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  • Binge Eating, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Uncategorized

    First Guest Blog…Deep Dive into 5 Minutes of Delayed Bingeing by Ari Snaevarsson

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    Hi lovely readers,

    Today on the blog we have a special guest post from Ari who is a nutrition coach who works primarily with clients who suffer from disordered eating patterns. He also works as a dietetic technician at a residential eating disorder treatment center. He has also published a fantastic book 100 Days of Food Freedom: A Day-by-Day Journey to Self-Discover, Freedom from Dieting, and Recovery From Your Eating Disorder. You can check him and his book out here

    If you have any comments or questions let us know at the bottom and Ari and I will be happy to answer 🙂 Lots of love, please enjoy this special guest post from Ari.

    “Today I’d like to invite you into a much deeper look into what just 5 minutes of delayed binge-eating looks like. This is going to be an article unlike most others, and if you struggle at all with seemingly permanent binge-eating patterns, this could be what it takes to reorient your thought processes and get into a recovery-oriented mindset. But first, what are we talking about when we say “delayed bingeing”?

    When we “delay” a binge, we are literally giving the brain messages and
    feedback loops time to process, and we are bringing mindful awareness to these sensations as we let them unfold. This way, rather than jumping from one distraction to the next and simply hoping this binge does not overtake us, we are taking an actionable step towards postponing the behavior.
    This is vital for us to grasp. As I had to learn in my own recovery from Binge-Eating Disorder, the problem is not the bingeing. The problem is the mindlessness of the situation (and it’s worth noting the word “problem” in this sense carries no implications of moral wrongdoing, but rather just serves to identify where things go awry and problematic behaviors start popping up). The problem is that we allow these thought patterns and behavior chains to roll on without interruption, and when we do this, the natural endpoint is a binge session.

    So, we use delayed bingeing (whether it be executed in a formal treatment
    setting or on your own) to get in touch with the feelings present during an urge to binge. This allows us to regain control over our symptoms and ultimately reclaim Food Freedom.

    But what does delayed bingeing actually look like and, as an extension of that, how can you start employing it today? First and foremost, it’s important to mention that this is an exercise to undertake at your own risk. If you don’t believe this will be helpful for you, either due to immense fear of your inability to control the situation or else reason to believe this is targeting the wrong aspects of your recovery, please reach out and I’d be happy to help you process this.

    If this does strike you as a potentially important procedure, consider
    implementing it first on a weekly basis. You can scale it up from there, depending on its initial efficacy, but it’s important to start at a small and manageable level. After all, this should only be one small piece of a larger recovery plan.

    A deep look

    To begin, we’ll want to enter the area where bingeing would normally occur. For some, this is the kitchen, but for others, it could be a college dorm common room with a vending machine in it or maybe a convenience store. Granted, if it’s somewhere public and others could potentially spectate, that might not lend itself to the most mindful of exposures, but the priority is to emulate your typical binge environment. You need not necessarily get the food out just yet (the idea with delayed bingeing is to give yourself the option to binge or not binge, and getting the food ready presupposes that you will binge).

    Minute 1

    Start by focusing on the breath. Breathe in on a count of 4, hold for a count of 1, and then release on a count of 5. Do this until it becomes more automatically rhythmic.
    It can help to focus in on a certain anatomical area where the breath feels most apparent. This could be at the level of the stomach, chest, shoulder, or even the nostrils. Find somewhere where it feels apparent and can easily be cued into. When your thoughts start running away from you (i.e. you become distracted), don’t fret. Just bring yourself back to the breath and carry on from where you left off. Remember that any sort of mindfulness endeavor is as much about the returning to the breath as it is
    about the mindful awareness itself.

    Minute 2

    You can now move to thinking about the hunger or binge urges that are present. Notice the difference between these two. Notice whether any true hunger is even present at all.
    This is an important step, as the whole idea of this delayed binge is to consider its validity and which part of you is asking to engage in the behavior. Is it your stomach rumbling and asking for food? Or is it a series of inappropriately wired neural connections that have grown to believe rapidly consuming food is the most efficient way to numb and deal with overwhelming emotions? Often, it’s the latter.

    Minute 3

    By Minute 3, the goal is to start thinking about how harmless this is. You’ve now delayed the binge a full two minutes, and nothing bad is happening. You’re ostensibly not in physical pain (at least, not from this) and your mood and emotions are responding accordingly. This is an extremely important realization to cement: the idea that this comes in waves and you are safe to wait. The binge is not an inevitability.

    Importantly, this is not to invalidate the emotional turmoil you might be
    experiencing right now. I recall nights where the urge to binge was so strong that killing myself seemed a more appropriate response, so that I could finally escape the pain and fear associated with these urges. Sometimes the urges would feel like my soul was leaving my body, and I needed to binge. So, the idea here is not to discount what you’re feeling but rather to properly contextualize it. Understand that the urges might
    feel scary beyond belief, but they are not going to hurt you. You are safe right now.

