Transcript blog
Welcome to break free from binge eating with me, Victoria.
I’m so happy that you’re here.
If we haven’t met yet, I just want you to know that I get you because I was you.
I was stuck in the diet binge cycle and hating my body for over 20 years.
I’ve overcome anorexia, bulimia, binge, eating disorder.
And I’m a domestic abuse survivor.
Now that I’m free and happy from the inside out I’ve dedicated my whole life to help other women feel the same in this podcast we’re going to cover food and body freedom Self Love and personal development.
If you’re new here.
Welcome. It’s great to have you.
And if you’re an old listener, welcome back.
I love you to bits and I’m in a bit of a different location today because my fiance is coaching upstairs. so I don’t want the sound to merge. You might see my fur baby in the background obviously if you’re listening to the podcast and not watching the video, check out my YouTube video. You can see my fur baby in the background. He’s actually stretching around right now he’s an Alaskan Malamute called Hero.
Anyway let’s get into this week’s episode, then.
So this week I’m going to be sharing with you three reasons why you’re still binge eating.
So three reasons why you’re binging,
Maybe at the moment, you’re at the start of your recovery journey or maybe you need a refresh of the basics and the foundation to break free from binge eating.
In this week’s episode, you’re going to be learning about the three types of restrictions that are keeping you stuck in the diet binge cycle, which absolutely sucks. I’ve totally been there and most binges have all three and don’t worry if you do when I share with you what they are because I did too.
Okay, so don’t worry about that you’ll learn the right question to ask yourself so that you can keep moving forward in your recovery to food and body freedom and you’ll also learn what to do instead of continuing to restrict, okay, so are you ready let’s get into it.
Then before we get into it, actually, that was a bit of a tease wasn’t it? Before we get into it, I am so happy and excited to invite you to my free brand new Facebook group that’s called Break Free from Binge Eating with Victoria Kleinsman.
If you would like to join this group, please go here!
In this free group, I’m going to be going live every single week answering some questions that you guys have for me. This is all going to be around food and body freedom I’m also going to be sharing loads of valuable content in there to help you on your recovery journey and all that this is free. So I’d love to have you there. Click here to join.
Okay, so let’s actually get into it then.
Questions to ask yourself
So the first thing to ask yourself when you’re in the diet binge cycle, is where am I restricting? That’s the question. Where am I restricting? Because every restriction has an equal and opposite binge. If you imagine a pendulum, which is like a thing that goes from side to side, usually with balls on the end. Like some kind of weighted balls. If you swing a pendulum one way it is going to swing the other way. And you know why? Because it’s the law of cause and effect it’s one of the laws of the universe.
So if you go one way with this pendulum swing with the energy you’re going to go the other way.
So what I’m sharing this with you for is because that’s what happens when we’re restricting.
So we restrict and the pendulum goes one way and then it has to go the other way because of the law of cause and effect.
Even if you can kind of keep it one way for, like, maybe months, at a time, it ultimately goes the other way and that’s where the restrict and binge cycle. The Yoyo diet comes into play. So it can be hard to see binge eating as purely a reaction to restriction because it seems like the devil. It seems like this month that we need to pin down, right? It seems like it’s completely taken over our lives.
I’ve been there and it does take over our lives. It’s exhausting, but actually binging isn’t the enemy staying with me. Don’t just turn me off like, just bear with me while I explain this.
Binging isn’t the enemy restriction is the enemy
Binging isn’t the enemy restriction is the enemy because if you didn’t restrict, then you wouldn’t binge okay? So binging is not the enemy, actually.
Biologically binge eating is keeping you alive. It’s your body’s way of actually helping you. Even though it doesn’t feel like that it biologically is helping you.
Okay, so the three types of restrictions I’m going to go through them with you right now.
Restriction #1 Physical restriction
The first type is physical restriction and there’s two points to this.
The first one in physical restriction is you’re not giving your body enough energy. So you’re not eating enough food, right? This can look like dieting calorie counting, counting points counting, sins macro cycling like not giving yourself enough fats or carbs at certain times of the day or or the week or months, intimate and fasting food like restrictive food plans skipping meals. All those things like I’m sure you’re well aware of what restriction is and what it feels like but physically not feeding yourself enough.
Food will make your body turn into a crazy cave woman and you’ll go crazy because again biologically your body sends every hormone signal possible to urge you to seek out high fat high shovel foods because it thinks that you’re going to go into a famine and again, and no it’s not helpful for our bodies to still react this way. Because, of course, we can just go to the shop and get whatever we want but biologically this is what your body sees. It sees when you’re not feeding, getting off. Oh, my God restriction. I need to eat and then it just stores all the fat automatically anyway because it’s trying to take care of you. So that’s one part of the physical restriction.
