Building Resilience: Strategies for Overcoming Setbacks in Binge Eating Recovery
Setbacks suck. Whether you’re in San Diego, California, NYC, or London, UK, it is so difficult to deal with setbacks in binge eating recovery. Picture this: You’re cruising along, and you haven’t had a binge eating episode in weeks. All of a sudden . . . WHAM . . . you have a stressful few days, and you forget to eat breakfast and even lunch, and you end up binge eating that night. Shame crashes like a wave over you. You feel physically uncomfortable. A thought keeps crossing your mind: “I’m a failure.” Guess what? The binge eating recovery journey isn’t over. You can build resilience and spring back from setbacks in binge eating recovery. Here are three tips on how to do it.
Tip #1: Embrace Self-Compassion After Binge Eating
Self-compassion is VITAL when it comes to resilience in binge eating recovery. It’s so important to be kind and show warmth and acceptance toward yourself in order to counter the shame. It’s also important to remember how far you’ve come and that one episode of binge eating doesn’t derail your recovery train.
Also, setbacks are NORMAL (Hear that in the back? NOR-MAL). It’s a regular part of binge eating recovery. What happens during the binge eating recovery trajectory is that the binge eating episodes don’t automatically stop. They instead slow down over time, in frequency and amount. So the binge you just had was likely part of that slowing down process. See? Lots of self-compassion to be had here.
Tip #2: Know When to Start Eating Again After a Binge
When do you need to eat again after a binge? It’s sooner than you think. In fact, the time when you eat again after a binge eating episode is the next scheduled eating time. So if you had a binge eating episode at night, get up and eat breakfast, regardless of whether you still feel full or bloated from the night before (actually, it takes only 2 hours for your stomach to empty, so even when you feel full after a night of sleep, you need to eat). Did you binge in the afternoon? Make sure you still eat dinner. Get the picture?
The message is this: You need to get back on the recovery horse as soon as possible. Remember that your body will be doing weird things (gas, bloating, acid reflux) as it is moving the food through the digestive system. Hang in there and eat the next meal or snack anyway. It’ll get that horse galloping again!
Tip #3: Keep Moving Forward After a Binge Eating Setback
It’s common to want to give up after you’ve had a binge eating setback. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve felt depressed and hopeless. I’ve thought that I was a failure. It would have been easy just to throw in the towel. What did I do instead? I reached out for support. I had people holding my hands either virtually or in person to help me keep going. They reminded me how far I had come and that I could keep going. Their presence let me know that I wasn’t alone.
The key is to keep moving forward after a binge eating setback. Keep eating mechanically, or regularly throughout the day. Keep practicing self-compassion, and keep prioritizing your eating disorder recovery. That is what resilience is all about—getting back up after you’ve been knocked down. You can do this!
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Disclaimers for My Work in Body Image, Binge Eating, and My Virtual Online Binge Eating Program
*DR. MARIANNE-LAND’S BINGE EATING RECOVERY MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM is online binge-eating education and private virtual group support via a Facebook Group. The aim of this course is to help people reduce and eliminate any type of distressed eating, such as binge eating or binge/purge behaviors via education, behavioral changes, and mindset shifts. DR. MARIANNE-LAND’S BINGE EATING RECOVERY MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM is not a clinical eating disorder therapy or eating disorder treatment program and is not intended to serve as such. In them, Dr. Marianne Miller works from her role as a binge-eating coach, not as a binge-eating therapist.
**The ELITE BINGE EATING RECOVERY METHOD is virtual binge eating education and LIVE virtual coaching support. The goal of this program is to help people stop any type of distressed eating, such as binge eating or binge/purge behaviors via education, behavioral changes, and mindset shifts. The ELITE BINGE EATING RECOVERY METHOD is not a clinical eating disorder therapy or eating disorder treatment program and is not intended to serve as such. In them, Dr. Marianne Miller works from her role as a binge-eating coach, not as a binge-eating therapist.