S U R P R I S I N G S T E P SStarting with your very next urge

T O E N D B I N G E E AT I N G

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I’m . I was a secret binge eater for more than 30 years. At times, I was up to 90 pounds overweight. I used every dollar I had and borrowed every penny I could to get better. I tried every conceivable treatment and have the scars to prove it. Literally. (No, the lap band didn't do the trick.) I even begged my dentist to wire my mouth shut.(Yes, really.) With the help of a coach, I finally discovered how to end binge eating. I’ve never gone back.You’ve probably imagined life without bingeing. How would you feel? What could you create, accomplish, offer to the world? I want you to discover that feeling, starting with your very next urge.In this guide, I’ll share with you the 12 counter-intuitive yet powerful steps that helped me to stop bingeing for good.Don’t miss the at-a-glance poster at the end.

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1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.

10.11.12.

I F Y O U D O E N D U P B I N G E I N G . . .

L O V E T H E B I N G E .

L I G H T U P T H E S H A M E .

S I T B A C K A N D W A T C H .

D I S S E C T Y O U R B R A I N .

G I V E U P T H E F I G H T .

E A T E N O U G H F O O D .

L O O K F O R W A R D T O Y O U R N E X T U R G E .

P R A C T I C E T H I N K I N G .

T H R O W A P A R T Y .

M A K E A B I N G E D A T E .

P R O L O N G T H E B I N G E .

L O V E T H E B I N G E .

N O T E S

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Y O U ' R E D O I N G G R E A T !

A T - A - G L A N C E P O S T E R

12 surprising steps to end binge eating, starting with your very next urge

3© 2017 Holding the Space

L O V E T H E B I N G E .1.I hear you:

You’ve just binged again.

The donut box lies open on the car seat next to you, a few multi-colored sprinkles and toasted coconut bits stuck to the odd smear of icing. The strawberry jelly that splotched out of bottom of one donut as you bit into the top is now a dead give-away on your favorite cream blouse.

You check the rearview mirror. White powder lines your lips and dusts the tip of your nose.

You look into your eyes.

Everything blurs.

Again.

Your belly aches and your heart aches, too. You didn’t even want to binge but you didn’t know how to stop. You could’ve used the extra few dollars in your pocket, especially since the binges have been coming more regularly now.

So why on earth should you love your bingeing?

Looking back, you may see that bingeing helped you to cope, to avoid despair, to keep going. Hating the binge may help you in the short term, but it’ll hurt you in the long run.

Bingeing is a habit that was wired into your brain with practice. You experienced an urge and you reacted to it by bingeing. The emotional distress caused by the hatred cemented this connection. Letting go of the hatred allows you to begin to let go of the bingeing.

Byron Katie teaches about the tremendous healing power of loving what is as a springboard for transformation: “I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. . . . When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”

Because it’s here. Because it’s happening. Because it’s the reality of your life right now. Because hating the binge hasn’t helped you stop. Because, weird as it sounds, your bingeing may have helped you.

“That’s ridiculous.”

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Shame is a classic trademark of binge eaters.2. L I G H T U P T H E S H A M E .

You’re not broken or flawed or inept. This isn’t about how good you are or how weak you’ve been. Binge eating isn’t a moral issue. It’s a wiring issue. There’s no place for shame.

Did you know that when you react to an urge by bingeing, your brain is working exactly as it was designed to work? Your brain has learned to efficiently automate a process that happened again and again: Up came the urge, down went the binge. Your brain is trying to help you. And if your binges were preceded by restrictive diets, your brain is trying to save you. It signals you with urges to binge as a way to prevent you from starving. It wants you to live.

When you understand this, you can stop blaming—and shaming—yourself. You ease the emotional distress that has helped to strengthen an old neural connection. And you give yourself the space to wire a new connection.

Shame researcher Brené Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging.”

Shame loves isolation and darkness. Shame leaves us hiding beneath it, defeated.

So get up. Turn on the lights. And let’s talk about the shame together.

For a binge eater, shame is a before-during-and-after kind of pain. Shame triggers a binge. We binge in secret. We feel shame that we binged. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So how to stop the cycle?

Consider that you are profoundly worthy of love and belonging. (Because you are.) Consider that your bingeing has absolutely nothing to do with your competence or moral fiber. (Because it doesn’t.)

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It often seems like there’sso much to get upsetover when we binge.

3. S I T B A C KA N D W A T C H .

If you had to write a screenplay for James Cameron to capture the character of your urge, what would your urge look like? Who would play it? The next time an urge stirs, imagine yourself sitting across from an empty armchair and . . . wait. Wake up your witness. You won’t wanna miss a thing.

There’s the amount and kind of food we eat. The lightning speed at which we eat it. The unnerving disconnect between how we want to eat and how we actually do eat. And the “ugh” feeling after the binge. It’s like, “OMG, there’s so much to freak out about!” But dropping the hate and naming the shame allows you to sit back and be a neutral and compassionate witness to what’s unfolding for you.

You know how you can have perspective and offer support to a friend, or someone who’s not you? That’s what I’m talking about. What if you could step back and see yourself in that same relaxed, non-judgy way? It’s called being a witness or “holding the space.”

You can be a witness for your experience the way you can be a witness for your friend’s.

And according to Brooke Castillo, master instructor and co-founder of The Life Coach School, increasing your awareness in just this way is central to aligning our actions with the realities we want to create in our lives.

To help you get distance and become a neutral observer, try this exercise:

What does this “screenplay” exercise look like? Maybe your urge enters, stage right, like this:

He sashays into the room, not even bothering to knock, almost pretending you’re not there. His white jeans are tight enough to reveal definition in his thighs. You don’t want to stare so you lift your eyes to his shirt—a pastel yellow that opens to tufts of curly hair. You start counting backward from ten to calm down. What’s that scent? Is that Givenchy or pheromones? Nine – eight – seven. He sits and you wonder if a seam might split. Six – five – four. Long manicured fingers reach up to his silvery streaked hair, which he strokes. Three – two – one. He slowly closes thick lashes into a wink. Zero.

Or . . .

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You hear him long before you see him—a motorcycle engine tearing through the air. Louder now. Closer now. Then a long, shrill screech. Then nothing. You stand up. There’s a crash. Dear God. Did he just let his bike fall? You sit down. He kicks the door open and it smashes into the wall. His black boots stomp down the hall. He rips his shades off and throws them onto the floor. Then he turns to you.

Or . . .

She’s a lioness with golden fur and golden eyes. She rips the door right off its hinges. (And you thought Biker Dude was bad.) She gives no warning and makes no sense. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t have to. Sharp white claws click elegantly, methodically, down the hall. She shreds the armchair in a flurry of swipes. She circles you. Then . . . she approaches with a surety that stops your breath.

See that? Your urge has personality! Who knew?!

Sometimes it feels like an arrogant seducer. Sometimes, like an intruder. Sometimes, a stalking predator. But whether it feels like a tease, an attack, or a hunt, the urge isn’t you. It’s just old wiring sending out an old—often dramatic—signal.

Whether you join the drama or watch it play out is your decision. And that is the best. news. ever.

So how do you disengage from the drama? Like this:

Have you ever talked yourself down from full-freakout at a horror movie by pulling back and remembering that there was a writer who created the story, a director following the script, actors playing the roles, stagehands setting up the lighting and props, and by imagining a hot techie in the projection room rolling the film? You can do the very same thing with an urge. The movie isn’t real. It feels pretty real, judging by the way you’re clutching your arm rests. But it’s not. You don’t need to run screaming out of the theater just because there’s a hoard of zombies descending on an unsuspecting town.

The same thing goes for your urge. You can stay calm by remembering that it’s just an automated message you no longer need. The urge isn’t you. It won’t hurt you. And it doesn’t own you. It may feel like it owns you, judging from the way you’re licking your lips. But it doesn’t. You don’t need to eat half a lasagna and a loaf of garlic bread to make it go away. You simply need to remember that it isn’t you.

You don’t have to binge to make the urges go away. That’ll happen on it’s own when you see through your urges. And the more you know about what's going on upstairs (see Step 4), the easier it’ll be to see your urges for what they really are.

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Luckily for us, we also have a higher brain that knows better.

Your higher brain is the most recent part of the brain, emerging only 2 or 3 million years ago or so. (Hey, that’s recent when you’re talking about the history of the universe.) Only primates have a higher brain. It’s sometimes called “the prefrontal cortex.” You higher brain is the home of your logical reasoning skills, your ability to make conscious choices, and your capacity to make voluntary movements (like flipping an omelette). Your higher brain is what sets you apart from a bird.

While your lower brain can send out pre-programmed orders to binge or die, it’s your higher brain that decides whether you follow through.

