My commitment to stop binge eating

All my life, I’ve turned to food because it makes me feel good.  It puts me in a food trance where I forget about all my problems and my worries.  But once the food trance is over, I feel guilty and disappointed.  I don’t want to live this way anymore.    

I want to learn how to cope with my emotions and feelings in a healthy way.  I want to learn how to enjoy all foods in moderation and not feel guilty every time I eat something that I think is bad for me.   I want to find inner peace and I believe DBT skills can help me with that. 

My previous attempts to stop binge eating

Learning from the past 

I’ve been trying to put an end to my binge eating for years.  

Participation in a Binge Eating Disorder Program

I reached out to my family doctor about 12 years ago and explained what was happening. She referred me to the Hospital which had a program for binge eating disorder (BED). I met with the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with BED and met with him for 15 minutes every week to talk about what was going on in my life. He gave me tips and tricks such as “don’t eat when you’re watching TV”, and “eat healthy foods”, etc... He prescribed medication to help treat my binging which helped me for a few months. I stopped taking the medication when I realized the medication impacted my productivity at work by slowing down my brain. After a year in program, I was still binging on and off, and overeating most of the time so I decided to quit the program.

“Shrink Yourself - Break free from emotional eating forever” by Dr. Roger Gould 

“Shrink Yourself” is a self-help book that explains the connection between eating and emotions. It teaches you how to break the cycle of emotional eating.  This book was an eye-opener for me. It helped me realize how powerless I felt most of the time which often resulted in binge eating.  This program worked for a while, but eventually, I started overeating and binging again.  I tried to figure out the emotions that were causing me to eat but I couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t feeling anything. I just couldn’t stop eating.  So I put the book away but never forgot about it.  Once in a while, I still take it out and read from it.  

“Fat Chance” by Dr. Robert Lustig

If you’d like to understand what happens to your brain when you eat sugar, do yourself a favour, and read this book. Or watch Dr. Lustig’s YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”.  One of the things I learned from Dr. Lustig is that the more sugar I eat, the more tolerant I become which means the next time I want my sugar fix, I need more of it to feel the same way. When I learned about sugar, I decided to join a sugar-free challenge and abstained from sugar. During that time, I felt great and I stopped binging. After 40 days, I reintroduced sugar in my diet and relapsed quickly.  

Abstinence from Sugar and Flour

It took me a long time to be able to abstain from sugar again but once I was able to abstain for 3 days, I decided to stop eating flour as well. I abstained successfully for 6 months but again I was tempted to try sugar again and eventually gave in which resulted in another relapse. Since then, I’ve abstained  several times but I haven’t lasted more then a few days or a few weeks.  I love how abstinence frees my brain from obsessive food thoughts, but I don’t see myself using abstinence for the rest of my life which has led me to try a different approach.  Moderation never worked for me in the past but I’m hoping this program will give me the tools I need to be successful.

DBT Skills

My daughter has symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder.  She was too young to be diagnosed with BPD when we got help.  She was only 17 when her doctor told us she had symptoms.

I've been using DBT Skills for several years now to cope with my daughter's behavior.  I've also been teaching her a few skills to help her.  DBT improved my relationship with her immensely and made a huge difference in our lives.  I started wondering if DBT could help me recover from binge eating disorder the same way it helped with my daughter.

What's an hedonic eater!

What is an hedonic eater?

An hedonic eater is someone whose brain is highly sensitive to food regardless of physical hunger.  Once I take that first bite, I can’t stop.  Especially, when it’s something highly palatable.  For the last 2 years, I’ve thought of myself as a food addict so can a food addict and someone diagnosed with binge eating disorder stop binge eating by practicing and using DBT skills when required.  That is what I intend to find out and I plan on blogging my experience as I learn and practice various DBT skills.

What is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)?

DBT is a cognitive behavioural therapy developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan to regulate emotions and tolerate distressing emotions.  

DBT Emotion Regulation Model

To be able to regulate my emotions, I need to be aware of them so it took me a while to recognize my emotions were triggering me to eat.  As mentioned earlier, I’m an hedonic eater. When I eat something highly palatable, my brain gets triggered and I feel an intense desire to eat more. The desire becomes so intolerable that I must eat to escape what I’m feeling. While I’m binging, I feel temporary relief  but it doesn’t last very long.  Feelings of guilt and hopelessness quickly follow, usually setting the stage for further binging. The above is my example of the DBT emotion regulation model. Everybody is different. We can be triggered by all kinds of things in our environment. Anything from a bad day at work, a dispute with your other half or even watching TV.

DBT Biosocial Theory of Emotion Regulation 

The "Bio" part of the model suggests that when somebody is biologically vulnerable to emotions, they are sensitive, they react fast, and it takes a while for their emotions to return to normal.  The "Social" part of the model suggest that somebody was raised and/or living in an invalidating environment.  Your environment sends the message that it's not okay to feel what you're feeling to the point that you yourself start invalidating yourself.  

I grew up repressing my emotions.  I was terrified of rejection as a child and rightfully so.  My own sibling was rejected by my mother so I felt I had to be a "good girl" to survive.  I was raised in an invalidating environment and I invalidated myself on a daily basis by repressing my emotions.  

I found this theory very interesting since people who binge eat may be not only vulnerable to emotions but also to food and its rewarding properties.  

If you're interested in finding out more about DBT Biosocial Theory, I suggest you Google it.  You'll get a more detailed description of what it is.

As I practice DBT Skills, I will practice being more aware of my emotions when I feel the urge to eat when I’m not hungry.  Perhaps, I can connect all the dots using the DBT Emotion Regulation Model as well as its connection to the DBT Biosocial Theory of Emotion Regulation.