Most bingers though, offer convincing proof of their struggle by their increased girth. They are constantly eating more food than their bodies require, reaching for food for emotional reasons rather than natural hunger, and if they do start out hungry, they continue to eat way past the point of physiological satiation. Therefore, no-one can diagnose compulsive eating based on size. Only you know if you are a binger.
Given the all-too-human capacity for denial, a binger is simply unaware of the inordinate amount of time she spends thinking about, choosing, buying, cooking and eating food. (I use the term ‘she’ because most bingers are women but that’s not to ignore those many men who have the problem.)
For our typical binger, her mealtimes, socializing, weekends and celebrations are the focus of her food obsession: what she should or shouldn’t be eating, will she manage to stick to her diet, is she having a ‘good’ day? So much mental energy is expended on a substance she is trying desperately not to eat.
It is senseless to label a binge habit simply as obesity – just as you can’t say that alcoholism is simply drunkenness or drug addiction merely the problem of being stoned. The fat is simply the symptom of the underlying eating disorder, albeit a significant one.
Most bingeing is done in the hours between the evening meal and bedtime—unless you are a mum with young children, when it starts at afternoon teatime. Food eaten during the early part of the day doesn’t seem to stimulate the need to continue eating as much as the evening meal does – probably because most people’s days are fairly structured and food eaten towards the end of the day signals a release of tension.
There is a difference between the eating habits of an ‘overeater’ and a ‘binger’. Returning from work, an overeater will nibble on peanuts or olives with her alcoholic drink while preparing the evening meal. This will probably consist of something like thick soup with a roll and butter, followed by roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, rice and a green vegetable. She will finish with apple pie and custard or ice cream. Tea and cake will follow a couple of hours later. She can’t understand why eating this way—plus a substantial breakfast and lunch—keeps her fat.
Our binger, on the other hand, who is constantly on a diet, will eat sparingly at her evening meal, preparing grilled fish with steamed broccoli and carrots and avoiding the mashed potato she serves to her partner and children. She too may serve apple pie for dessert, but only to the other members of the family. Unfortunately, one of her children may leave the crust of his pie and she absent-mindedly pops this into her mouth. This activates the need for more of the same and she will quickly finish the rest of the pie, then nibble on biscuits while clearing up. Later, preparing the children’s lunch boxes for the following day, she will open a five-pack of chocolate biscuits, put one into each box and eat the remaining three. Now into full binge-mode, she will continue eating for the whole evening, often indulging in weird food combinations like spooning lemon curd and muesli into a tin of condensed milk and eating it out of the tin with a teaspoon (as you do). She will do this stealthily, keeping an eye on the door in case anyone should come in and see her. She knows why she is fat and tells herself she will ‘start her diet again tomorrow’.
Changing Bad Eating Patterns
When you are greatly overweight, your ‘fat’ becomes the problem and your lack of control both mystifying and depressing. Some doctors classify this as an obsessive-compulsive phenomenon but the issue is the overeating, not the result. You need to identify the problem behaviourally rather than in terms of your appearance.
The best way to deal with this is to give up the notion of dieting (even ‘sensible dieting’ is a contradiction in terms) and substitute a healthy-eating plan encompassing food from every group and cutting out only the food that is not good for your health. Eating is something to be enjoyed rather than feared. A balanced diet is not a biscuit in each hand.
In a following chapter I will show you how to change the words that have made you fat in the past and substitute them for words that will keep you slim. As you are the one who talks to yourself, you are the only one who hears what you say, so you need to keep it positive all the time. This may sound easy, but if you have been a compulsive eater for many years, you are so used to berating yourself about your uncontrolled eating, your perceived weakness and unacceptable shape that these thoughts are a part of who you are. Subconsciously, you may want to hang on to them. Life is much simpler when all roads lead to one destination. You perceive that if all of your problems can be reduced to food and fat, the only solution is to go on a diet.
When you mentally shout at yourself for overeating, you get upset then need to comfort yourself with more food, thereby creating a circuit. If you stop being nasty to yourself and change your words to praise and encouragement, you break the circuit and stop translating all problems into fat. Faced with loads of problems, you’ll need to come up with solutions instead, and sometimes that isn’t easy. Let’s face it: it is often fear of your real problems that sends you scurrying for the food in the first place.
Body-image Versus Self-image
It is time to stop confusing your body-image with your self-image. Body-image is not what you see in the mirror: it is the reaction you have within you in response to what you see. I understand that you want to be different from the way you are now—that you don’t like the shape of your body – but this does not make you a bad person. You say you hate yourself but you are not your body. Consider your character: I am sure you are kind, generous, funny, a good loyal friend. What has that got to do with the fact that for some reason you have eaten too much food and allowed your body to become fat? Some of my very large clients say they feel ashamed to be seen and think that other people are talking about their size. So what? That is their problem. Why should you care? They don’t live with you.
I am not suggesting you resign yourself to being overweight but that you acknowledge what is – without judging that reality. Acceptance does not imply self-delusion. When you accept yourself you simply say, ‘This is how I am right now and it’s OK’. How you look, the number on the scales and your eating habits are neither good nor bad. They just are. As you learn a healthier way of eating, your body will reflect this change and you will get slimmer. For now, however, developing an acceptance of how you look is crucial to resolving your problem with food.
The easiest thing to be in the world is you. © The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be.
The logic of why you binge may still elude you but that logic is there nonetheless. Each person in the course of their development finds ways of coping with life’s experiences. Therefore your eating has simply become your chosen way of dealing with your problems. When you reach for food to comfort yourself, you are reaching back in time. It is something you have always done. So? Is that a reason to hate yourself? Of course not. What you are going to do now is to replace this means of coping with something better, and make the decision that from now on you are going to be nice to yourself.
What We are Going to Do
The aim of this book is to help you identify the foods, thoughts and behaviours that are keeping you fat so that you can make the necessary changes. I want to make you feel better about yourself – not simply to lose weight no matter what it takes. This means that the plan you devise should not be geared towards undereating—or trying to achieve a negative energy balance. Rather, if you can eliminate overeating – meaning eating in excess of your body’s natural requirements—and learn to stay in control, your problem will be solved.
Your objective, instead of focusing on the numbers on a scale, is to develop healthy and sustainable eating and exercise habits, and build a more positive body image. Here are some of the issues we will be addressing in the following chapters: