A Mini-Guide to Practicing Self-Love in Binge Eating Treatment and Recovery
My word of the year is love. Yes, yes I got this idea from Lizzo’s album Special and from Sonya Renee Taylor’s book, The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love. After listening to the album hundreds of times and reading the book over and over again as I treated eating disorders in San Diego and coached recovering from binge eating in cities like London, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York, I figured it out. I linked the power of self-love to the binge eating recovery process. In order to help yourself recover from binge eating, You have to learn to love yourself. It may sound hard. It may even feel impossible. I’m here to give you hope that self-love is not only possible, but it’s also inevitable when you get the right binge-eating help.
Self-Love is About Action, and So Is Healing From Binge Eating
People often discuss self-compassion, meditation, etc., when promoting self-love. What they don’t address is how taking conscious actions cultivate self-love. What I mean by actions is practicing specific behaviors that can change the way we feel about ourselves. I know that when you’re struggling with binge eating, there can be a lot of shame. Self-love may feel out of reach. It’s in those very moments when doing opposite action or acting in a way opposite to how you’re feeling, can make a huge difference. For example, I’m not a fan of going to grocery stores. The lights are too bright, and they smell kind of funky to me.
Story Time About Me and Healing from Binge Eating
Several years ago, my husband was laid up with an injury, and so I had to go to Trader Joe’s, which is a grocery store in the U.S. I grumpily went, grumbling to myself as I walked down each aisle and feeling sorry for myself. A couple of days later, I came across a study suggesting that smiling, even when you don’t feel like it, can boost your mood. So I tried it. As I was walking up to Trader Joe’s entrance, I slapped a smile on my face, all the while thinking that it was a silly idea.
Guess what happened? I started feeling better. Looking for the groceries I needed in a (very) well-lit store felt less of a burden. I began noticing things about the groceries that brought me joy, such as a brightly packaged product or an item from a different part of the world. Then, as I looked at other shoppers, they began smiling back at me. My smile grew wider and felt genuine! I was able to transform an icky experience into something that actually improved how I felt about both the situation and myself.
Do I enjoy going to grocery stores now? No. But, if I have to go, I now have a tool to help me have a better situation. And guess what? As I’m writing this blog post, I’m smiling right now, even though it’s the end of a long day. I’m feeling pretty awesome about myself and life right now, actually. Try it. It really works.
Self-Love Can Mirror Our Love for Others
It’s such a weird thing that we struggle to love ourselves when we are able to love others so easily. In my last Ultimate Binge Busters Masterclass, we talked about how there are personality traits that are common to people who grapple with binge eating. These traits include being a “giver.” What that means is that the majority of my clients who binge eat give so much to others that they arrive at the end of the day completely spent, desperately wanting to feel some sort of relief or pleasure, so they turn to food.
Research States…
Researchers have found that many binge eaters feel more pleasure from eating when compared to people who do not binge eat. So a binge actually works . . . in the short term. You may feel relief or even a sense of numbness or detachment when you binge eat. It is a break from giving so much. The rub is that not too long after the binge, shame sets in. Physical discomfort does, too. What was enjoyable turns intolerable.
The cycle makes sense…
It makes sense that you want to make yourself feel better after a long day of giving. You may even feel trapped in the binge eating cycle in part because you give so much that you don’t know what else to do to take care of yourself but eat. I’m here to tell you that there are other options. The very fact that you give so many shows that you have a huge heart and a great capacity for love.
All we’ve got to do is to get you to turn that big heart toward yourself. How? By taking action. Learning how to love yourself means taking the step toward recovery, which most of you likely have done because you’re reading this blog post! You’re actually giving to yourself by taking the time to read these words. You rock! So let’s start small. Do one thing for yourself earlier in the day.
Whether it’s scheduling 15 minutes to read blogs on self-love and recovery (wink-wink), or it’s carving out time to reach out to your friend. Do one thing every day, then build up to two things, then three, etc. It doesn’t have to be big, like doing a spa day (although those are GLORIOUS), it can mean that you draw with crayons for 20 minutes or add a couple of steps to your nighttime skincare routine. Whatever you do, do it CONSISTENTLY, and over time, these loving behaviors will turn into greater self-love.
Self-Love Exists Inside You (& has all along!)
Remember at the end of The Wizard of Oz movie when Dorothy talks to The Wizard (a.k.a. the man behind the curtain), and he tells her that her greatest wish to return to Kansas was accessible to her all along because she was wearing the ruby slippers?
That’s how self-love is! I know, I know, it sounds cheesy. But according to Sonya Renee Taylor, radical self-love is an inherent part of us. It’s a wonderous part of our resilient human spirits. I love this notion because it shows how we don’t have to reach outside of ourselves to add some newfangled technique to generate self-love.
All we need to do is tap into the deepest parts of ourselves. Now, that may feel scary. One reason a lot of us fell into the binge eating cycle is that we just didn’t want to dive into the depths of our emotions. They felt too big. Too scary. Too overwhelming. I’m actually not talking about unearthing emotional trauma like a ditch digger. It’s about reaching down into your soul, finding the diamond shining inside you, and bringing it to the surface.
It’s like the lyrics to Rihanna’s song “Diamonds”:
Find light in the beautiful sea
I choose to be happy
You and I, you and I
We're like diamonds in the sky
You're a shooting star, I see
A vision of ecstasy
When you hold me, I'm alive
We're like diamonds in the sky
Radical self-love is inside both you and me. We can find light and love in this beautiful sea of life. We’re like diamonds, shining bright in the sky.
Sending lots of love your way. ♥️
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*The INEVITABLE BINGE EATING RECOVERY 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. The INEVITABLE BINGE EATING RECOVERY COURSE is not a clinical eating disorder therapy or eating disorder treatment programs 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 programs 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.