If you’re suffering from binge-eating or compulsive overeating, I feel obligated to post this for you, now that I’m genuinely experiencing what I’m about to describe. I know how MANY times I used to honestly wonder how I could possibly find alternatives to bingeing, when no matter what I tried, it seemed the pressure-cooker would build, until finally I felt like I had no choice, I had to release that pent-up emotional energy somehow! And truthfully? I probably would have kept going, albeit with the incremental improvements I was still making in certain aspects of the behavior (sometimes so incremental I think you’d have needed an electron microscope to detect them), had it not been for one nagging development: it stopped working!!! No matter what I did, I could not jump back into that “zone” of escape. DRAT if I remained stubbornly in the same emotional state I was trying to temporarily migrate out of, only now I’m eating all these calories and absolutely miserable knowing the damage this would render only hours later. The worst of both worlds!
So you could say the final straw was this loss of being able to do the presto-switcho. Suddenly there was no point. And of course, I tried this a few times before I had to conclude the frustrating (looking back life-saving) reality: My. Eating. Addiction. Had. Expired. Never saw it coming.
In any event, that’s when I began to take seriously the plan of finding out avenues for stress release, and measures that would reduce the build-up of that stress in the first place, and put them to action. I had no idea if they would work, but I gave them a try with the assumption and hope that they would. My attitude was, “What could it hurt? It has to help somehow.”
And now, with a period of time under my belt and a sense of growing perspective, I can honestly say YES, they WORK! I think much of it comes down to, you have to be honestly ready to want to stop the behavior. I “wanted” to stop the behavior for many years, but deep down I think what I really wanted was to stop WANTING to do the behavior. Meaning, I wanted to stop FEELING TRIGGERED. But of course, that’s wishful thinking. Extinguishing triggers, at least for me, has been a process, not a “one day I woke up and they were gone!” phenomenon. So it turns out, what I needed was to reach that willingness to face a life without bingeing or compulsive overeating, and all the fears and panic and grieving that came with it, before I could then even think about truly reconstructing a life without it.
In any event, I don’t want to tangent too far, other than to say, if you’re reading those self-help books or going to a therapist about cognitive-behavioral type strategies, namely those that include finding alternative rewards or stress-releasing activities as a way to displace your bingeing, I’m here to give you hope that it can help you. Hang in there, it’s better than I ever imagined!
Since example often gives better clarity than the general, let me share some of the activities I’m currently finding particularly soothing — ones that honestly I look forward to way more than the idea of compulsive eating:
- Taking a long, warm, leisurely shower, with fragrant soaps and shampoos, closing my eyes and feeling the water flowing over my body.
- Doing stretches on my back while listening to a favorite podcast.
- Doing yoga in my exercise room, in front of an open window.
- Taking a short walk, not in the “fitness” sense, more in a leisure mindset.
- Making a cup of my favorite tea (by the way, for those times I have eaten too much — yes, they still happen, just nothing like it was — I have found great success in curtailing my eating by taking a “tea break” in the middle of the meal).
- Setting the coffee maker on timer, and putting my favorite inspirational book on the kitchen table the night before, so I have my coffee and morning literature ready to go for when I wake up.
- Doing crossword puzzles and other mind games.
- Wearing my headset when I grocery shop, zoning out to music or a podcast.
- Listening to music or the radio while taking a long, relaxed time to prepare our meals.
- Wearing nice clothes that feel good on me.
- Stopping and taking some deep breaths, looking outside or around wherever I’m at.
- Making the bed and tidying up the house, not in a punishing, “must get this done” way, but in an, “It’s so nice to be in a clean environment” way.
The list goes on, but you get the idea. These things may do nothing for you, but they’ve proven their value beyond my wildest dreams for me.
Now I realize that eternal vigilance is the game here; I can’t think I’m “done” and can coast from here on out. For starters, I’m still progressing, and experimenting to determine what’s helpful and what isn’t at the moment. I have to know this isn’t the end of the story, but I’m actually excited — curious — to see what’s going to happen next!
Bottom line: it’s wonderful to see that some measures — the very ones that I avoided for years because they struck me as too simple or somehow I just “knew” they would never work (somewhere I’m sure I had tried a few, half-heartedly, no doubt “proving” to myself of their futility) — REALLY DO WORK if you work them!
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