284: Binges While Recovering

Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 284 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at www.seven-health.com/284.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach, and I help clients to fully recover.

It’s been a while since I’ve put out an episode. I feel like the podcast for a lot of this year has been more haphazard than I would like it to have been. There’s been more rebroadcast episodes and less new content. Really, the reason for that is so much of my focus this year has been on creating a programme, creating The Fundamentals of Full Recovery. It’s been a really monumental undertaking. There’s that thing of when you think you’re almost done, you’re 50% of the way there, and it felt like that has constantly been what’s happened this year.

Everything has taken longer for me to create and for me to learn, and yeah, it’s been a really big undertaking, but it is now all created, and it’s awesome to see the community that is being created as part of this. I’m really, really proud of what’s been created and to be able to see the participants as part of this community supporting one another and recovering together. I’m happy that the podcast has had a little bit of a dip because it has allowed me to be able to put my focus on creating this programme.

The doors for the programme are going to be opening again in the February time. What I’ll do is put a link in the show notes for how to get onto the waiting list, so if you’re interested in becoming part of that programme, then you can go on the waiting list and you’ll be the first to be notified when the doors are opening for it again. But really, that is where my focus is going to be for all of 2024. It’s really building up this programme and building up the community and putting focus in this area, because it’s one of those things where I’ve had this realisation of the real importance of community and the real importance of recovering in community and the importance of connection. It’s a big part of the programme, and it’s where I want to put my focus. That’s what’s going to be going on for 2024 and where I’m going to be putting all of my focus.

I also want to just mention I’ve been ill. I recently got back from a business event in LA, so went out to LA for a business live event, for a conference. I signed up for a business programme in the June time, which has been fantastic. As part of that programme, there’s a live component. I went out for the event and it was great, apart from the fact that on the morning of the second day I started to feel ill and then progressively got worse and then didn’t make it to Day 3 of the conference and had to get home from LA to Aberdeen while feeling pretty horrendous, and then had quite a number of days in bed once back home. It’s just been a real slow burn in terms of getting back to health.

Today I’m feeling better than I have since I’ve been ill, but it really has taken a lot out of me. I’ve been very exhausted. It’s really affected my capacity to be able to think clearly. Just really been wiped out and had pretty much a week in bed, and then it’s been slow recovery since then. I’m finally feeling like my mind’s not just filled with treacle. That’s a positive. That’s another thing that’s most recently got in the way of these podcast episodes going out.

But really, I’m wanting to get back into the routine with this and have this be a weekly show, because I know how valuable it is. I get such lovely messages from people saying how useful particular episodes are, and I know with recovery that it’s important to have this bubble, to have content or to have information coming in regularly that helps you to remember that you are on the right path and helps support you in having certain messages that are reinforcing why you’re doing what you’re doing, because this can be very different to what you’re hearing in your everyday life and what is going on in the media or what you’re seeing in your social media feed.

So I recognise how important my podcast or lots of other people’s podcasts can be, and I really want to get back into that rhythm of putting things out on a really regular basis so that people can be depending on this information and using it to support recovery.

What I want to do today is talk about something that comes up a lot with clients and a lot in different messages and things that I see. This is the idea or the situation of binges in recovery, having binges start to occur during recovery.

This creates a lot of fear and it creates a lot of worry, and it can actually be the thing that brings someone to the point of wanting to start to recover or seeing things as a problem. What often happens is that people are able to keep up restriction for some length of time, and that length of time could be a number of months, it could be a number of years, it could be a number of decades, and then at some point binges can start to occur. It’s amazing how despite someone can be restricting for a really long time, while that is going on, it’s not seen as a problem. It’s only when that the binges start to occur that an issue is seen, and it’s seen that now there’s something wrong that is occurring. This is often a common thing when people then start to look for support or look to recover.

I just want to go through some different aspects connected to binges and binges in recovery and different things that come up connected to this.

00:06:42

What is a binge + why does it occur?

Just as a starting place, if I’m thinking about a general definition for a binge – and there are lots of different definitions as part of this, but a binge is seen as an episode of uncontrolled eating in which a person rapidly consumes an excessive quantity of food.

When I think about that definition, the word that jumps out most for me is the word ‘excessive’. The reason why that sticks out the most for me is because I think this word is highly subjective. Excessive for one person may not feel excessive for another person, and when we’re thinking about ‘excessive’, what timescale are we looking at this over?

For example, there can be times where with clients, what they talk about as being excessive is generally a pretty small amount of food – is what someone else may have for a snack or what someone else may have for a meal. To them it feels like a really big amount of food because in relative terms, compared to what is going on on a regular basis, it is more than usual. But in absolute terms, it’s actually not a huge amount of food in the whole scheme of things.

The other thing I would say connected to ‘excessive’ is we need to look at the timescale connected to this. Yes, it may be an excessive amount of food if we’re looking at it across a number of hours, but if we’re reflecting on the fact that there’s been restriction that’s been going on for the last week or the last month or the last year, this amount of food isn’t particularly excessive. In the whole scheme of things, it’s a drop in the ocean in comparison to what the body has truly needed. So I think it’s always useful to really think about, what does ‘excessive’ mean when we’re thinking about a binge?

From my perspective, binges are always in response to restriction. I cannot think of a client that I’ve worked with where, when we’ve looked at what’s going on in terms of binges, there isn’t some form of restriction that is occurring. I’ve done other podcasts on restriction, and I will link to that in the show notes, but there are different types of restriction. You can have physical restriction where you are physically not eating the particular food or you’re physically restricting the amount of calories you have coming in.

