Beating Binge Eating

In this episode, I discuss emotional/ binge eating in the context of trauma and emotional connections which can lead to bingeing.  I am joined by Stephenie Farrell, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and we dig into the science behind EFT tapping, the stress response, and ways to overcome binge eating.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, it's Penny Megansen from the Meganston Method, and welcome to Penny for Your Thoughts, where we discuss how our thoughts and mindset affect our health, happiness, and performance. And I'm joined here today in this episode Beating Binge Eating with Stephanie Farrell. And Stephanie is a certified intuitive eating counselor, and we're going to be talking about the science behind binge eating. Let's get started. Hello, Stephanie. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hi, Bunny. So nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

It's great. So let's just get right into it by breaking down what binge eating is exactly, what leads to it, what's the science behind it?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Well, in terms of binge eating, right here, I'm not talking about diagnosed binge eating, so that's important to note. But binge eating is something that people are very familiar with, I think. And what really happens is uh it's a result of physical and mental or emotional restriction. So um it's that out-of-control feeling, you know, around food, that out-of-control eating. And what sets it up really in the first place is feeling like we need to lose weight, right? Uh that diet mentality, feeling uncomfortable in our bodies, feeling like we need to lose weight. And then, you know, we go on a diet, maybe we lose weight, then we gain it back, and we feel guilt, we feel shame, and then the the cycle continues. So that cyclical and chronic dieting can actually really perpetuate the binge eating. In terms of why people binge eat, there are probably about four reasons why. And one of those reasons, of course, is biological. So it's biological hunger, it's that um animal hunger, right? You've been restricting yourself from eating uh for quite a while. I mean, you're on a diet or you're restricting food, and your body doesn't know that like there's a Starbucks on the next corner, or your fridge is fully stocked. So the body really goes into that starvation mode, that um famine mode, and feels like it's starving, you're not getting enough energy. So when that happens, of course, naturally, when you come in come in contact with some kind of food, you want to eat, and that's that out-of-control feeling because your body needs to get that energy from your food. Um, and then there are a couple of other reasons. So, reason number two, I would say, is stress, you know, that stress from rigid food rules that we have, moralizing uh food, good and bad. Uh so you know, people will put certain foods off limit. And then when we when we do uh break down, break down and eat that food, it's kind of this all or none thinking. What the heck? What the heck? I'm just gonna eat it all because I might not get it again. So that's another thing too. When we vow to start our diet, it's like this last supper eating, it's like the last time we're gonna have this food. We better eat it now and get it all in because we're not gonna have it later. And then there's self-care. So if we're not looking after ourselves appropriately, um, if we're not getting enough sleep, if we're too stressed, if we don't take time for play, um, then all of those things are going to contribute to binge eating. A lot of people who don't get enough sleep will over uh, and I hate to say the word overeat, but they'll eat more in response to that because they feel like it's giving them more energy. Yeah, in fact, it's maybe not, it's kind of draining the energy, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, it's interesting. What do you think about self-sabotage as well? Because I find with a lot of clients, as they're starting to get, and maybe some of our listeners can um resonate with this, but as you're getting, you're losing weight and you're getting closer to your goal, it's like the body wants this sense of homeostasis, this need to stay the same. So it starts to um have more cravings and wanting the things that you're limiting yourself even more than you did even before uh you started this whole pattern of you know, healthy exercise and eating, eating habits. Um, and it's like a way of just trying to keep us from changing or changing our bodies. And um, it seems like that starts that cycle of um uh being out of control. I don't know. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Uh I think that's true. I mean, we all have this biological set point. It's a weight where our weight will pretty much stay the same. Um, in terms of aging factors, that's that changes as you get a little older. As we go through adolescence, that changes a bit too. Because of hormonal reasons. But we have this set point weight. I mean, mine is 10 pounds or 20 pounds up or down, right? And our body wants to stay there. That's where our body functions the best. Um, so when we start messing around with that and playing around with that, and uh restricting our food and dieting and and then cycling, weight cycling is just it's really very, very bad for the health. Uh creates a lot of stress, it creates a lot of um uh chronic illness and such as well. Uh so just playing around with that, playing around with our metabolism, you know. Um, every time we go on a diet and restrict food, it's uh at least 95% of people who go on a diet and lose weight uh within a number of years gain it all back, plus then some. And mostly that uh that weight gain is it's not muscle, they're losing muscle, right? We start playing around with um our uh our set point, uh start playing around with uh metabolism, it affects all kinds of things as well in the body, uh, which is when you can get into like um hypothalamic uh amenorrhea as well for for young women and for women. So it can really mess with hormones and mess with a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So one thing I noticed with working with clients is there's such a strong emotional connection with food. And so um I thought, why don't we talk about that as well? Um, what have you seen with clients? And I have what do you feel about the this emotional connection?