“Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.”
Adrienne Rich
Dear Readers,
Please find below 3rd post in coaching series from Catherine Liberty, Bulimia Help Recovery Coach on bulimia urges. I hope you’re finding it effective in your journey to recovery.
For Part 1 and 2 Click Below
I want to give you a little more insight into exactly how bulimic urges work, how they’re controlling you and the number one most important thing you need to do in order to remove those binge urges once and for all.
If you’re like the majority of people with bulimia then there is a good chance your eating disorder started with some form of food restriction. Whether that involved cutting out certain foods, entire food groups or simply embarking on what you thought was a relatively healthy low calorie diet.
The fact is that bulimia is triggered by some form of food restriction and if you’re predisposed to developing an eating disorder then even a tiny change to your eating, like cutting carbs, can cause some serious problems down the road.
When you restrict your food your brain sends an extremely strong signal that prompts you to eat the very food you are trying to avoid. This is why you’ll crave carbs so much if you’re cutting carbs and why you’ll experience intense cravings for the foods you’ve been avoiding.
The simple fact is that you cannot live without food and your body will do everything in its power to ensure that the food you are providing is adequate for survival.
You can try to avoid eating but soon enough your brain will override that intention. Your survival instincts will kick in.
Let’s think about our bodies survival mechanisms in a different way for a second.
What happens to you when you hold your breath? Well pretty soon your brain overrides your intention to withhold air and your survival instincts kick in. You have no choice but to inhale some air because your brain is sending the signal that without this breathing mechanism, you would die. Eating is just as vital as breathing when you consider your long term survival. Without these survival mechanisms, you would die.
So basically the binge urges you’re experiencing are a reflex. They occur when your primal instinct to survive takes over and sends extremely strong signals to your body that you must eat.
Of course binge urges may also be triggered by emotional responses and if you’ve read the Bulimia Help Method book then you’ll already know that it goes into a great deal of depth regarding the difference between the kinds of binge urges, but if you’re yet to read the book then it may help for you to think of those two different kinds of binge urge in the following way:
Body binge urges – these kinds of urges happen when you’ve gotten too hungry or restricted a certain food group. The primal urge to eat overtakes you and creates an almost impossible to resist binge urge.
Mind binge urges – these kinds of urges occur when you’ve started to use food for comfort and you are attempting to soothe yourself with food. Mind binges can be triggered by stress, depression, anxiety, disappointment, loneliness, habitual routines, and many other emotions- sometimes even positive emotions contribute to these kinds of urges! I remember being so shocked when I realised that I’d often experience mind binge urges when feeling excited or especially upbeat. But it just goes to show how varied our triggers can truly be.
It is important in recovery to be able to distinguish body binge urges from mind binge urges because if you can recognize the emotion that you are trying to soothe, you can start to deal with that emotion directly instead of resorting to a binge.
Alternatively, if you are able to see that you’ve experienced a body binge urge then you can analyse your structured eating plan to see what is missing.
The one thing that will make a dramatic difference when it comes to keeping either of those types of binge urge away is your ability to stick to a good, well-balenced, nutritionally varied structured eating plan. So many people are surprised to learn just how vital regular eating is during the healing process but it absolutely needs to be the entire foundation of your recovery, so please PLEASE do not underrate its importance.
Of course, long-term recovery is a bit more complicated than just learning how to eat right, but it most definitely needs to be your number one focus right now.
Watch out for the next post, it’s about bloating and what you can do about it.
