by Lauren Grant | Mar 27, 2015 | Binge Eating, Compulsive Overeating, Emotional Overeating
10 Practical Tips on How to Stop Binge Eating
As a former binge eater, I had tried it all. I knew how I wanted to approach food, but every time I would try to get a handle on my overeating I would end up back in the diet/binge cycle. Over years, I started making some changes to my food and thought process that significantly changed my reaching for food when I would feel stressed or anxious. I liked to share my top 10 tools on how to stop binge eating that truly helped turn my life around.
- How to Set Yourself Up for Success. Learn how to approach food in a healthy manner, not on a diet, not feeling like your holding your breath to get to the next meal, and not in a way that will set you up for obsessively thinking about the next opportunity to eat.
We’ve heard it before, but are you doing it? Eat frequently throughout the day. It starts with the basics, of eating good combinations of fruits and vegetables, healthy proteins and carbs every 3 hours. If you go too long without eating you will set yourself up to overeat and feel out of control, feel like you don’t know how to stop binge eating. So set yourself up for success and eat good quality fuel every few hours.
- Plan. Plan. Keep healthy food available for the full day. If you don’t have good quality food on hand, you will end up turning to whatever junk is nearby. Just like you wouldn’t send your kids to school without a game plan to eat, you need to have your game plan. You wouldn’t show up to a meeting without your report or presentation materials, you have to be well fed before you go in, and if it’s going to be awhile, bring something with you so you can last the duration. We are much better off when we have good fuel in our system. When clients ask how to stop binge eating, the best tool I share is to have a food game plan.
- What are you saying to yourself: How we communicate with our selves will affect how we feel, how we handle life challenges, and what ends up showing up in our lives. We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. If your internal communications aren’t serving you, then you need to learn how to shift them to helpful resourceful communications.
- Meet Your Personal Needs: A lot of times we don’t even know what are needs are. We are so busy taking care of everyone and everything else that we end up last in our own lives. We then end up rebelling and turning to the food and end up binge eating to meet our personal needs. So learn to identify what is going on in your emotional life and how you can support yourself as you handle it. If you don’t know how to handle the situation, that’s when you need the support even more. So learn to truly be your own best friend.
- Create a Balance Life: Many times we let work or kids, or parents needs overshadow the other important parts of our life that they get crowded out. We stop focusing in or prioritizing time for ourselves, exercise, eating well, time with friends, socialization, or self-care. We then start to feel bad about ourselves. We need to take charge and reprioritize our time and energy. Pull out your calendar and schedule fun and exercise, just like you would anything else that makes it to your to do list or calendar.
- Problem Solving Skills: Learning how to overcome challenging situations and people are key to managing a healthy life. If we don’t have healthy boundaries, it is very easy to get overrun by other’s needs. If you are not sure how to solve an issue, start utilizing your resources, which can help. Think outside the box, research it, talk to friends or knowledgeable people in the area you need help in and then pick a direction. The key is don’t stay stuck. Try an idea if it works great, if it doesn’t move on to the next idea. If we do nothing for too long, we end up feeling bad about ourselves and lack of control and many times turn to food. When we don’t know how to stop binge eating or don’t feel good about other areas of our lives, building our problem solving skills and resources are the key to success.
- Develop a strong sense of self confidence and self-esteem. We want to feel good about ourselves unconditionally. Even if things aren’t the way we would like them to be, we can still feel good about who we are today and the direction we are moving in. Feeling good about ourselves and feeling whole and complete, allows us to make the best decision we can in the moment.
- Stop Self Sabotaging Behavior: If we beat ourselves up emotionally when we get hit with life challenges or are not sure how to stop binging, fix things in life or make them right, we end up spiraling down and feeling even worse. If you recognize that you have patterns in your life that are showing up over and over again that aren’t serving you, it’s time to shift your thought process and let go of the thoughts that are taking you down that path and shift them to a healthier approach.
- Create Health Boundaries with Family/Friends/Work. Learning to say “No” is a tough one for many of us people pleasers. We like to make everything right or perfect for everyone, and then we end up sacrificing ourselves and end up turning to the food. Determining your own limits of what you can manage comfortable is important, but feeling comfortable sharing it with others is even more important. So you can stand up to yourself, even when others push back or try and put their agenda or needs onto you. Learn to prioritize yourself, they may be sad or strike out, when you first start setting boundaries, but in the long run, you will be healthier and you will develop healthier relationships. If people can’t respect your needs, then maybe you need to revisit how much time and energy you put into the relationship.
- Learn to Be Your Own Best Friend: Learning to be our own cheerleader and support system will set us up to feel better when you get hit with the daily ups and downs. Visualize a big bright white light surrounding and supporting you.
