How to help clients cope when they crave a binge eating episode

One of the hardest elements of emotional or binge eating for clients is the feeling of being out of control during the episode. Clients will often talk about it being an out of body experience for them. In many groups that I have run, when I do my Habit Loop exercise participants will say they don't even know what their triggers are, and don't 'remember' the craving - they go straight to eating without even understanding the how or why.

This is very distressing as you can appreciate. Clients beat themselves up for having no willpower, or being unable to stop binge eating. What they do not understand is that the drive to eat in response to difficult feelings or emotions is almost entirely unconscious. But why is it so inaccessible to our conscious control?

Because it nearly always started many years ago, in response to a trauma or other adverse or difficult experience. Their brain, sensing a new coping or safety strategy, filed away the trigger/response schema of "I feel stressed/anxious/scared, I fill up with cortisol, I eat high sugar/fat/salt food, I release dopamine and I feel calmer".

Over time, like learning how to drive, the brain simply filed away that schema as an autopilot. The brain loves efficiency, at least 40% of what we all do everyday is autopilot, and that is generally a good thing. If we did not have this capacity, we would effectively have global amnesia and have to re-learn most of our everyday tasks from scratch every day!

The negative aspect of autopilots unfortunately is that the brain does not ever return to review autopilots and ask itself "Is this still helpful for me?". It also rarely thinks of the longer term consequences - all it wants in the moment is to solve the problem of elevated cortisol. It's never thinking to 2 hours later when our client is beating themselves up, feeling shame, guilt, disgust and self-hatred because they cannot break the cycle of emotional eating.

So how can we help clients to bring their unconscious autopilot of eating in response to high cortisol, under their conscious control?

Most clients will know when they are on the point of deciding to binge eat - they know their next step is to go to the kitchen, ring the take out or get into the car. So at that point of decision, we encourage them to S.T.O.P.

S - Stop and breathe, give yourself a chance to interrupt the autopilot.

T - Think about how you want to feel when you go to bed tonight (delayed gratification, vs the instant gratification of the eating)

O - consider your Options. What else can you do besides eat right now?

P - Prepare for this by having a list of alternatives. Pick one.

I've recorded a video that does a deeper dive into using this technique which is on You Tube that you can watch now, and share with clients.

How to cope when you crave video

Please let me know what you think of this technique, and if you will use it with clients! Feel free to post on it and tag me, send me a message or ask me a question. I am always happy to hear from other professionals and help where I can!

Until next week!

Warmest wishes,

Emma