The second part of the physical restriction which I believe is the most under talked about kind of physical restriction in this world of food. Freedom is actually nourishment. So if your body is lacking nourishment, your body’s going to keep craving food to try and nourish yourself like you’re a grown ass woman right? We first of all need to eat way more food than what the diet culture has brainwashed doors into thinking we need, like, if you look at a normal eater, I mean what’s a normal eater? I class a normal eater as my sister, my fiance. They eat a lot of food. Like if my diet brain comes into play and I’m comparing which I don’t advise that any of us do, but we’re human right? If I were to allow myself to compare what I used to do all the time, I would look at my sister who’s tiny and I had two babies and just never diets and she just naturally stays the same kind of size. She eats a lot and I used to look at him and think, oh, my gosh you’re eating again.
And like my fiance he’s always eating. And I used to think how the hell is that even possible when they don’t put weight on. So we need a lot more food than the diet industry likes to tell us that we need, right?
Talking about the second part of physical restriction is actually malnourishment. So the nutrients I was talking about are if you’re not getting enough nutrients for your body to work properly and to feel good because our body’s naturally want to feel good. So your body’s going to keep signaling you to eat or to see cap things until it’s satisfied it’s got all the vitamins and minerals. It needs to actually do its job, which is keeping you alive, right?
So if you’re eating a lot of processed foods, your body is not getting a nourishment it means, and by the way, let’s not make processed food, bad or wrong.
This comes into the next part, which is number two of restriction. I’ll go into that in a moment. So let’s not make any of this bad notice that I use the word process food not junk food or bad food because none of it’s junk or bad. The fact is, for example, an Apple is not processed. Whereas a chocolate bar is processed because you can’t just wander into a field or a ward and pick a chocolate bar, right, but you can just wander into an Apple orchard or whatever wherever you find apple trees, you can just pick an Apple.
So the point I’m getting at is that the language I’m using is very important. Processed foods aren’t bad or wrong. But if your diet is mainly processed food, your body’s not getting the nourishment that it needs.
So then you’re constantly going to be feeling hungry and dissatisfied, your body is constantly seeking nutrition.
Processed foods just have a lot of empty calories in. They also have addictive qualities, especially if you’re not nourishing yourself.
So we’ll go into how to do that towards the end of this podcast. But that was the reason.
Number one physical restriction in the terms of not actually eating enough food and not nourishing yourself with the nourishment and vitamins and minerals that your body actually needs.
Okay, so let’s move on to number two.
Restriction #2 Mental restriction
The second type of restriction. This is the hardest one to break. What possible this is mental restriction. This looks like a diet or food. Rules I’m not allowed I shouldn’t have I’ve eaten bad.
So I need to be good today and it brings up all these feelings of guilt about what you’ve eaten and how much you’ve eaten like, I don’t know about you.
But when I was in the diet binge cycle, I would start all kinds of diet and health plans, and even when I was on a health plan, I would binge on things like porridge and not like and health bars that I didn’t even particularly enjoy, but because I had the restriction mind there, I was still binging on stuff that I was quote allowed to have in the particular diet. I was in a mentally mindset.
In my opinion, I teach a lot of this in my coaching. The number one thing to change your relationship with food is well, not the number one thing these three things I’m sharing with you are equally as important. But the mental side of things has the most impact on all the other things so it is the most important I would say. So mental restriction again. It looks like dieting. The way you talk to yourself I’m not allowed I’ve been bad Oh I’ve been good today because I’ve not had X Y and Z right and it brings so much shame. It brings so much guilt around this because guilt and shame, guilt is a feeling like your action you’ve done something wrong where a shame is a feeling of I’m wrong there’s something wrong with me and with this food thing, this obsession with food and the diet binge cycle guilt very quickly leads to shame.
And then what happens with shame as you hide stuff? So, hiding the way you’re eating, because you think it’s wrong or bad. Like, I legit used to wait for my fiance to go and the shower. And then as soon as I heard the shower, turn on, I would frantically get the brownies out the freezer that I tried to turn myself from eating. Hence they were in the freezer, shooting them in the microwave and then going to the toilet and eating them as quick as possible. Like, there was so much shame around that so mental restriction brings shame and guilt and fear and there’s something wrong with me and I’m embarrassed for the way I eat that’s number two. And that is huge, I could literally do a whole episode on mental restriction which I might actually do.
Okay, so moving on to number three…
Restriction #3 Emotional restriction
And this one I had I had a lot of blocks around. I didn’t want to hear this when I understood what it meant, but emotional restriction basically is harboring your anger. Sadness, pain and stress, lack of purpose, it’s basically suppressing your feelings and not letting them be heard or not allowing yourself to feel them right, and what we do instead is just run to food.
So, again, let’s not make this bad or wrong because what we tend to do if we want to eat emotionally is an attempt of Self Care.
Actually, emotional eating is an attempt to take care of ourselves. When we do that, we think it’s bad and wrong and then emotional eating then turns into binge eating. So all three of them can merge together but it’s really helpful to practice feeling out emotions because our emotions are here for a reason . So if you imagine that you’re inside a house and the house is you, and then something happens that makes you feel angry or upset, and then there’s a knock at the door which is an emotion at the door, and it’s anger. Then anger sat outside with a little sign “let me in, I’m anger” and you’re like “absolutely no way I have time to feel you, I didn’t like to feel anger, that’s bad and wrong, NO.