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Oh boy, I feel it was a huge emotional connection. Um, you know, just for myself, I've seen it definitely I've seen it with clients from myself. I mean, I've suffered with disordered eating of various sorts uh since I was um knee-high to a grasshopper. So since I was very young. Um, and for me it was this sense of safety. And for most people, it is a kind of feeling of not being safe in the world, uh, not being safe maybe in the home. There's issues at home or or whatever the stress might be, maybe a loss. I've seen it, uh, grief, feeling abandoned. Those kinds of feelings a lot of the time are really underneath. Um, for me, it was not feeling safe. There was a lot of uh stuff going on in my home. And uh I turned to food because it made me feel better. I find a lot of people find that comfort in food range of things where people uh feel more comfort controlling their body and restricting. So for me, that became kind of a pattern, uh, finding comfort in food, binge eating, uh, bulimia, and uh restriction, restricted eating. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, yeah. So I I found it was really trying to figure out what is that gap that the food is filling and spreading from there, and um trying to figure out whether it's boredom or whether it's some sort of emotional comfort that you're looking for, whether it's stress that leads to the binge eating and that sort of thing. And so going to stress, um, let's talk about the stress response and how that plays into all of this.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, so I mean, when you um in terms of the stress response, when you experience something that feels threatening or dangerous, uh, your body has this innate reaction, right? Your nervous system goes into the fight, flight, and freeze response, basically the stress response. Uh, and you know, most of the times uh in today's society, most of the time, if you're in a traffic jam, if you're whatever it is that you're doing, you're not not really experiencing a real threat to your life or safety, but your body believes that it is, your nervous system believes that it is. So what happens is the fire alarm goes off. The amygdala in the back of the brain, this little almond-shaped uh primal part of the brain, starts setting off this fire alarm, and you get this cascade of reactions um throughout the body, throughout the nervous system, saying, you know, you better you better run away or stand and fight, or you're just gonna uh sort of roll over and play possum, right? Um excuse me, and uh when that gets gets to a certain um uh state, um you can be in chronic stress. Uh so I mean, particularly uh as we were talking about emotions and in childhood, if you have a traumatic experience in childhood, if you have a traumatic experience uh later in life, or if you have um what I say are like microaggressions, weight-based microaggressions, foods are very traumatic. They create trauma, they create that stress response in your system. So your nervous system is kicked into high gear and it's stuck there. So that also takes us out of our rational brain, takes us offline, and then you know, in terms of the eating, uh, that's become our pattern, that's become our coping mechanism over many years. So we're in that stress response chronically. Well, we're gonna turn to food, right? To make us feel safe, to make us feel better. Yeah.

unknown 10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Okay, so then how do you reverse that?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Well, uh, for me, I use a lot of emotional freedom technique, a certified practitioner of emotional freedom technique. And um EFT is fantastic. It's it's AK tapping or EFT, and uh it's just for the audience.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Um, I think we're both EFT uh practitioners, and so we should probably break it down so you can go ahead. Um, the science behind EFT tapping and what makes it work, and then we can talk about how it works in this environment.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah, absolutely. I use so much of it with my clients one-on-one for many reasons. Uh, as you mentioned, I am an intuitive eating counselor as well, but I find that uh the EFT really helps people make those shifts toward those 10 principles, and it makes it a lot easier for my clients. But in terms of uh EFT tapping, it's a somatic cognitive energy technique. So soma, of course, body, cognitive thoughts, uh, it regulates the stress response, so it it down-regulates that stress response, and it helps us to perceive things um differently. So it rewires the brain as well, those neural pathways. And in terms of the emotional eating, that's a neural pathway. We've created a pattern, we created time after time of turning to food. So it works beautifully in terms of uh emotional and beating. Um, but it actually creates those new neural connections, teaches your nervous system to behave differently in response to what feels threatening, so circumstances. Um when you feel a trigger, you respond very differently. Once you may have responded in a different um manner. Um, it really changes our thoughts, our perceptions.