How to Recover from a Painful Binge-Eating Episode
One of the most powerful tools I ever developed for recovering from a “bad binge,”
was simply learning how to separate whatever physical pain I experienced post-binge,
from the emotional pain I experienced post-binge.
When I took the time to notice, I realized that the physical pain of bingeing
(even the kind that leaves you in bed in the fetal position for hours)
is really not much more uncomfortable than having to pee really badly, or having a bad rash, or hangover, or some other arbitrary physical irritation.
The true bulk of my suffering at the “hands of a binge,”
was actually the result of emotional pain—
that is, my shame at having failed,
my fear of gaining weight,
and my belief that there was something deeply wrong with me for not being able to “control myself around food.”
It definitely didn’t occur to me that most people can’t “control” —aka restrict— their food for very long, and that most people binge when they try.
While there’s no safe way to eliminate the physical discomfort of a binge after-the-fact (other than wait it out, listen to your body, and take care of yourself like you would a hangover),
our emotional discomfort,
which is the much more painful part of bingeing in my experience,
can be alleviated in an instant,
through challenging our weight-normative beliefs,
challenging the morality we attach to food and eating,
and developing a compassionate understanding of what diet-culture has put us through.
(And don’t worry—just like a hangover—the physical discomfort goes away pretty quickly if we resist the urge to dive back into restriction as a solution).