Hello new and old friends alike! This is my first ever blog post, so in “celebration” I’m going to touch on a topic that opened my eyes when I was struggling to go even a few days without binging.

Is Negativity keeping you stuck in the binge cycle?

For most of my life, I followed a pattern of binging 3 times per week, with a day or two of restriction nestled in between. When I managed to restrict for longer than a day, I felt empowered by the thought that maybe this time was different. Maybe I had finally reached rock bottom and could start to rebuild my life.

Constantly obsessing over NOT binging proved exhausting, and eventually I would binge just so I could have a reprieve from trying NOT to binge. Not surprisingly, my old habits caught up with me, pinning me against the walls of my pantry and demanding I cave.

The quiet moments that follow these manic binges remain painfully vivid in my memory. Stuffed, sitting on a crumb-covered quilt, I promised myself that I would never let this happen again. This current discomfort, somehow greater and more pressing than all the pain that ever preceded it, was the last I would subject myself to. Tomorrow was a new day, a new me. Future me was going to finally commit to not binging.

While I know that my bloated self probably meant well, I understand now that focusing on the “NOT” caused far more harm than good. With the “NOT” constantly at the forefront of my mind, I set myself up to fail time and time again, simply because I was fighting against the way the human brain naturally works.

Why Telling Yourself to Stop Binging Doesn’t Work

At the time, I didn’t know that the more you try to suppress a thought, the more likely it is to occur.

This phenomenon is known as Ironic Process Theory, more commonly known as the pink elephant/white bear problem. The theory illustrates how people tend to think MORE about something that they’re told NOT to think about. In so many words, if you’re told NOT to think about a pink elephant, you’re probably going to think about a pink elephant (a lot).

This is because the brain is not capable of processing negatives. In order to process a command, it must consider the subject before knowing what to do or not do with it.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s take the command “DON’T EAT ICE CREAM!”

Here’s how the brain would process the command “DON’T EAT ICE CREAM”:

When you tell your brain “DON’T EAT ICE CREAM,” it has to first take into consideration the main subject (“eat ice cream”) before it determines how to proceed. In other words, “eat ice cream” enters your consciousness before the “DON’T.”

After your brain processes the “DON’T,” disappointment takes root. Moments earlier, it believed you were going to indulge in its favorite creamy treat (mine is huge fan of Speculoos gelato). Now, forced to relinquish this tasty promise, remorse takes the place of fiery enthusiasm.

And then you get involved.

You tell your brain it’s stupid for wanting that ice cream in the first place. It shouldn’t be disappointed because it’s fat and needs to lose weight anyway. Look at it! Its thighs are rubbing together for Christ sakes!

Each time you have a negative thought about your body, it reinforces the command “DON’T EAT ICE CREAM” since this is the action you perceive will improve your body. If you’re in the throes of an eating disorder, I think it’s fair to say that this thought may fire anywhere from 1 to 10 times every five minutes.

After enduring this conversation all day, your brain inevitably becomes exhausted. Not only must it try to resist all that delicious ice cream you forbade it from eating, but it also must stomach your verbal abuses. Battling resistance makes it feel so incredibly deprived. Desperation renders it vulnerable. “Oh, what the heck,” it thinks, “I’m worthless and fat and I’ll never change, so why not eat ice cream?” