels causes us to be very anxious, reactive and stuck on negative thoughts. I could talk about brain chemicals for hours, which is why I will probably give it its own podcast episode. Doctors constantly tried to work on this level, and have code fix binge eating by medicating people to normalize these two brain chemicals. And it can work in the short term. But if the person has other root causes to binges, and most people do, they eventually binge again. And now they're medicated and Benji, in the same time, I go into medication details in a separate podcast, which I will link somewhere below. But the key here is to build tiny daily and weekly habits to naturally increase these brain chemicals, while making sure we provide that body with the appropriate nutrients that are used as building blocks for these chemicals. We go into this in detail my program, because it is key, so important to feeling good, and improving brain health. So we can decrease our vulnerability to stress, anxiety and depression. And ultimately get rid of negative thoughts that cause us to binge that are persistent. And so the worst we can be motivated to take care of ourselves and and do what we set out to do and meet our goals. The third root cause is that binge eating has become a new habit in your life, what I'm not gonna send you habit. But the third root causes of binge eating has become a habit in your life. There are three ingredients, they bring a habit to life, number one trigger, number two action, and number three reward, there's a trigger, there's an action and there's a reward, it becomes a habit really, really quickly. So the trigger can be seeing a bag of chips, the action is happening, the bag of chips, and the reward is the intense pleasure we have for a few minutes. While we stuffed ourselves with chips. We all know we eventually feel bad, but the brain is only concerned with the immediate reward it gets from the action. And one of the best ways to get rid of habits is to eliminate triggers, because no trigger equals no action. And many try to do that actually, by removing junk food from their homes. And I'm sure you've tried doing that, you have a moment where you like have strong willpower, and you will clean your house completely of junk food, because you say out of out of sight out of mind. And you do your best because there are triggers. And we all know that. The problem is triggers can be internal or external. External triggers occur in our environment. And it can be seeing food advertisements, seeing a post on Facebook, seeing junk food lying around. And these are some some triggers that we can actually be motivated and easily get rid of. Internal triggers are trickier because they happen within us. And they become and they come in the form of thoughts or feelings and they're very difficult to get rid of. This can be very persistent, and ultimately where people fail big time. Because they don't know how to eliminate these triggers, because they're unaware of the thoughts and the feelings. And it's very normal to go through that when you're not aware of how the mind works, and how to overcome certain negative thoughts. And to add on that if you have certain low brain chemicals such as serotonin, you could be even more clinically prone to being stuck in negative thoughts. The key to getting rid of this root cause is to learn how to respond differently to internal triggers. This is not difficult to do and doesn't take long, takes a plan or some practice. And it's something we spent a lot of time doing in my program. And we managed to overcome in a short period of time, because of the strategies that we use. The fourth route is that our brain is overwhelmed with ants, man ants here stands for automatic negative thoughts. And they come uninvited, and they're very persistent and are not based on any logic whatsoever. So this is actually what makes a thought an automatic automatic negative thought is that they are uninvited which means that you don't sit there wanting to think that way. And number two, they're persistent isn't you want them to go away, but they can't seem to go away. And number three, they're not actually based on any logic. One of the biggest ants I often see with binge eating is what I call a fortune teller and, and it looks a little bit like this. I don't know if your program will work for me, I don't think I will ever overcome binge eating a huge 90% of people I talked to say that before they commit to the program, they all end up overcoming it. And here's why this is an end. How can you possibly tell what the future holds? It's impossible, yet we superimpose our past results and our past life on the future. And this end can be very convincing. How many times you tell yourself you're going to bench night tonight anyways, and you know what? The truth is you don't actually know and how can you know what the what the future holds. But by believing these ads you give them strength and life and it almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy. The key here is to overcome these ants by learning to identify them and using strategies to neutralize them. This is like the knockout punch the binge eating. Many people overcome measuring once and for all. Once they learn how to do this effectively, and they become skilled at identifying ads and neutralizing them The fifth root cause is a lack of alignment. And this one is a little bit interesting. We have different cells within us and many are unaware. And I myself was unaware until a few years ago. life coaches and people who are skilled in the spiritual realm, we'll say 12 different