On our journey out of overeating, it’s common to fall off the wagon: to be eating mindfully, only to revert back to painful habits like sugar bingeing or overeating. This often happens due to stress or due to new (or more challenging) circumstances. For example, a difficult week at work sends you back into food, or you are fine not eating sugar in the warmer months, but struggle in the dark and cold of winter.
During these times, it’s normal to feel like a failure, to feel like you will never change, to feel full of self loathing, to feel like what the hell – I’ll never be able to change so I might as well eat that cheesecake that is calling my name! And yet you can get back on track.
How do you escape from these feelings? How do you recommit?
A few suggestions:
- Setbacks aren’t personal. Going back to overeating doesn’t need to decimate you. It doesn’t mean that you are a terrible person. It just means that your capacity to cope at that moment wasn’t powerful enough to overcome your pattern of overeating. Don’t judge yourself for this. Instead, embrace it as an opportunity to learn. Can you look at the situation neutrally? Can you observe it from a distance, with openness, curiosity and compassion instead of judgment, blame, shame or guilt? Judging or condemning your behavior will not help you change.
- Acknowledge your humanity. One of the challenges of being human is that we know better intellectually before we’re able to do better behaviorally. This is because change takes time, and initially, it feels worse before it gets better. When I stopped the pattern of overeating after dinner, I felt unmoored, deprived, and panicky. It was only after months of working on breaking this pattern that I was able to feel at peace with not overeating at night. The physical world we live is dense. So even though we may have an idea about eating differently, it takes effort to put this idea into action. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for a binge because change takes time: it’s a normal pathway that’s true for every person.
- Give yourself emotional support. We revert to old patterns because our emotional brain is wired differently than our intellectual brain. We may know intellectually that junk food makes us crazy and that it’s in our best interest to avoid eating it. And yet if we don’t feel this on an emotional level, we won’t embrace the hard work of change. That’s why grounding is so important (see #5.) It’s very difficult to argue with a body that is hungry or exhausted. That’s also why it’s important to really feel your feelings – to feel your sadness or anger or frustration, for example, about not eating foods that you’d like to.
- Find support. Please don’t suffer alone. When you are feeling caught in a negative spiral of “I’ll never change, I’m a terrible person, I am so mad at myself that I fell off the wagon, I can’t do this,” it’s important to get out of your head and share these feelings with another person. They can give you perspective and help you unlock from this negative thinking. This is why we have support forums here. Use them. They are there to help you. If you aren’t a Support Forum member, learn more here so that you can get the support you need to change painful eating habits.
- Go back to base camp. Sometimes, when we slip, it’s because we stop doing the things that keep us feeling good. Go back to grounding. Return to what has worked for you before: eating regular meals, planning out your food, keeping your house stocked with whole foods, and getting restful sleep, for example. Don’t make getting back on track any harder than it needs to be.
- This too shall pass. Step back from your negative loops about your mistake and recognize that nothing stays the same. The challenges in your life will pass. The need to overeat will pass. The sugar craving will pass. The strong feelings of, “I’ll never change,” or “I can’t do this,” will also pass. Give yourself breathing room so that you can get out of panic mode. Close your eyes and breathe. Try telling yourself over and over again, “This too shall pass” or another affirmative mantra. Going outside is a great way to create space and separate from negative self-talk. Call a friend. Find perspective by lightening the intensity of negative feelings that arise when we’ve “blown it.”
- Remove any obstacles. Make yourself safe. As Laurel Mellin writes, this is “minimizing harm.” One of the quirky things about being human is that we think that supporting ourselves is a sign of weakness. So we don’t remove obstacles and then we feel terrible when they trip us up. Challenge this thinking. If you know that having sweets in your house will cause you to indulge, remove them without judgment. If you need to leave the kitchen after dinner, do it without feeling like a weakling. If you need to ask for help at a family gathering, ask. It’s the difference between walking down the street, trying to avoid the potholes in the road, versus walking down a different street so that you don’t even encounter the potholes. For example, I still don’t keep raisins in my house. They are my all time favorite binge food and I don’t want to be constantly trying to avoid the pothole. So by keeping them out of my house, I am choosing a different street. For years, I didn’t bake for the same reason – way too tempting. What about you? What does avoiding the potholes look like for you?
- Recommit. Repetition is a part of life. Embrace it. Embrace the opportunity to live out your intention to treat your body kindly on a daily basis. How wonderful that you get a million opportunities to make this intention real – that every day you get to choose: How will I treat my body today? How will I treat my spirit today? If you aren’t treating your body as you’d like to, great: you can start over. You can recommit to a new intention. Good for you.
You can change. You can create new habits and new responses to stress. You don’t have to turn a slip up into a plunge down into the abyss. Spend some time contemplating the good in your slip. What has it taught you? What did you learn? And how would you act differently next time? That’s all you can do. You can’t change the past. You can only focus on where you are right now. In this present moment.
For more help, consider these options:
- Read the Overcoming Sugar Addiction book.
- Join the Support Forum membership, finding strength in our mutual encouragement.
- Take up the challenge with the Sugar Addiction support program and find a new way to live.
- Explore the Heal Overeating support program if your challenged with food beyond sugar.