These steps are really big tools that will have significant change in your life and approach to food. If you would like more ideas on how to stop binge eating feel free to touch base and ask for help. We are a community that works together and helps others break free of emotional overeating, binging, yo-yo dieting and just constantly making poor food choices. We are a safe, discreet environment, where you will get positive results. The Hungry Heart is an 8 session systematic process that helps clients overcome their issues with food. If you are ready to end your battle with food and feel good about yourself, then click the link below and let’s get started.
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by Lauren Grant | Mar 21, 2015 | Binge Eating, Compulsive Overeating
Are you tired of working hard to lose weight only to gain it back again?
Do you feel like you’ve reach a point in your life where you are giving up and giving in to every imaginable temptation when it comes to food?
Are you limiting yourself from participating in certain activities because you feel your body will make you feel uncomfortable?
Most of us have found ourselves feeling a strong loathing about our weight and our inability to lose those pounds. The frustration builds and our self-esteem plummets to a dismal abyss. We have all tried diets, exercise clubs, support groups, drugs and leaning about control. All this, and still we feel the face of failure. Perhaps it is time to become aligned with who you truly are, who you would like to be and learn what self-acceptance is all about. At the Hungry Heart you will discover a method that, step by step, teaches you to lose weight naturally and permanently.
Finally there is a program that assists you in breaking out of the diet/binge cycle and helps you lose those painful pounds. With the Hungry Heart you’ll learn to feel better about yourself, lose the insatiable appetite for food and come to peace with your body.
A Caring Approach to Out of Control Eating
The Hungry Heart is a place for healing your relationship with food so you can experience the exhilaration and passion of living every day FREE of compulsive eating.
Lauren Grant is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Nutritional Counselor. She will show you how to move past your preoccupation with eating and weight loss and move towards a more rewarding life.
As a former overeater, she battled for years with chronic weight fluctuations by starving and binging and exercising to excess. She knows first-hand how an obsession with food drains your energy and destroys the quality of your life.
She has maintained a success rate of many years and is glad that painful time is behind her. “I had tried it all. I contacted sponsors and friends for advice and guidance. This was understandable a very painful time in my life. Today I am proud to share that I’ve been free of compulsive overeating for over twenty years. I’m happy, healthy and not preoccupied with what I eat. Taking care of myself by eating healthy and exercising regularly is a natural way of life for me. Feeling my true feelings, dealing with the pains and pleasures of real life has allowed me to live free of compulsive overeating,” she says.
She created the Hungry Heart to help others move past that awful feeling of failure. Laruen earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is a graduate of both the Hypnosis Motivational Institute in Los Angeles and the American Academy of Nutrition. Her credentials are impressive.
Through hypnosis, clients are brought to a relaxed state of consciousness where they choose to see only what is relevant to their task, blocking out everything else. Hypnosis involves guided visualization to create suggestibility in your mind. This allows you to rid yourself of inhibitions, behaviors, or negative habits. It’s the quickest and easiest way to facilitate change. You will get positive results.
The Hungry Hearts well-balanced approach to LIFE-LONG recovery is successful because she integrates your subconscious thoughts and feeling with your conscious awareness. Add the proper nutrition and you get to enjoy optimum good health and quality of life.
by Lauren Grant | Mar 19, 2015 | Binge Eating, Dieting, Emotional Overeating
Many of us, it seems have gone to war with our own bodies and minds by constantly putting ourselves through a never ending cycle of fad diets; dropping weight, then under stress or facing any of life’s many challenges, we “fall off the wagon” and binge, gaining back the weight and more. We may or may not be overweight or have an actual “eating disorder” but we just don’t seem to make healthy choices at times that make the difference between successful change and dismal failure and guilt.
When our expectations don’t meet our reality in life, our subconscious minds send us directly to the food. The food provides a temporary distraction from the discomforts of our lives. Food becomes a substitute for self-nurturing or self-caring behavior, a reward for a job well done, or a way to relieve stress, boredom and anxiety. Our subconscious mind attempts to meet our emotional needs.
We try to get a hold of the situation, but the harder we try, the more desperate we feel. Food becomes an overwhelming thought. One week we’re eating everything in sight, and the next week, we’re starving ourselves to lose the extra pounds we just gained. We then harshly judge the lack of control we have over food and obsess about what we will or will not eat next. We are right back to the problem with our physical body and unmet emotional needs. This yo-yo dieting destroys our self-esteem, quality of life, and takes a toll on our body.
End The Battle With Out Of Control Eating!
