Stop Binge Eating – Stop Overeating

1. Perfectionism
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How often do you have a perfect day? One where you clear your to-do list, spend enough time with family or friends, get all of your work done at the office (or finish all of your homework if you are a student), and still manage to have time for yourself to relax?

What about the last skill you learned?  How many times did you screw-up until you started seeing progress?  Did you perfect the skill from your first try?

It’s obvious that perfectionism is a lie.  Yet for many of us who deal with overeating, we often go through cycles of yo-yo dieting.  After a binge, an overeating episode or just a period of weight gain, we get back on a food plan or diet expecting to follow it perfectly this time around.

The first time we mess up, consume a bad food (a food not in our food/diet plan) we become very disappointed at ourselves, feel an overwhelming sense of guilt, and label ourselves as failures once again.

Perfectionism is a lie. Recovering from overeating/binging is a process, it has a lot of bumps, and roadblocks a long the way.  Those who recover are those are easy going, can forgive themselves, and are willing to stick it out.


2. All or Nothing
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Remember the last time you tried sticking to a diet or food plan, and slightly fell off track.  Maybe you ate more than your plan allowed, couldn’t resist having that cookie or bag of potato chips, or just experienced a tough emotion and resorted to a slice of pie for comfort.  What happened after that? You probably started feeling guilty, and realized that you have already failed, so you kept overeating/binging.

This is a result of All or Nothing thinking.  You either want recovery to happen 100% your way according to your plan otherwise you are just going to give up, and not even try.  Have that one cookie or slice of pie will not mess up your diet, and will at most add 200-400 calories to your diet for that day.  What really makes you gain the weight is your All or Nothing thinking, which makes you feel like a failure and encourages you to keep overeating to numb out that negative emotion.


3. Dieting Works
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Dieting doesn’t work. At least not on it’s own.  For a person to lose weight and keep it off for at least a year or two they need a lot more than a diet.  Dieting just addresses the external factors of weight loss like what foods you eat.

Dieting is like a good accounting book.  It has all the knowledge one needs to become an accountant, however, it’s not enough by itself.  That potential accountant will need to study the book hard, maybe seek other accountants adive for more understanding, then make some connections and network to get an accounting job.

Dieting has a negative effect for us who deal with overeating.  Especially if we have a Perfectionist or an All or Nothing mentality.  Diets are all guidelines not concrete solid rules. Even those who successfully lose weight by combining a diet with other resources never follow the diet perfectly.  They’ll often have days where they totally fall off track.


4. Social Programming
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How many commercials have you seen where an overweight person loses so many pounds by taking a pill, or exercising for 10-20 minutes a day for 30 days? 
Society, advertising, and other media sources always make weight loss look so easy. I’m sure you have tried many of those magic pills, and weight loss equipment without any luck.  I’ve tried them too so that makes us both suckers

Many diet books today makes regularly eating healthy food sound so easy. If Bob can do it, why can’t you?  The TRUTH is that improving your eating habits, dealing with emotional eating issue, and losing weight are all tough.  While I can give you helpful tips/guidelines to help you along the way, speed up your recovery etc, there is no magic pill.

Give yourself credit for your efforts.  Think about how long you have been working on your overeating.  Many other people would have given up already.  Be proud that you are still sticking in there and trying  

To learn more about dealing with these lies and learn other useful tips to recover from overeating subscribe to my FREE Tips newsletter.

Also if anyone wants to share how these lies have impacted their overeating or can think of any other lies please share in the comments