If you have ever been on a diet, then you are probably familiar with the binge cycle. It’s not fun. You eat clean and healthy all week just to find yourself stuffing your face full of junk on the weekend. Furthermore, it is discouraging and could be holding you back from achieving your weight loss goals.
What is a binge cycle?
Simply put, it is binging, restricting, beating yourself up, getting back on the wagon, and repeat.
I thought it was impossible to break out of the vicious binge eating cycle. For years, I thought losing weight was all about extreme willpower with no slip-ups. I saw girls on social media seeming to eat clean and perfect 100% of the time, which really took a toll on my mental health. I would restrict myself so much that when I did find myself around those higher-calorie foods, I would say “F it” and eat myself sick. I was so blinded by the ‘all in or all out’ mindset that I was burning my candle at both ends. Hours at the gym had nothing on that family-sized box of cereal in my cabinet I would binge on later.
My mindset now has totally shifted, but the process takes time. It’s not like a switch that you turn off or on one day and then you’re fixed. It starts with putting little things in place, making progress, but most importantly starting from a place of empowerment.
tips to help you beat the binge
- Accept that you are NEVER going to be perfect. Expecting perfectionism is setting yourself up for failure. Instead, expect a slip up now and then, and learn how to recover quicker so you don’t beat yourself up. This will not only help in the moment but it will help to take the pressure off when you do eat those higher calorie foods.
- Limit or get rid of the processed tempting foods in your home. If you’re always eating chips late at night, stop buying them to eliminate the temptation. This isn’t to say you can never have chips, rather you are just removing them from easy access. Changing your environment helps to stop leaning so heavily on willpower. You can actually get consistent in your habits, which is vital for long term success.
- Eat more food with lots of fibre. Foods with high fibre content helps to reduce the appeal of highly addictive foods and curbs cravings. By eating more of the right kinds of food, like whole grains, legume, potatoes, and high volume foods like vegetables, they help to curb your hunger. Both in the moment and also hours later when fibre reaches our colon. If you want to read up on fibre, highly recommend the book Fiber Fueled by Will Bulsiewicz.
- Started eating in a way were you don’t feel the need of a ‘diet break’. I started to follow a whole food plant based diet called the Starch Solution, which promoted more satiating foods like rice and potatoes.