So, your lower brain can’t make you eat the whole Cappuccino Dacquoise, even though it’s screaming for you to do just that. Since it’s not in charge of decisions, your lower brain can’t make the call to devour those discs of crispy hazelnut meringue layered with coffee buttercream. Your lower brain also doesn’t control your legs that could hustle you over to the fridge or your arms that could whip the cake off the top shelf.

Only your higher brain can choose what to do about an urge fired from the lower brain. And only your higher brain can get you from zero to cake in two seconds flat.

But let me show you what I mean—and, I promise, this won’t hurt a bit.

You have a lower brain and a higher brain. I’ve over- simplified of course, but we’re talking brain science here!

According to Dr. Amy Johnson, the author of Fighting the Urge, the lower brain is the oldest part of the brain. We’re talking pre-prehistoric. It first showed up in fish almost 500 million years ago. Most creatures have it—including reptiles—so it’s sometimes called “the reptilian brain.” It’s old and rigid. It doesn’t think or reason.

Your lower brain tries to:

1. keep you alive by initiating powerful impulses for anything it thinks you need to live—including food

2. help you run more efficiently by automating patterns that it notices happen repeatedly (urge, binge; urge, binge).

Fuse these two functions together, and you’ve got a potent combo. Because binge eating has become a programmed habit, your lower brain thinks you need to binge to survive. So it sounds the alarm for you to binge. The reason it can really feel like you’ll die if you don’t binge is because the urge comes from the part of your brain that relentlessly tries to keep you alive.

Lower brain

Higher brain

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4. D I S S E C T Y O U R B R A I N

After all that talk about a horror show,

you’re probably picturing an evil

doctor with a scalpel.

You really do get to choose how you respond to an urge to binge. And when you understand that your decisions and actions come from a completely different part of your brain than your urges, that choice becomes a whole lot easier.

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Now you can see that the disconnect you’ve been feeling makes perfect sense: Your animal-survival instincts coming from your lower brain think you’ll die if you don’t down a cake or two. But your intelligent reflections coming from your higher brain don’t want you to have more than one piece.

Now that you know that the disconnect makes sense, you can use the same brain science to wire a new connection in your brain—and to end your binges for good. Keep reading!

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When the urge has come in the past, you mayhave wanted to fight it with all your might.

5. G I V E U P T H E F I G H T .

Just use your willpower—simple, right? Not.

If your experience of willpower is anything like mine was, it sucks. When I would decide I wasn’t going to binge, I used to have to block off a whole weekend when I could hide under the covers and sob. I wanted to binge so badly. Banging my head against the wall seemed like it would’ve been more fun. Sometimes I could hold out for days, sometimes for months. But in the end, I felt overpowered and exhausted by the urge. I’d been trying to fight the urge.

The funny thing is that by giving the urge so much attention and emotional energy, I was actually strengthening it, not weakening it!

Let’s recap: The part of your brain involved in making a decision to get food is not the part of your brain sending out the urge to

binge. Those urges will weaken and disappear when you stop reacting to them by bingeing. When you remember to separate from

your urge, you’ve got the leverage you need to ride out the urge and soon the urge will no longer have any power over you.

Did you really want to fight Ms. Lioness, Biker Dude or Mr. Sashay (from Step 3) anyway? Luckily, you don’t have to. All you have to do is watch their drama.

Let’s see how a peace treaty might work the next time that motorcycle rips

You don’t have to fight the urge because the urge is just a carryover from your pre-prehistoric brain. And you have something so much more powerful than willpower to respond to the urge: your evolved higher brain.

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down the road:

“Oh boy. Here comes that biker again. He’s always so intense. He storms in here like he owns the place. But he doesn’t own it. He’s just a ghost from an old part of my brain. He’s done the best he could to help me. I can take it from here. He’ll go away in time. And I’ll be perfectly fine until he does. I’ll watch him from that quiet place.”

Want a metaphor-free example of what your higher brain might say the next time an urge comes calling? Here we go:

“Oh boy. Here comes an urge. Now that it’s here, I’m scared. Okay. Sit down. Breathe. The first thing I notice are thoughts flashing through my mind (‘I’ve just got to have those mashed potatoes with butter!’ ‘If I don’t eat all of them right now . . . I’m gonna die!’). But Martha said the urge is just coming from my lower brain. This urge isn’t me. Woah. I can see the potatoes already and I’m nowhere near the fridge. Soft, fluffy whiteness with wispy steam curling up and golden butter drizzling down. Hey! Is that a pool in my mouth? Or is my mouth just happy about potatoes? My heart is pounding and my jaw is clenched. OMG, is that . . . sweat? Are you kidding me? Has all this been going on every time I’ve had an urge to binge?

“But wait. I’m still here. And I’m okay! I’m still sitting. Still watching. I’ve got to remind myself that these are just outdated signals from an old part of my brain that’s been trying to help me survive. They’re just sensations. They aren’t a walk in the park, but they’re so much more manageable when I remember to simply witness them and when I remember that my real strength comes from my conscious mind, the higher part of my brain that’s in charge of deciding what I’ll eat. Whew! The urge is pretty much gone and I’m feeling calmer now. That took about 20 minutes. I’m think I’m ready to call a friend.”

You’ve just responded to your urge by allowing it to unfold while you watched with curiosity. Victory! (More on partying in Step 9, we’ll get there.) You didn’t react to your urge by frantically fighting it with willpower or by begging it to go away with a binge. And what did you learn? That the urge is a tangle of sensations in your body that you can handle, untangle and describe in detail. You’ve just taken one huge step toward rewiring a new connection in your brain.

Note: Your urge may be longer or shorter than 20 minutes. Even if it’s longer, that’s still more efficient than the time it takes to make or buy the food, eat the food, and then have those crappy post-binge blues.

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You’re probably laughing at this one, aren’t you?6. E A T E N O U G H F O O D .

When your body gets enough food, you help your lower, survival-oriented part of your brain say, “Ahhh, no need to sound the alarms with an urge. Everything’s okay.”

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Surely with all the food you consume in a binge, you don’t need to think about whether you’re eating enough food. Think again.

Binge eating often follows on the heels of restrictive dieting. And bingeing sometimes resolves on its own as soon as you eat enough satisfying food. You can’t resolve binge eating while depriving yourself of fuel that your body needs.

Eating nutrient-dense foods that don’t spike your blood sugar and bring on cravings makes feeling satisfied so much easier. For example, this might mean eating more full-fat proteins (like high-fat, organic Greek yogurt) and fewer low-fat, processed carbs (like 95% fat-free cookies). Even if you don’t focus on nutrient-dense food right away, try to come back to this as soon as you can.

As you have more practice witnessing your experience of the urge, you’re going to gain an important skill in witnessing in general. You’ll start to take note of what hunger feels like, what fullness feels like, and which foods feel best in your body. This knowledge will help you to fuel your body in increasingly nourishing ways—just like mama wanted!

Ending the habit is not just about ending the binges, it’s about coming to know the true joy of nourishing our bodies.

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Each time you get an urge, you get a chance to consciously and deliberately give it a pass. This is the perfect opportunity to wire one whole loop in your brain in an entirely different direction—away from the binge.

7. L O O K F O R W A R D T O Y O U R N E X T U R G E .

Ever take your car to the mechaniconly to have it purr like a kitten

as soon as she opens the hood?With no sign of that tickety-thunk sound it was making? “But, honestly,” you say, “it was just doing it on the way here!” Your mechanic looks over her glasses at you and tut-tuts. She pulls out the hood prop rod and clips it back down into place. Then she lets the hood slam a little louder than was probably necessary.

How’s she supposed to help you if there’s no tickety-thunk?

Just as your mechanic needs the tickety-thunk to fix your car, your urge is your next best ticket out of the bingeing. You need this signal so that you can teach your brain to respond to it differently.

So don’t get upset if your urges keep coming for a while. They’re actually just what you need. Learning to let them pass will set you free. If this seems impossible, don’t panic. This process can take time, but the steps above have already got you started on understanding and witnessing your urges without having to fight them. It’ll get easier.

So look forward to your urges: they’re going to help you!

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8. P R A C T I C E T H I N K I N G .I bet you thought you had that one down already.

You’re smart and you know how to think. But what you may not have known was that the thoughts you were thinking weren’t helping you. Maybe your thoughts went something like: “I eat this platter of black cod brûlée right here, right now, or my life is over.”

But wait, you’re not just going to practice new thoughts randomly. You’re going to practice at specific moments. Here’s why:

Stanford behavior scientist Dr. B.J. Fogg stresses the importance of linking new habits to a well-established habit in your life. You’ve got tons of ingrained habits in your day. Brushing your teeth, showering, making your bed, starting your car, etc. So you’ll notice I’ve put each thought that I want you to practice after a pretty reliable event in your day.

Here are three thoughts to practice thinking about urges.

1. Right after you get out of bed in the morning, think, “Urges will help me end my bingeing.” (Remember: Each urge is an amazing chance to get better at the vital skill of letting it unfold.)

2. Every time you wash your hands, think, “It’ll get easier to allow urges.” (Remember: Each time you allow an urge to pass without fighting it or reacting to it with a binge, you’ll learn that you really can handle the experience. And soon the intensity of the urges will wane.)

3. As soon as you start to feel an urge, think, “Urges are just sensations that I can watch with curiosity.” (Remember: Urges don’t make you eat—that decision comes from a totally different part of your brain. You can witness and describe urges from a neutral place. You’ve got this!)

Whatever thoughts have kept you stuck in a cycle of bingeing, they’ve become automatic and they’re not serving you. Now we want to replace them with automatic thoughts that do serve you. But to make new thoughts automatic, we need to . . . practice, practice, practice!

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9. T H R O W A P A R T Y .Ever done a 5K run / walk / ride?

If so, you’ll know how all those cheering spectators made you want to keep going. So make yourself some noise!

In Brain over Binge, Kathryn Hansen recalls how getting excited about her progress helped her recover from bingeing sooner. And according to Dr. Fogg . . .

Two moments in particular are worthy of belting out a hip-hip-hooray, he says:

1. As soon as you remember to practice. For example, you sense an urge to binge stirring on the way home from work and you remember to think the thought, “Urges are just sensations that I can watch with curiosity.” It’s time to give yourself a hearty slap on the back.

2. As soon as you do your practice. For example, you actually go ahead and practice thinking the thought, “Urges are just sensations that I can watch with curiosity.” A wide grin is due and a good dose of pride.

Dr. Fogg recommends that you do or say to yourself (either aloud or in your head) whatever fills you with the greatest sense of victory. Then take a moment and notice how you feel.

When you celebrate your progress, no matter how small, you give yourself the boost you need to build a new habit quickly.

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Look, this practice of detaching yourself from the urge can work right away. But sometimes it takes time. I know what it’s like to want the binges to end right away. Hang in here with me. Sit down and let’s talk about what to do

if you still can’t bypass the urge. That’s where steps 10, 11, and 12 come in.

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I F Y O U D O E N D U P B I N G E I N G . . .

This might sound like I’m telling you to put“shoot up heroin” in your calendar.

But it’s different, I promise.

If you’re not able to let the urge pass in its own time yet, at least binge consciously so that even bingeing itself stays part of the healing process.

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Making a deliberate decision to binge keeps you conscious. We always want to make clear and specific choices about what we eat from the higher, executive, conscious part of the brain. Remind your higher brain that it’s in charge—no matter how hard the lower brain tries to boss it around.

It’s important that you plan your binge so that you’re not eating as a reaction. Reactive eating comes from the lower, primitive, unconscious part of the brain and is what gets us locked into unhealthy patterns where we feel we have no control over what we eat.

Plan the location of your binge so that you can be comfortable while you eat without worrying about being interrupted. Plan the food. Plan the amount. You’ll stop eating when that amount is gone or when you stop enjoying the food. Make your plans 24 hours ahead of time.

For example, on Monday night, Evangeline decides that on Tuesday night she’s going to pick up two pints of Luna and Larry’s Organic Coconut Bliss, Naked Almond Fudge flavor—her favorite! She’ll eat it at home after the kids are tucked in. Owen works late on Tuesdays so that’ll give her a chance to binge alone so she can really focus on the experience. She’ll tell Owen about her plan. He’s a pretty awesome support to her.

Like Evangeline, make sure you plan to eat food that you love. Sometimes we binge to punish ourselves and force ourselves to eat food we don’t even really like. Sometimes we’re just so unconscious when we binge, we’ve never realized that we don’t really like what we’re eating. Sometimes we eat more than we truly want because we’re not getting any satisfaction from our food. Loving the food you binge on helps you stay compassionate toward yourself, helps you stay conscious, and means there’s a chance you’ll be satisfied by it. Loving what you eat will also help you with the next step.

10. M A K E A B I N G E D A T E .

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Savoring each mouthful is key to staying conscious. At all times, try to stay present, aware, and deliberate during the binge. Losing your witness risks slipping back into the unconscious, reactive habit of bingeing. Keeping your witness allows the binge to serve as a step toward new wiring instead of just another loop through the old neural groove.