But then, what happens? Anger knocks ever louder and then maybe you’re gonna need some chocolates to try and make the anger go away which doesn’t make sense, but it does at the moment, right? But then guess what happens, sadness will then come along and then guilt, then always over feelings and then they’re just gonna line up outside your door knocking louder and louder until you let them in. If you let them in all at one time you’re gonna have a house full of all these difficult emotions with a message to give you and you’re gonna be like “F that! Get out of my house, I’m not letting you in again. Right?
So when you first stopped feeling your feelings, it can be really scary cause you didn’t have to do it. I would advise, if someone knocks out of your door, like a feeling or emotion, open the door, hear what it has to say because it’s giving you a message, giving you a sign, telling you something, and it will just go.
But if you let them all line up outside, if you ignore them, they’re just going to keep knocking louder and louder, and what you eat is not gonna make the noise go away. So emotional restriction is basically not allowing yourself to feel, and there’s so much cultural brainwashing and stigma around there, especially women.
Women, ladies, queens, your emotions are your power.
I’m actually going to do a whole episode on each one of these and talk and dive deeper. It’s pretty normal to have all three.
Recap
So those are the three…
Numer 1 is physical restrictions in terms of diets, food plans, micro counting, and all of those things. Malnourishing yourself, like you’re actually not nourishing yourself through food.
Number 2 is mental restriction. “I’m bad or wrong for eating this.” “Chocolate is bad.” “Alcohol is good.”
Number 3 is emotional restriction. Not allowing yourself to feel, not honoring your feelings, not exploring what the feelings are telling you and just choosing food instead.
It’s normal to have all three. I had all three for so long, and I was like “Oh great, I’ve not just got one, I’ve got all three. But it’s okay because we can absolutely get over this. You do not need more will power. We don’t need more will power, what we need to do is..
Let me give you a few tips before I end this episode and again, we’re going to dive in each one in future episodes.
But instead of focusing on the binging, “I need to stop binging. I must stop binging. Oh my god, it’s awful, I’m a binge eater.” All of these things, let’s take away our attention from that which is hard as hell, I get it.
Instead, if you take out the three things I’ve shared with you, the three restrictions.
What to do instead
Physical restriction.
Instead of dieting, following meal plans, macro planning, and all of these, practice INTUITIVE EATING and I’m not specifically an intuitive eating coach. There is a whole blog and video on my website explaining why. Briefly, what a diet tends to do is turn everything into a diet because dieting is not an action, it’s a state of mind. If the intuitive eating diet, if they’ve eaten past 4, or eating when they’re not hungry, it’s bad and it’s wrong, we’re gonna start again tomorrow.
Number 1 is to practice intuitive eating, and I’ll do an episode again on this. Explore intuitive eating. Stop physical restriction. Listen to what your body actually wants and needs.
Then with the malnourishment thing, allow yourself to have three hearty meals a day with fats, proteins, carbs, fiber . Feed and nourish yourself not just with food but with things that nourish your soul.
This comes on to the emotional part which was number three with emotional restriction.
Emotional restriction
Like what actually fills you up, what makes you happy, what excites you. Do more of those things. So feed and nourish yourself not just with food but with things that you enjoy, like walking and listening to podcasts, or meditation, dancing, playing games with your friends. Write yourself a little love menu and then pick one each day. Drawing, whatever likes you want. Fill yourself up with what you actually need and it’s not always just-food. Even though we think it’s about food, it’s not actually about the food.
Mental restriction
Self-talk. This is for mental restriction. We’ve just briefly covered the cure or the antidote to help with physical restriction is to stop dieting. Practice intuitive eating. Nourish yourself with food-three meals a day. Give yourself the opportunity to have three meals a day. Bring self-care into your life in all areas. Like relaxing for half an hour, take a nap. If you work from home now because of this pandemic, use your lunch break to have a little cat nap. It’s not bad or wrong, it’s good for you. Nourishing yourself in every way possible.
The other one is self-talk is everything. The way we talk to ourselves basically determines our whole life. I’m not kidding you. So get curious about the way you talk into yourself. Are you saying “you’re bad or wrong” “I’ve been naughty” because you’ve had a chocolate bar? Why the hell is that naughty you just had a chocolate bar, right? Enjoy it!
I’ve got a lot so share with you. But just notice the language you use and start to flip that. Nothing’s bad, nothing’s wrong, like everything is abundant. Nothing’s gonna be taken away from you. Really focus on your self talk.
And that’s a wrap my beauties! If you would like to dive deeper into this and get help and support on your journey, join my free FB group or commit to a huge change, invest once and join my lifetime group coaching!
So much love to you Queen!
