Over the last several years, I’ve helped thousands of women break free from binge and emotional eating. Not only that, but I’ve also let go of my own struggle with that as well as weight and debilitating body image struggles.

I was in the trenches of the diet world for years. My life looked like on and off track eating, binge guilt restrict repeat, and hating and shaming myself the whole way through…I was miserable.

Then when I realized it was about more than food I went on a seemingly never ending quest to “fix” myself thinking that would fix my relationship with food. Therapy, personal development, hypnosis, working with the top fitness, nutrition, and life coaches and healers in the county…you name it. I made some progress but still felt stuck. This all went on for over 12 years.

Back then I searched endlessly for a way out of the struggle. What did I find? I found that there was a lot of experts with a lot of ideas.

Being an expert, though, doesn’t guarantee that your advice is the be-all-end-all solution.

In fact, some of the old-school wisdom that the gurus and teachers share does a lot more damage than repair.

Now, I’m not knocking these people as human beings. Nearly everyone in the space has great intentions, but a lot of what’s being taught, even in school is harmful and doesn’t look at the full picture.

In today’s video, I’m sharing the top 3 most outdated strategies that are touted to help with binge eating, the pitfalls of each one, and what to do instead to feel peaceful and free with food.

I bet some of these methods will sound familiar to you, and I’m sure that you’ve tried at least one of them at one point. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that any or all of them left you feeling stuck, broken, and frustrated. Maybe even stuck in that binge-restrict cycle longer than you need to be.

Don’t let what the world thinks is “right” keep you trapped in an unhealthy cycle with food for years!

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Number One: Focusing exclusively on therapy and emotional work. Now, don’t get me wrong. Therapy and emotional work are both worthwhile and valuable. And if you have a mental health condition, past traumas, emotional things you want support around, by all means, get the help that you need and do not let anything I share detour you from seeking professional help – please.

What I’m referring to here is when people miss the mark when and assume what emotional work and therapy alone can accomplish freedom from binge eating.

You see, contrary to what traditional therapy or eating disorder treatment says, you don’t have to heal every emotional wound or trauma to have a healthy relationship with food.

Take me, for example. When I stopped binge eating, my emotional life was far from perfect…

I was still trying to launch my business. I was couch-surfing while trying to get everything off the ground. In the emotional department, I was falling apart –  I had a lot of self doubt, I didn’t know how to be with or process my emotions – I was all over the place AND I still stopped binge eating.

True, I did a lot of the emotional work along the way. But sometimes, the deep work made me feel like I was on a wild goose chase to “fix myself.” As if I had to be perfectly healed before I could make any progress at all.

It sent me on this hunt for looking what was wrong with me when truthfully there was nothing wrong with me, I was just disconnected from my power and professionals telling me I was branded with a disorder or an addiction didn’t leave me feeling empowered – AT ALL.

But even without all of my emotional ducks in a row, I was still able to get on the road to freedom with food. Why was this possible for me?

Because while there is an emotional component to binge eating, and people can be driven to food when certain emotions arise, the primary cause is physiological.

In other words, you need to first break the pattern in your brain that causes you to binge and make sure your physiology invested in making you eat. And no amount of emotional work alone can do that.

So if you try to tackle the emotional work before taking on the physiological causes, it’s like putting the cart before the horse.

The truth is, life is going to get stressful, emotions are going to arise, you’re going to get triggered – true healing and peace isn’t about controlling the triggers and fixing yourself – it’s about releasing all the programming and patterning that drives you to eat in those moments and being resourced enough to stay centered and not need food when one of those moments (aka life) happens.

If you’re binge eating you’re not broken – you’re just disconnected from your power.

Number Two: Dieting, controlling, or restricting your foods. This is the one that we all know far too well, I’m sure! Restricting your portions, controlling what you eat, or abstaining from certain foods, mentally judging what you eat…is a recipe for disaster.

Trust me, I was on that path longer than I needed to be…

For years, I masked dieting as “healthy eating.” I ruthlessly judged what was good and bad to eat, and I restricted every bite I took (or tried to, anyway).

But if you restrict what you eat in the name of being “healthy”, it still constitutes control. If your intentions aren’t loving, nurturing, honoring place, even things like “clean eating” are restrictions.

You see, when you restrict your food options, that survival switch in your brain gets locked in the ON position. We call this the “binge switch.”

And when that switch is ON, it drives you to think about food, eat uncontrollably, and crave relentlessly the foods you’ve deemed “forbidden.”

In other words, it conditions you to have what I call “tunnel vision” with food. The more you try to control what you eat, the more out of control you feel.

So please know if you do feel out of control with your food – more attempted control is NOT the answer – it’s just making things worse.

Number Three: Intuitive Eating as The Be-All Solution. Now, this might surprise you. After all, you’ve probably heard me talk about intuitive eating and listening to your body as a beautiful and supportive practice.

And it’s true–I really DO believe in the power of intuitive eating and listening to your body! The problem comes in when you make intuitive eating and listening to your body the one and only tool in your arsenal.

When you put that kind of pressure on this practice, it turns from a supportive practice to just another set of stringent rules.

Here’s an example. If you decide to up and quit traditional dieting and replace it with intuitive eating, your intentions might be good.

But if you don’t address the underlying problem first–that is, breaking the pattern in your brain that causes binge eating–what usually happens next isn’t quite what you might’ve bargained for…

You let go of all the traditional diet rules and it may feel good for a day or so but oftentimes that can lead to a food free-for-all. Then the fear sets in, and you go back to your old patterns of restricting, controlling, and probably even shaming.

And after that, “intuitive eating” morphs into just another diet.

To make matters worse, the whole experience might leave you feeling as though something was fundamentally wrong with you. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth…

For one thing, intuitive eating and listening to your body relies a lot on recognizing your body’s hunger and fullness cues. And in reality, those cues don’t return to their natural state until you’ve broken out of survival mode – meaning it won’t work if that switch in your brain driving you to eat is still on.

Intuitive eating and listening to your body are both worthwhile and beautiful practices. I practice these techniques every day myself, and I believe in their power! But I encourage you to recognize that they are intended to be helpful tools, not the ultimate solution.

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So there you have it! The top 3 strategies to beat binge eating that ultimately set you back instead of move you forward. Some of them are good ideas being used ineffectively, while others do more harm than good at any point in the game.

But how do you take the steps that will set you free, for real this time?

The first step on the road to food freedom forever is breaking the link in the brain that drives you to binge eat in the first place. And from there, using the emotional and intuitive steps to support you as you complete your journey to peace and ease with your food.

Now, that’s a pretty big topic for a single post, so I have a special gift for you.

Click the image below where I’ve got a special gift for you! We call them, “Craving Cards”, and they’re one of our most popular tools!

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You’ll learn how to stop cravings in their tracks, feel confident, and get back your power, fast! 

Love,
Brittany

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