cells to be exact. When we are unaware of them, and secretly unaccepting, we start to behave in ways that we don't understand. We bury parts of us, saying out of sight, out of mind, but they're not out of mind. They're there and they come out in ways we cannot imagine. One of the ways that come out is by self sabotaging your efforts or by constantly keeping you in a state of confusion about who you are as a person. The key is to discover what they are, accept them and align the ones that have the most control over our action. And there's three to be exact. When these three cells are different than we feel confused, frustrated, with self sabotage, and we are constantly at a state of dissonance, when they are aligned with your validated confident sure of what we want, and we move with power towards our goals. The sixth and final route is being stuck in a cycle of one big pattern. dieting, benching is a common cycle. These cycles have patterns and are quite similar. That could be that you start darting around the same time of the year, or your attempts are similar in lifespan, or you constantly attempt dieting as a solution, even when it hasn't worked before. You might also find that you have patterns or cycles and other aspects of your life, such as relationships, or work or family dynamics. This cycle or pattern keeps you locked in for years on end and can be very much can be very much one of the biggest root causes of binge eating. If you have ever stopped binge eating for a while, but then you suddenly find yourself thinking about it again, or even missing it and I know sounds weird, then you could be stuck in a cycle. The key to overcoming this is to learn how to connect with our spirit so that we can effectively forgive the past and move on. When we do that the past no longer invites itself in our present or future, the cycle is broken. Connecting with your spirit is might seem a bit Hocus Pocus to you right now, if you don't consider yourself a spiritual person. It is something I slowly ease people into in my program to give them a taste of how it's like without imposing any beliefs on them. The key is to discover it on your own. Having said that, one of the best ways you can break the cycle is by doing something drastically different, almost opposite of what you have been doing. If you have been dieting, or to try to stop binge eating, don't diet, find a therapist instead, find a program you never thought you would be doing or that seems very bizarre. Trust me, it might work for you because it is breaking the cycle you do something very different than what you're used to doing in your previous cycle. Michael program beyond the bench is a very different approach than what you see out there. And I guarantee you've never seen anything like it before attempting to do it quick called classifiers breaking the cycle. So do you know the six root causes of binge eating? They are the reason why binge eating is so complex and different from person to person, one person might be struggling with two or six root causes, or three or five, or even six out of six. And the more root causes you struggle with the more persistent binge eating is most people who come to me struggle with at least four out of six. Now back to the reason why most people are so unsuccessful with overcoming binge eating, they continuously work on one or two of the root causes completely unaware of the remaining ones. When they do that, they might get some short term success with binge eating. But it almost always comes back again, because there are other routes, nourishing it and bringing it to life. A very good therapist can work on two to three of these routes, because that's what their skills are doing. And good dietitian might be able to work on to the other two or three other different our routes, because that's what their skill set is. And ultimately, a combination of two is what could get you to a point where you're no longer benching because the best and number one way to overcome measuring once and for all is to get rid of these root causes completely. And this is something that you can do with appropriate plan strategies and the right knowledge. And so I hope that you learned today that binge eating can be a complex problem that requires a specific approach for you to overcome it. And so with this knowledge, please go easy on yourself and be kind to yourself while you're while you finally overcome this problem because you can. And so if you feel like you've been you struggled with many of these root causes, I invite you to schedule a conversation with me where we can see if my program beyond the bench will be a good fit for you. It's an eight week program that goes through addressing how to overcome these root causes by taking action. And by building the right habits and establishing a lifestyle that can be consistent forever, and they can get you the results that you want to achieve. At this point, while I'm filming this, recording this story during the pandemic, all my progress are 25% of and so I encourage you to take advantage of that. But potentially if you're already working with a therapist or dietitian, that I encourage you to potentially seek either a therapist or a dietitian to supplement whoever you're already working with. So if you're working with a therapist, I recommend finding a dietitian. If you're already working with a dietitian, I recommend you find a therapist unless you're specifically working with a therapist or a dietitian who specializes in binge eating disorder. So I hope you found this episode helpful and I look forward to seeing you the next one.