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Part of the reason you’ve rushed binges in the past is because you didn’t realize you could handle just watching the urge unfold, and because your binges were surrounded by hatred, secrecy, and shame. With all that out of the way, and because you’ve consciously decided to binge and have a plan for it, you don’t have to rush. In fact, if you’re going to binge, savor every single mouthful.

Savoring . . .

~ allows you to treat yourself with respect. By having a minimum requirement that the food you binge on be food that you enjoy, you get to send a message to your brain that you care about yourself.

~ keeps you conscious. To savor every bite, you need to notice every bite. Adding pleasure and intention to your binge takes the helplessness out of it.

~ provides an opportunity to learn. You might learn that you don’t actually like potatoes with butter all that much. Or you might learn that you love the first three mouthfuls, but the next three? Meh.

~ gives you a chance to notice when you’re getting full. When you eat really fast, you may miss your satiation signals waving white flags.

Savoring food takes time, but the results are amazing.

Let’s see how Evangeline’s doing. It’s 8:30 p.m. and the kids are in dreamland. She’s already noticing the saliva gathering along her tongue. She intentionally notes her body heading down to the kitchen: her leg muscles activated on each stair, her arm muscles engaged as she opens the freezer door and pulls out the first carton of Naked Almond Fudge.

On a scale from -10 (absolutely famished) to +10 (positively stuffed), she’s about a +2. She’s not hungry after eating a light

dinner with the kids, she feels light and satisfied.

11. P R O L O N GT H E B I N G E .

Yes, you read that right.

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Eva’s feeling excited and a nervous. This is the first time she’s planned a binge. She reminds herself that she’s not reacting to an urge from her lower brain. Her decision to binge and her movements toward the fridge are coming from her higher brain.

The urge doesn’t own her. She is in charge.

She scoops the full pint into her favorite bowl and sits down at the table. Eva takes in the streaks of fudge and specks of almonds. She eases her spoon into the tip of the softness and lifts it up to her nose. She notices the scent of almond amaretto and a surge of anticipation. She puts the spoon in her mouth and the explosion of flavor shuts out everything else. She feels the coldness in her mouth and tracks it as it slides down her throat and into her belly. She puts her spoon down. That was exquisite. On a scale from 0 (not enjoyable at all) to 10 (absolutely delectable), that was 10. Hands down.

Eva spoons up some more and puts it into her mouth. Almonds and fudge delight her senses again, though not quite as much as the last time. The puts her spoon down and ponders the experience. She gives that one an 8 on the Enjoy-O-Meter.

She swirls the third spoonful in her mouth. Down goes her spoon. It’s a treat, but only a 6.5. Interesting. The score is slipping.

By the time Eva has swallowed the sixth spoonful, she notices her enjoyment has dropped to a 3. Her belly feels full, at about a 7 on the fullness scale. And the ice cream feels heavy in her.

She keeps eating but stays keenly aware of each mouthful, of how each successive spoonful is less pleasurable than the last. She finishes the pint, noticing how she’d tried to recapture the bliss of that first spoon. She recalls how in the past she would’ve moved onto the second pint waiting in the freezer. The deal was that she’d stop eating when she stopped enjoying the food or when she’d eaten the amount she’d planned on, whichever came first. She’s definitely not enjoying it now. And she feels about a 9 on the fullness scale. Eva decides she’s done. She curls up on the couch with the latest edition of The New Yorker.

When we actually sit down and commit to enjoying the food, we realize that bingeing wasn’t so much about satisfaction as it was a way to end the urge. Pay close attention to whether you’re enjoying a binge, and you may well discover that you’re not! And before you protest that savoring every mouthful will take too much time, remember that it would probably have taken Eva about as long to eat two pints of coconut ice cream at her typical Tasmanian Devil binge rate as it did for her to eat six spoons slowly and mindfully.

Because Eva stayed conscious of her emotions, she was able to eat less food than she normally would when she binged. She’s feeling excited about the experience.

But strangely, she’s also feeling a bit sad that she didn’t need to eat the second pint. It feels like a loss. The ambivalence is confusing for Eva. Like breaking up with someone, it leaves a void. But now Eva gets to pour that energy into the rest of her life.

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So . . . you binged.

Maybe it was even an accidental and unplanned binge.

No, you haven’t blown it.

This binge can still help you prevent your next one.

