Bingeing and Food Cravings — Six Powerful Strategies to Defeat Binge-Eating

Imagine a pile of fresh-cooked chips, crisp outside, meltingly smooth and starchy inside. A soft, squidgey doughnut, oozing jam. A mound of ice-cream. A whole box of chocolates…just for you. A big bag of salty, crunchy crisps.

Hard for most of us to refuse — and for people with food cravings, almost impossible. Cravings are strong desires for particular foods or types of food, almost always high-fat and often high-sugar as well. These are danger foods, diet busters with a vengeance. Once you start eating them, it’s very difficult to stop, and the desire for them can seem irresistible and uncontrollable.

Cravings aren’t fuelled by hunger. They are often set off by emotional needs, and can also be caused by food allergy. Since many diets do leave you feeling hungry, how can you tell whether that sudden passion for chips is an emotionally-based craving or simple semi-starvation?

Craving

* Is in the mouth and mind. You long for the taste, texture, mouth-filling qualities and feel of a certain food:

* Is sudden and urgent

* Is specific, for a particular food or type of food

* Is semi-automatic; you just can’t stop shovelling it in

* You may go on eating past the point of physical discomfort

* Leaves you feeling ashamed

Real Hunger

* Is in the stomach, with rumbling, emptiness, discomfort

* Grows gradually

* A wide range of food would do

* Is under conscious control

* You stop when you’re full

* Leaves you feeling satisfied

Food cravings can make your life a continuing misery, trapped in a hideous vicious circle. You feel fat, unattractive and unlovable. So you binge to distract yourself, to fill the emptiness inside, to cheer yourself up. It doesn’t — or not for long. What it does do is make you feel out of control, disgustingly piggish and profoundly ashamed. Your self-esteem ends up even lower and your hips even larger.

Knowing the pointless harm you’re doing yourself doesn’t help you stop. Lecturing yourself, blaming yourself, hating yourself — these reactions not only don’t stop the cravings, the stress makes them worse.

There are three games your cravings play to make you feel it’s OK to give in to them — just this once.

*persuading yourself that giving in will positively improve things in the present situation — some chocolate will really energise you.

*telling yourself that bingeing will help relieve anxieties, depression or other discomforts … cream cake is so soothing.

*believing that you deserve it … you’ve stuck to a diet all week, you’re entitled to some chips tonight.

All harmless enough — unless you have food cravings and you know that once you start, you won’t stop. Obviously it’s a good idea to find other things which relieve stress, make you feel good and act as rewards.

Five ways to beat bingeing

Half the battle in learning to cope with cravings is realising that you CAN resist them. These six key tips will point the way.

* Keep things in proportion. Thinking of your cravings as ‘overpowering’ urges it would be ‘unbearable’ to resist, that you just ‘couldn’t live without’ chips or whatever is just so frightening and stressful that you’ll head straight for the fridge to calm down.

Such over-the-top descriptions are simply not true, so change your inner language. Is walking past the chip shop really unbearable — compared with breaking a leg? Use words like ‘uncomfortable’ to yourself instead. Remember that millions of people have overcome full-scale addictions — for drink, tobacco and drugs. You can certainly cope with chocolate. You can bear the feeling, you won’t go crazy.

It helps to remember past times when you’ve denied a strong urge. You survived then, you can survive now.

* Visualise the results of giving in. Counter the immediacy of the craving by making the long-term consequences very vivid. Urges are very shortsighted; it’s hard to see past that tub of ice cream. So ask yourself: How will I feel later if I give in?

Imagine someone whose opinion matters to you watching you stuff yourself, finding out you can’t control yourself. Imagine how you’ll feel once you’ve, yet again, proved to yourself that you’re a slob with no willpower? Now, feel the glow of achievement you’ll have when you walk away from the food. See yourself as a size 12, slipping easily into terrific clothes in a communal changing room.

Warnings on the fridge door can help. So can talking to yourself as if you were advising a friend. Use to yourself the arguments you would use to her.

* The Inner Beast! Think of the craving as something quite separate from yourself. Give it points on a ten point scale. Even a name, perhaps — one woman called her food cravings ‘the Beast’. Distancing it this way makes it easier to fight.

* Mental distraction. Create a vivid mental picture of a peaceful setting — a warm beach, perhaps — and use it to relax. This will help if you mainly overeat as a response to stress. However, if being relaxed just makes cravings stronger for you, choose some challenging mental activity … planning the perfect holiday, designing your dream house, creating a business, working out what makes your boss tick…

* Physical distraction. Leave the place where you feel the craving. Get out of the kitchen and take a walk or do some gardening. Monitor yourself to find out when and where you feel most tempted, and change or avoid those particular situations.

* Food allergy. If you mainly crave one type of food .. ie wheat (bread, pasta, pizza, cakes, biscuits) … suspect you may have a food allergy/addiction. Try stopping ANY wheat (read every label) for a week, then try a little again. If you’re allergic/addicted, you’ll feel bad as withdrawal kicks in, great after a week, craving again once you try the food again. If you stay off the wheat, you’ll be free of cravings. But having ‘just one biscuit’ is like an alcoholic having ‘just one drink’ … Be warned! And consult a nutritional professional.

Why haven’t I talked at all about understanding the emotional reasons behind food craving?

Because you can gain control of your eating without analysing the reasons. It’s so tempting to use introspection as a substitute for action and a way of finding excuses and justifications for going on giving in. ‘I have to binge, I had such a miserable childhood.’

You don’t have to, and you can learn not to. Good luck!

Jane Firbank’s site, http://www.secretsofchange.com/, has over 100 fascinating and helpful problem letter replies, plus scores of articles and book reviews.

Jane Firbank is a psychotherapist working from the new Human Givens approach to counselling. This unites cutting-edge psychological and brain research with the new insights of evolutionary psychology and the ancient insights of the traditional healing and spiritual disciplines. The Human Givens approach is powerfully and rapidly effective in helping people move on from depression, stress and anxiety, obsession, psychosis, relationship problems and addiction. Phobias, traumas and Post Traumatic Stress can often be removed in one or two sessions using the latest knowledge of how the brain works.

Jane Firbank, BSc (Psych), HG Dip, GHR, is in private practice in London, England where she also regularly writes and consults on psychological matters for the Press, TV and radio.

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