You can have impending physical restriction. This is where you’re telling yourself that this is going to happen, so “Okay, when I have my lunch or my dinner today, I’m not going to be eating X, Y and Z food, or I’m going to be keeping it to this small amount” or “Starting tomorrow, we’re going on a new diet or we’re restricting.” It’s this impending restriction that is just on the horizon.

And then there is mental restriction. Mental restriction is the fact that “I’m eating this particular food, but I’m not allowing myself to have it mentally. I’m chastising myself for the fact that I’m eating this chocolate or this muffin or this serving of rice” or whatever it may be. So yeah, the food is coming in, but it’s coming in while at the same time I’m telling myself that I shouldn’t be doing this and I shouldn’t be consuming this and that’s too much food, etc.

All of these restrictions are typically occurring at the same time. There’s some physical restriction, there’s impending physical restriction, and there’s some mental restriction that’s going on. And all of these are typically occurring prior to a binge. So there’s restriction, and then the binge is the result of that restriction.

00:10:51

What foods are consumed as part of the binge?

I think it’s also useful to reflect on, what are the foods that start to be consumed as part of the binge? For some people, this will be just more of whatever they were eating at that particular meal, while for others there are certain foods that are off limits, and it’s only when I’m having a binge that I’m allowing myself to have these particular types of foods. Again, this can be very much connected to physical restriction, to mental restriction.

But I think it’s useful and instructive to look at, what are the foods I’m eating when I’m having a binge? Am I allowing myself to have these foods as part of my general everyday eating? Because one of the ways, when working with clients, that I help them to overcome binges and for the binges to start to stop is to have more food freedom and to have more allowance. Typically this means, let’s look at the foods that you’re ending up binging on. How do we bring these into your regular day-to-day? How do we have these in your house on a regular basis?

And I know that can be very terrifying for people, and it feels like “If I do that, there’s just going to be more and more binges occurring.” And that may be true in the very short term, but the problem is because of the restriction and making these foods off limits. It works until it doesn’t. The way that you truly get past that is allowing more of these foods to come in. For example, if you’re finding that chocolate is the thing you always end up binging on, how do you start to bring chocolate into your day-to-day? How does it become part of your snack and part of your main meals so you’re really normalising this thing as opposed to it being this food that is either put up on a pedestal or this food that is feared?

00:12:57

Intentional vs unintentional binges

I think it’s also worth looking at when this is starting to occur in terms of the binges with recovery – differentiating between intentional binges and unintentional binges.

The way I think about this, an intentional binge is where you intentionally go out and buy certain foods in advance of that binge. There’s almost a decision of “I’m going to do this thing, and to do this thing, I need particular foods, so I’m going to go and get that in advance and then I’m going to come back and have this binge.” It’s preplanned, predetermined. You go into the experience knowing “This is what I’m going to do.”

This does obviously occur as part of recovery and does occur as part of binges. What I tend to find is that this is less of the problem for most people. What tends to be more of the issue, especially if binges are starting to occur more in the recovery process – so “I hadn’t really been binging before recovery and now it feels like this has started to happen” – it’s more of what I consider an unintentional binge.

An unintentional binge is where “I was eating my regular meal or I was eating my regular snack, and then something started to change.” It could be “I noticed my eating started to get quicker than it was before, or I started to notice that I was nearing the end of what I had set out for myself and I really wasn’t full, and I was feeling like if anything, I’m now hungrier than when I started.” Or “I’m nearing the end of what I had planned for myself and I’m just not feeling particularly satisfied. The food doesn’t feel like it’s scratched the itch in the way I wanted it to, and I’m now noticing I’m starting to think of other foods and other things we have in the house.”

So there is this shift that occurs while eating a snack or a meal that then results in a binge occurring. I think this is much more common as part of binges that occur in recovery.

I think what is interesting and useful to notice as part of this unintentional binge is often there is this psychological component connected to it, and there is this feeling of “I have crossed some kind of line. I’ve crossed some kind of line because I’ve eaten too much or I’ve started to eat the wrong types of food or I’m starting to notice I’m eating too quickly.” There’s this feeling of “I’m recognising that I’ve done something wrong and that I’m doing something wrong.”

Often what happens as part of that, there is then some arbitrary line that is crossed, where it’s something like “I’ve now done this so far and I’ve already gone to this place; what the hell? I’m now going to just continue on with this.”

I think it’s really useful to start to notice where that arbitrary line is or what you feel like you did wrong or how you cross that line, because it is arbitrary. This is very much about “I’m creating some story or some meaning connected to a particular event.”

I often reflect on myself that there are times where I will finish a meal and I’m still hungry, and I may be over the stove, eating more food, using the ladle of whatever I served the food with. I could be standing there for five minutes, continuing to shovel food into my mouth. If I was so inclined, I could really start to judge this experience, and I could start to create meaning from this experience. I could tell myself I’m going down a particular path or I’ve crossed some particular line, it could go in a particular way.

But when this is happening, I don’t have those stories connected to that situation. I’m not telling myself that I’ve done something wrong. I’m not judging myself. But it’s the exact same experience that many people have that, for them, means they have crossed some line, and for them means, “Okay, now I get into the ‘what the hell’ mode” and it then turns into more of a binge.

I think it’s important and useful to just start to reflect on this. I’ll talk about this a little more later on, because I think one of the things that can be useful after a binge has occurred is to do some reflection connected to it. But just being aware of, what happened? How did things go from “I’m having a regular meal” to “I’m now finding myself in this situation”?