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Um just to clarify, so EFT tapping for those of you that are watching or listening and you're not familiar, you're tapping on different areas that are points on uh Chinese meridians. And so it's based on these Chinese meridians and getting this continuous flow. Um, and the thought behind it or the science behind it is that uh when you're having these negative emotions all throughout life, from the time you're born onwards, um, that these negative emotions can get sort of stuck in our bodies and what we're trying to do is clear them. And so when we get triggered from a stressful event or something makes us angry, um that's usually because it's connected to something from the past that's happened before. And when these uh continue to happen, these events happen throughout our life, uh, they build up on each other. And so by clearing them from the start, it's kind of like peeling back the layers of an onion, getting to the core issue. And once we clear that, then you don't have that um same sort of negative emotion to that same event. So that's how it's um that's sort of the science behind why it changes how we deal with the situation. So a boss shouting at you isn't going to take you back to all those years that your father would shout at you and make you feel small and make you feel um insignificant or not clever and that sort of thing. It'll just be your boss shouting and it doesn't mean anything to you, and you don't get that same level of stress or needing to go home um that day and just eat a pint of ice cream because you just felt so bad in that um, you know, situation. Um, and so that's how you have to, and it's so effective that you don't even know what's happening. It feels like nothing is happening. I find most of my clients kind of giggle about it and say, you know, I feel like this is silly, nothing's happening, but then the change happens and they just feel different, um, they behave differently. Um it's it's really, really impactful, I find.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Um in terms of in terms of that that um lowering the stress response and and changing the thoughts, it also, I mean, it regulates the nervous system. So when we use mernium points, um it's actually taking us out of either that fight flight uh or the hypoactive that um freeze response and it just brings us back to that homeostasis in our nervous system. So when we can stay there in that homeostatic state, um we are more connected to ourselves, to others, we're more connected, and we're not responding so negligible to these issues.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

So absolutely you just end up being able to think more logically and more rationally, and so all these bad habits like binge eating, cravings, all of these things just sort of die down, they just don't seem to exist or they don't um overtake your daily life. Um, that's what I find with a lot of my clients.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Craving in terms of cravings are absolutely normal if you're restricting your food intake, so that's why I really help people uh stop chronic dieting because it just perpetuates the problem. Um, biologically, we can't overrun that, um, but we can learn to break patterns and manage patterns and deal with all the underlying emotions that uh we have uh with emotional freedom of meat.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, yeah. So going to that, what are some tips that you had for the listeners on how they can overcome binge eating if that's something that they're struggling with at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, so there are a number of things that uh we want to do is in terms of number one, I would say shifting away from that diet mentality, shifting away from dieting, because like I said, chronic dieting, chronic food deprivation is going to um basically put you in that mode of restriction and restricting food intake leads to binging. So chronic dieting leads leads to binge eating, and uh then number two, eating at um at least every five hours. So eating uh trying to eat normally throughout the day. A lot of people restrict throughout the day and then they find themselves binging or feeling out of control around food at night. But really, if you're feeding yourself adequately during the day, every five hours, that that is going to lessen, right? Uh number three, really exploring your relationship with food. So not uh trying not to moralize foods as good and bad. Uh, and by the way, all of these things are very difficult to do. They are difficult to do. Uh, intuitive eating is fantastic, but EFT is an amazing tool to add along with that to help people get out of that diet mentality, and in terms of the moralizing foods, their beliefs about foods, good and bad, and to explore that relationship they have with foods. Um, but also, you know, one thing I would say is really finding in an emotional sense, finding out what their real needs are in terms of emotions. A lot of the times that breaks down to like setting boundaries. For a lot of my clients, boundaries is an issue, um, and self-silencing. I think for a lot of women, at least my age, self-silencing is something we learned as children. So it's it's hard to break, but again, EFT can help that, SIN can help that. So three things to ask yourself if you find yourself eating for emotional reasons could be um, you know, what am I feeling? If you can really zero down on what you're feeling, um, and then say, you know, what am I feeling? Acknowledge it, and then say, well, what do I really need? It's maybe not food that I need, it's something else. I have a deep need for something. If it's connection, if it's uh loneliness you feel, you might need connection, uh, or or whatever it is for this the person, and then really thinking, like, what how can I meet that need? What can I do right now to help me meet that need that's not uh placing that importance on food? So maybe it's connecting with a friend over Zoom and very stressful these days. Uh, you know, so people have a lot of a lot of um need for connection and loneliness. So those are three things that I would definitely ask, you know, if you're reaching for food for emotional reasons.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, yeah. And I think, and just in the way that you were describing that, I think what I find a lot of people do is they're not comfortable sitting with those feelings. And um, and it's so important to be able to do that, even if it feels bad, um, just sit with it and try and sort of understand it and understand why I am feeling like this, uh, to really get to that core issue. Otherwise, if you're constantly going around it, trying to fill your time with other things, that's what that binge eating is. It's like you're just filling that gap or filling that time so you don't actually have to deal with the stuff you need to deal with. And so give yourself just that quiet time to just listen to what's going on in your head or in your body and and do that instead of the eating, because the eating is just keeping you busy so that you're not focusing on the real stuff. And so um, yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Um EFT comes in and it's so beautifully uh fits in with this work that I do, getting under there and and scooping out some of those emotions and really finding out what it is and dealing with it and being more comfortable over time dealing with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Now, do you have a client story or anything, uh a personal story to um share with the listeners of how um either EFT tapping helped or just someone's journey through getting over this binge eating pattern?