    Minute 4

    Now shift to some loving kindness (metta) meditation. You are going to grant yourself love and radical self-compassion. As Dr. Kristin Neff teaches in Self-Compassion, there are three elements we want to focus on here: self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. For self-kindness, use statements of compassion to emphasize self-care, such as “I’ve been doing an awesome job so far, and I’m staying super calm and in control.”

    For mindfulness, return to some deep breaths and use a statement or two of objective mindful awareness, such as “I’m feeling a little bit of impatience but also some pride” (of course, keep this true to what you’re actually feeling). And then, finally, for common humanity, we just want some statement that reminds you of the greater picture, like “Binge-eating is a neurological condition that affects millions. Others are going through
    this struggle too; I’m not alone.”

    Minute 5

    To finish the delayed bingeing, by Minute 5, we will implement the two-step process I refer to as “peaceful transitions” in 100 Days of Food Freedom. First, institute a state of “free mind” but letting your mind run rampant. For the next 20-30 seconds, your mind is free to be as “anti-meditation” as it wants, freely ruminating on thoughts, getting distracted without returning to the breath, etc. Then, return to the breath again and maintain a soft gaze (especially important if your eyes were closed prior to this), allowing yourself to peacefully transition back into normal life. This is also where you’ll decide whether to act on the urges or not.

    Remember that, if you do choose to act on them, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve now taken a full 5 minutes to consider where these urges are coming from and whether you truly want to eat or not. This is a significantly more informed decision now than it would have been 5 minutes ago.

    Conclusion

    The final decision, as this delayed bingeing protocol ends, is whether to eat. This is something you get to decide, which is the most important point of it all. Nobody gets to tell you when to eat or stop eating. The decision comes from within, and these 5 detailed minutes of mindfulness and self-evaluation serve to help you make a completely informed decision here. The final question to ask yourself before determining whether or not to grab for food now is: Am I hungry for this?

    Delayed bingeing allows for anyone struggling with binge-eating to reclaim some control, if only momentary, and realize the binge is not an inevitability. Binge-eating is often very different than “normal eating,” not only in the speed of consumption and lack of fullness cues, but also in the sense that it is primarily nudged on by psychological thought patterns that have led us astray. For example, maybe the thought is that “this current feeling is uncomfortable and the only way you can fix it is with your binge foods.”

    Rarely is the thought something as grounded in reality as “an ice cream would be nice right now.” As such, taking the time to become intimately connected to these thoughts and truly sift through them to discover their underlying motivations is more important than you might ever realize.

    Remember that this strategy can always be used when you need it, rendering it one of the most accessible therapeutic strategies in recovery. The binge is not an inevitability.

    Your life is your story. Make it amazing.”

    I hope you have enjoyed this guest post from Ari and found something useful in there for you. I personally have used this principle before bingeing many times in my recovery and it has helped me immensely.

    See you next time xx

    CONTINUE...

  • Blogvember, Dieting, Exercise, Recovery, Uncategorized

    5 – Take a break – transform your relationship with exercise now

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    I am a fully qualified personal trainer and up until 7 months ago that was how I spent most of my time – training people in the gym, teaching gym-based classes and training myself. However I only did that job for around 18 months after quitting my corporate job in finance before I realised that while I thought I had made my passion my job I had actually made my obsession my job and it got pretty unhealthy very quickly (read more on my story here).

    Coming to Bali was supposed to be a brief break from London living, get some sun, sea, sand and space. I never envisaged my whole life changing, definitely not going from training nearly everyday to not at all for 2 months. I used to live in the gym, literally. At one point I had memberships to 3 different gyms. I was completely obsessed, addicted even, it was my whole life.

    Exercise was my escape, my release, my ‘me-time’. It was my meditation, it was what ‘kept me sane’.

    I see this all over social media – we use exercise to ‘de-stress’, to forget about our problems for an hour, to make ourselves feel better. For a lot of people this can be totally healthy, but for anyone who has struggled with food or their body image, has emotional trauma from their past (or present) they are trying to run from, exercise as an escape is just another way to not deal with your life. Another way to avoid feeling what you need to feel in order to be ok, in order to accept who you are. When everything around me was falling apart and I got bored of dieting I made exercise my absolute compulsion. I claimed that it was good for my mental, emotional and physical health.

    However it got to the point that anytime I went to train in the gym I would get physically ill. I would train and then have to lie in bed for 2 days after as I was completely exhausted, suffering from flu-like symptoms. I went to the doctor and tests showed my kidneys were not functioning properly, unable to cope with the strain I was putting them under with my lifestyle. At this point I had cut my training down to once or twice a week, or even less. I was definitely not over-exercising by any stretch of the imagination.

    But exercise was still hurting me. And not just physically.

    The gym had been another place I went to escape from the things in my life which I didn’t know how to deal with, like my parents divorce. I had absolutely no tools to deal with any difficult emotions in my life, so I avoided them.