The first step to break out of this vicious cycle is to learn how to become our own best friend. As long as we need food as a tool to deal with emotional issues in our life, it doesn’t matter what plan or program we are on, we will eventually return to the food because we need it. Dieting has disconnected us from our natural ability to know what our body needs, fostering our unhealthy relationship with food.
Let go of the self-sabotage and negative internal dialogue. Tackle the root issues that established your relationship with food long ago by retraining your mind to accept who you are without judgment or criticism. You can move past your preoccupation with eating and weight loss and move towards a more rewarding satisfying life. You can enjoy the eating the foods you love without feeling guilty or gaining eight.
Give yourself the same love and attention that you give those you care about. Take time for yourself, listen to what your needs are and meet them. Put yourself first on your priority list. As hard as they may sound at first, if we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t have the resources necessary to take care of all the other aspects of our lives and the overeating will continue.
There is no benefit to eating and then feeling guilty because if will only lead to further overeating. So if you choose to eat something enjoy it and let it go! Most importantly, treat yourself with love and respect to reach a place of inner peace so you can lose those painful pounds naturally and permanently. If you have any questions on how to take the steps to break out of this cycle, you can call the Hungry Heart toll free 877-HUNGRY-7 (877-486-4797) or go to our website thehungryheart.org for free tool and tips on how to get started.
by Lauren Grant | Mar 18, 2015 | Binge Eating, Compulsive Overeating, Emotional Overeating
I first realized I had a problem with food at about the age of eleven. My parents divorced when I was three. The yo yoing between families put me under a tremendous amount of stress. I found myself eating more when I would go to my dad’s house. The environment there was unwelcoming to say the least. I would hide food, sneak food and overeat when I was there. I found that when I came home to my mom’s house my problem would continue. I taught myself to self-love with the food. It was my entertainment, my friend and my parent. As an adolescent I struggled with my weight. I was about ten to twenty pounds more than my friends. Those extra pounds made me want to diet. My mom was a self-confessed calorie counter and helped me to do the math on all my food. I worked out and counted calories. I would lose some weight, but of course I would gain it back. I tried the cabbage soup diet (yuck). The hotdog and grapefruit diet, lean cuisine, slim fast, etc. All those worked short term with a result of a few extra pounds on top of the original weight I wanted to lose.
Emotional Overeating: My Road to Weight Loss Sanity
Finally I felt it was time for some professional help. I tried Jenny Craig and I lost twenty pounds. The minute I went off the terrible frozen food, I gained the weight back. Then I tried Weight Watchers (it had worked for my friends), same end result. I felt like a complete failure. In turn my eating became more out of control. I decided I wanted to get off this roller-coaster of self-destruction. One day I was reading Orange Coast Magazine and saw an ad for feeding the Hungry Heart. I thought what the heck. I’ll give it a shot. I have to say I was skeptical even though my mother had hypnotized me for a sleeping problem as a child. It sounded scary to have someone I didn’t know or trust yet do it. When I finished the first session, I felt energized and hopeful that I could overcome my fears of trying another way of dealing with my problems. After a few sessions I became aware of how and when I eat. I started asking myself “are you really hungry?” or “are you upset, frustrated or sad?’ This was huge for me! I knew I ate for those reasons but I chose to ignore it. I chose to ignore my own feelings like I didn’t have time for them. My sessions with Lauren were very emotional. I wasn’t use to talking about my fear of losing weight. Through time, I realized that by confronting my fears, taking time to understand and feel my feelings I can make a lifelong change in the way I approach food. I’m not at my idea body weight yet, but I feel my mind is healthier than ever. Lauren taught me to make healthy food choices and freed me from the destructive cycle of binge eating. She taught me to have confidence in myself no matter what the scale says. The weight loss was just an extra perk, gaining my sanity was the real gift.
by Lauren Grant | Feb 4, 2015 | Binge Eating
Raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing that all you need to do to overcome binge eating is to really put your mind to it. Me, too! That’s why I put together this list of 10 practical tips to help you finally kick the habit– no fluff, I promise.
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by Lauren Grant | Feb 13, 2014 | Binge Eating
I often ask myself, “where did I begin my relationship with food and why did it lead to binge eating?” While driving one day, I was listening to my 9 year old son Paul and his 10 year old friend Nate talk about a group of High School Cross Country runners that were huddled at the street corner waiting for the light to change to continue their run. This familiar group of boys ages 13-19 has always caused a lot of ruckus in our car. They always run without their shirts and thus have been lovingly termed “the shirtless guys.” Before this year, I found it funny how my modest son deemed the “shirtless guys” as a point of interest every single time. At one point, he stated “I would never run on the street without my shirt on, let alone in those short shorts.” (more…)