Here’s why:

You haven’t come full circle. Instead, you’ve spiralled upward through a layer of the urge–binge pattern.

This was a single episode. Leave it at that.

Light up any shame that may be skulking around and sit back and wait for your next urge. Witness it with gentle curiosity.

You can do this. It takes practice, but you’ll get there.

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If you maintained even an ounce of awareness during the binge, you’re so much closer to not having to binge the next time the urge comes.

12. L O V E T H E B I N G E .

JOIN

Y O U ' R E D O I N G G R E A T !

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Life coaching for when you’re SO DONE with the binge

YOU CAN DO THIS.LET ME HOLD THE SPACEFOR YOU WHILE YOU DO.

Or contact my amazing team atsupport@holdingthespace.co.

JOIN

These 12 steps are a great way to get started. Try them out and let me know how it goes. If you decide you’d like some help to consistently apply these practices in your life to end binge eating for good, I’m here. I’m a Master Life and Weight- Loss Coach and Instructor and an Internal Family Systems Practitioner— the evidence-based approach developed by renowned clinician Dr. Richard Schwartz. I am passionate about helping people release their struggle with binge eating. To break free from binge eating, working with someone can make all the difference. (It’s how I stopped.) Again, imagine your life if you didn’t have to binge. How would you feel? What would you create, accomplish, offer to the world? Let’s get you there, starting with your very next urge.

N O T E S

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Herbaltea

FOR THE BONUS AT-A-GLANCE TAKE-ANYWHERE POSTER!AND NOW . . . AND NOW . . .

Each time you get an urge, you get a chance to consciously and deliberately give it a pass. This is the perfect opportunity to wire one whole loop in your brain in an entirely different direction—away from the binge.

Whatever thoughts have kept you stuck in a cycle of bingeing, they’ve become automatic and they’re not serving you. Now we want to replace them with automatic thoughts that do serve you. But to make new thoughts automatic, we need to . . . practice, practice, practice!

When you celebrate your progress, no matter how small, you give yourself the boost you need to build a new habit quickly.

If you’re not able to let the urge pass in its own time yet, at least binge consciously so that even bingeing itself stays part of the healing process.

Savoring each mouthful is key to staying conscious. At all times, try to stay present, aware, and deliberate during the binge. Losing your witness risks slipping back into the unconscious, reactive habit of bingeing. Keeping your witness allows the binge to serve as a step toward new wiring instead of just another loop through the old neural groove.

If you maintained even an ounce of awareness during the binge, you’re so much closer to not having to binge the next time the urge comes.

www.holdingthespace.co

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S U R P R I S I N G S T E P SStarting with your very next urge

T O E N D B I N G E E AT I N G

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I F Y O U D O E N D U P B I N G E I N G . . .

1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.

10.11.12.

L O V E T H E B I N G E .

L I G H T U P T H E S H A M E .

S I T B A C K A N D W A T C H .

D I S S E C T Y O U R B R A I N .

G I V E U P T H E F I G H T .

E A T E N O U G H F O O D .

L O O K F O R W A R D T O Y O U R N E X T U R G E .

P R A C T I C E T H I N K I N G .

T H R O W A P A R T Y .

M A K E A B I N G E D A T E .

P R O L O N G T H E B I N G E .

L O V E T H E B I N G E .

Why? Because it’s here. Because it’s happening. Because it’s the reality of your life right now. Because hating the binge hasn’t helped you stop. Because, weird as it sounds, your bingeing may have helped you.

You’re not broken or flawed or inept. This isn’t about how good you are or how weak you’ve been. Binge eating isn’t a moral issue. It’s a wiring issue. There’s no place for shame.

If you had to write a screenplay for James Cameron to capture the character of your urge, what would your urge look like? Who would play it? The next time an urge stirs, imagine yourself sitting across from an empty armchair and . . . wait. Wake up your witness. You won’t wanna miss a thing.

You really do get to choose how you respond to an urge to binge. And when you understand that your decisions and actions come from a completely different part of your brain than your urges, that choice becomes a whole lot easier.

You don’t have to fight the urge because the urge is just a carryover from your pre-prehistoric brain. And you have something so much more powerful than willpower to respond to the urge: your evolved higher brain.

When your body gets enough food, you help your lower, survival-oriented part of your brain say, “Ahhh, no need to sound the alarms with an urge. Everything’s okay.”

HOLDING THE SPACE

www.holdingthespace.co