    The stress of storing all of my negative emotions in my body on top of a gruelling fitness regime I had put myself under for the previous 3 years led me to completely crumble.

    So I quit everything. I quit every single thing I was doing to avoid my emotions and instead started feeling them. Quitting the gym was one of the toughest because I am naturally an active person (…I was a Personal Trainer!), but also because there is a powerful message coming from the media that exercise is a healthy way to handle your emotions. I was left feeling like such a failure that I couldn’t exercise. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I saw so many messages from fitness influencers saying exercise was so good for their mental health/anxiety/depression. It felt like I lost part of my identity and one of my main coping mechanisms.

    But actually while I had to give up a big part of my life for a few months I didn’t realise that this was the best thing I could do for my relationship with myself and with exercise.

    The beauty of dealing with my real issues, feeling into them rather than trying to escape them with exercise, is that I have been able to come back to exercise with a fresh perspective. Coming back to it I am now able to enjoy it in a new, different and much more liberated way. Actually enjoy it for what it is, which is a way of keeping my physical body healthy so that I can enjoy a long, happy life.

    Truly if you know you are using the gym to escape from deep painful emotions and dissatisfaction with your life than you are setting yourself up for disaster. You are kicking the can down the road and potentially destroying your body in the process.

    The only reason we should be in the gym is to keep our physical bodies fit and healthy so that we can enjoy our lives.

    CONTINUE...

  • Uncategorized

    Thank You Bad Days

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    I fell into the hole. And I just kept falling. The trap door opened, I took a step back then inched forward and peered in. How comfortable the darkness looked. I took another step back but this time only to run and jump headfirst into the hole. How comforting, all of my old fears. Like old friends. All ready there. Waiting for me to come back to them.

    That is not how it felt. it did not feel like greeting old friends. It felt like being sucked back in time where all I could hear were arguments in my head. One side saying no this is too scary, the other side saying just do it stop being such a wimp. No middle ground, no clarity, no air, no space. Just two opposing forces. Where had I gone?

    I couldn’t find myself. There were so many opinions, so many voices, everything my mind had in its arsenal to repress all emotion and confuse me, stop me from hearing myself. And it was a powerful powerful tirade of noise. Why am I not good enough, what am I doing here, why do I just want to lie in bed all day, why am I getting anxiety leaving the house, why do I have no appetite, why am I so tired, why can’t I sleep, why did talking about it with friends not help, why did meditation not help…why can’t I just figure out what the hell is going on and get myself out of it??

    And herein lies the problem. It’s like a chinese finger bind, the harder you pull the tighter it gets. I look back and can see clearly where I was triggered. I knew the ‘why’, I knew what stories I was playing out but understanding and acknowledging didn’t seem to help. Then it struck me. After nearly 3 weeks of all these thoughts getting louder and louder I realised that the harder I was trying to stop them, the louder and stronger they were getting.

    But how do we take back charge in these situations? I’m not going to say just let it go. Because in this scenario it was coming on so thick and fast I barely had space to breathe let alone make room to let it go. So I gave my mind permission to be triggered. It was uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable. But resisting the feelings you have when you are triggered is giving the triggers power. The more space I gave my triggers the less they pushed for my attention.

    It did mean however accepting that I was going to have a few bad days. Even once I had stopped resisting I knew a few days of discomfort and fear-driven behaviour would come. Days of not being able to concentrate, feeling scatty, feeling like you’re doing the wrong thing, even when you’re just sitting still, feeling disengaged, just frightened of life, of making a move in any direction.

    In trying to fight the triggers, what I was really fighting were my bad days. You will all know what your bad days are like and how secretly desperate you are to never have them again. I didn’t want to ‘waste’ my precious time on this earth laying in bed, or feeling afraid to go out into the world, or to reach out to someone. But the reality is trying to fight these urges was making it worse. Being kind to myself and meeting myself where I was in my recovery in that moment was what was important. Accepting bad days and being triggered is probably one of the hardest things once you have seen how beautiful and alive the good days.

    For me I was holding on to this narrative of ‘getting better’ and ‘being healed’ and the truth is you can heal and you can get better but this involves accepting bad days may come. That is what being healed really means, not fighting yourself, but accepting all that comes and being at peace with yourself whatever that looks like at the time.

    Being kind to myself even when I was triggered was hard. I had this overwhelming sense that I should be ‘over this’ by now. After having a really magical few weeks of feeling amazing to sink into these feelings was in some ways unbearable. This is the old me I kept thinking to myself. I don’t want to be the old me anymore. But the reality is I will never not be the old me, all those experiences will live within me forever. The difference now is that I know there is more to life. Even if I can’t reach it for a few days or a few weeks I know it is there. The hole is just here to remind me, to give colour and texture to the rich fabric of life, it throws up things I can work on. While I may have fallen in, I can always find my way out.

    CONTINUE...