Is this you
You are an intelligent, disciplined, focussed person, who can succeed in every thing you set your mind too – except when it comes to food. Every so often you decide enough is enough and you are really going to do something about it. You do the research and yes this latest diet seems to be the real deal. So you get yourself motivated, learn all the new rules, buy in all the food you will need, set the date and plunge in. This time it will be different. You are doing really well – at first, cutting back your food and exercising and you are feeling very pleased with yourself.
Then, out of the blue,
Suddenly, you feel a bit anxious and the anxiety starts to build and build. You keep thinking about bingeing while at the same time trying to resist the urge to binge. It’s almost like you have a devil on one shoulder saying, ‘Go on, binge, you know you will in the end,’ and an angel on the other shoulder saying, ‘No, you are not weak, you will not binge’. The problem is that internal arguments like this only increase the tension and anxiety until the inevitable happens. Despite all your efforts you find yourself suddenly bingeing out of control and you don’t know why? It can seem like a complete mystery to you, but there is a simple explanation
Stage one: “I‘ve blown it.”
You try just one or two biscuits – ‘That won’t hurt, will it!’ – and, before you know it, you have eaten half a packet of biscuits and you feel that you’ve ‘blown it’, so you might as well eat the whole packet. This is rapidly followed by stage two
Stage two: “The Last Supper.”
‘Don’t worry,’ you tell yourself, you will get back on track the next day and cut back on your eating and do a little more exercising to make up for the packet of biscuits. Which nicely sets you up for stage two, ‘The Last Supper’ syndrome. You realise that you will have to really cut back the next day, no more treats, so you might as well eat as much as you can while you can, so you hunt around the house for any treats you can find, because you will have to really deprive yourself of them the next day.
Stage three: “Better eat everything in the house.”
You start to worry that you may be tempted to overeat the next day, so you had better get rid of all temptation from the house, so you eat everything you can find.
Stage four: “Zoned out.”
When you can’t eat anything else and the food kicks in, you find the anxiety has gone and you feel so relaxed and zoned out from all your problems, without a care in the world, happy and safe in the knowledge that you will sort it all out the next day.
Stage five: “The fresh start.”
You wake up in the morning and realise what you’ve done. You are wracked with guilt and shame and you resolve to make a fresh start. You eat really well (code for cutting back on food) and hit the gym, setting yourself up for stage one and another round of bingeing.
Why it happens again and again
It is tempting to put this down to lack of will power. But you would be wrong. These are the dramatic effects of unstable blood sugar, which I am sure you have experienced many times. You know that once the binge gets underway no matter how strong your will power – there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Well there is a way and it has nothing to do with will power. The way to stop the effects of food chaos is to stabilise your blood sugar levels.
This sounds very technical but it is not really. But it does require ‘food knowledge’, a little planning and some experimenting to find out what works best for you and how you live. Book a 30 minute FREE assessment of where you are and what you need to build a good relationship with food again.