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah, um, well, I do have lots of clients that have been through generations of uh binge eating, chronic dieting, having huge successes, but um I always like to bring it back to myself because I had so much experience um over the years, over 20 years of disordered eating behaviors. And um, you know, I think I always searched for something to help me, but it wasn't really until I found uh emotional freedom technique that uh it really got to the root of my issues. So uh dealing with the chronic trauma that I dealt with growing up, serious trauma, um uh both you know, emotional and and mental, emotional and also physical trauma. Uh it really helped to deal with a lot of that, helped me discover a lot of my issues related to body image, my beliefs. About myself and the world, beliefs about my body, um, generational beliefs that were kind of placed on me. Parents did the best they could, but you know, my mother had uh issues with uh body image and and weights and all those kinds of things. So, you know, really doing that deep work with emotional freedom technique, and in conjunction with um, I also practice trauma-sensitive or trauma-specific yoga, the somatic aspect of those things, intuitive eating and really getting away from the diet mentality and making peace with all foods, allowing myself all foods. Um, it's just it's I'm completely a different person than I was. Um, and I see that in my clients too. I had one young woman who said, you know, you're the first person that I talked to uh about my disordered eating that really made an impact on me, you know, and really helped me deal with my um my internal stuff. So just just hearing that, just knowing that I'm helping women in that way, just very hard.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I just wanted to mention because I think often we we're talking more and more about trauma, and I think a lot of people think trauma has to be something really drastic, a rape or something, you know, physical abuse as a child and these sorts of things. And a lot of the trauma that I see is what I like to call microtrauma. There are little things that you think, oh, well, everybody sort of has that sort of thing, you know, either a parent that really never showed affection or a parent where nothing was ever good enough, these little things that over time just, you know, sort of become a huge part of uh who you are or who you feel you're not, because it was just cyclical. It was just something that you were dealing with all the time. And you might not even be aware of it because it feels so normal. Um, and these little micro traumas I find are the things that uh we we can't see because they're just so small and insignificant that um we don't really think about them. And that's the stuff that I find when I'm doing EFT tapping with clients comes up all the time. This feeling of not being good enough, nothing is ever good enough. Um, and it's just because that parent was maybe just a bit too busy, and maybe it wasn't that their parent wasn't there for them, but they were just a bit too busy, and that as a child made them feel that they weren't good enough or they weren't interesting enough or something like that. Something as small as that can lead to such a big thing like burnout. I see a lot of burnout in clients and that can stem from something so small as that. And I see the same with binge um binge behaviors, uh, where it's really just trying to fill some um hole that's there because of something that was so small from a childhood event um that didn't seem very significant, and the person isn't even aware of it. So trauma doesn't always have to be big traumas, it can be lots of small things that compound and become uh something that feels very negative for the person. Um and yeah, and these are things that I feel really lead to all of these bad behaviors um that just aren't working for us.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

And trauma is really a perception, actually, it's it's that person's perception of what is traumatic. So if you the similar uh the same thing happens to you and I, and maybe I would interpret that, my system would interpret that as being a trauma, and you might be fine. Um, and as you mentioned, those little um micro traumas along the way, and living in a weight be weight, uh you know, a diet culture uh we're driven to you know, we see it every day, we're just swimming in this diet culture. It's just this and that sort of thing. Yeah, and if you're if you're of a uh in a larger body, and I know this from uh from my younger years, I was in a larger body, you're getting these microaggressions left, right, and center, and that can be traumatic and off, you know, this this chronic kind of trauma that you're dealing with every day. So so yeah, they can be like little called little tea traumas. That might be for the person, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, that is great. And Stephanie, if the listeners would like to get in touch with you, how um how can they find you? Where where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Uh well, uh my website is www.stephaniefarrell. That's s-t-e-p-h-e-n-i-e-f-a-double-r-e-double-l. Um, I'm also on um on Instagram at your coach Stephanie. So um they can find me there, and of course, I'm on Facebook. So just look for me, Body Confidence and Stephanie Farrell, you'll find me.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today. That was wonderful. Thank you. And as always, you can find me at Meganson Method on all social media, and I look forward to seeing you next time.