Acknowledging the Binge

Okay, so we've all done it, right? Even those of us who seem to have a good handle on our eating habits most of the time, can have a moment where the wheels fall off and we eat something we didn't really didn't want to. Oh, we thought we did - in the moment. But after the fact, not so much. Let's see, what are the eating mistakes we can make. We can either eat too much, plain and simple - that old portion control thing. Or we can eat too much of the wrong thing. Or we can eat when we are really not hungry - ya know, that emotional eating thing.

And if you are like me, after you have these moments, you just want to forget about it, move past it and start over - back on program or back on target with the next meal, right? Right! Now, that is all well and good. We definitely should not be berating ourselves for making these choices. It is good to move past it. However, I'm here to propose that we do something additional when this happens. Acknowledge the binge. Now, what exactly do I mean by this? I'm referring to not simply ignoring it. After you are in a better place than in the middle of it, I ask you to consider it... analyze it and try to figure out what made you grab that food to begin with. What were you feeling? What were you trying to not feel? Had you starved yourself and you were just desperate? Did you feel like you are being deprived? What was at the heart of what you were feeling before you binged? The way I figure it, I am better off it I can learn something from this situation and get some good from it. Plus, if I'm able to pick it apart, perhaps I will deal with that situation differently if, or really when, it happens again.

Now this advice is just for us Weight Watcher peeps: I even advocate calculating the points of the binge and recording it. You might be surprised at the number of points you really consumed. It could be way more than you thought or way less. But either way, it is the truth - the truth that your body already knows whether you write it down or not.

So yeah, acknowledge your binge - own it so it does not own you!