Binge eating is something many of us face - yes MANY of us. Whether we binge out of intense physical or emotional cravings depends on the individual, but I wouldn't be surprised if we had all binged once in our life.

For some though binge eating is something that takes over their lives. Binge eating can be a regular, daily occurrence. The number one issue causing binge eating is usually emotional repression. In a society that encourages us to repress, avoid and take our mind off our feelings, it can be hard to allow ourselves to actually feel due to guilt and shame. When you keep avoiding or distracting yourself from feelings it can be even harder to move from this to a life of feeling. Binge eating is just one way people use to repress feelings.

Overcoming binge eating is a task that can seem quite daunting but taking a few steps in the right direction can really help prevent binges for good. I think it is important that before we address the emotional side of bingeing we must make sure that our body is getting all it needs nutritionally and physically. There are many aspects to overcoming binge eating but I feel the first crucial step is to stop dieting.

Although having a healthy diet is a good thing, the word diet has been used to describe deprivation eating. When you think of the word diet I am sure the first thing that comes into your mind is that you have to "give up" foods you like. This mentality around the term dieting is exactly why most diets fail and most people are unsuccessful at losing weight and preventing themselves from binging. One needs to reframe their mind around the word diet in order to be successful in eating better and overcoming cravings.

Thinking of a diet as deprivation will also push you into a panic mode, which can lead you into a binge. I know when I tried diets (or specifically the mainstream diets) I would do ok the first day but by evening I would almost go into a blind panic, as though all food was being taken away from me. This would lead me to a massive binge. This mentality is partly due to the way the word diet is used but also because of my emotional eating. I was going to "deprive" myself of my comfort foods.

As a result I found the best way to eat healthier and to keep cravings at bay was to slowly introduce healthier foods and to nourish my body with the right foods to diminish.

Most diets out there do not nourish your body sufficiently, are not healthy or geared towards the optimum diet for us as a species and leave you feeling deprived. They also do not address emotional and physical cravings either. So you are bound to fail by using these programs or getting wrapped in their use of the word diet.

Your Thinking

The biggest reason for failing at diets is the way we think. We think of food as good and bad and if we eat the bad stuff we feel guilty and ashamed. On top of this we see bad food as something we aren't allowed or that we are missing out on.

What we should be doing instead is viewing those foods we consider bad as something we have CHOSEN not to eat. You have chosen not to eat that food as opposed to not being allowed to have it. You can freely choose again to have it but you are choosing not to for your health and weight loss goals.

We need to also take the food off the pedestal we have firmly placed it on because those junk foods do not love you like you love them do they? They leave you feeling ashamed, guilty, depressed, sluggish and awful.

If you stop seeing foods as good or as bad, start taking power of your choices and saying to others and to yourself that you are CHOOSING to eat this way, you are CHOOSING to not eat certain foods, then you will find you will have much more success in eating healthy and not binging.

They are not forbidden foods, they are just foods you are choosing to no longer eat.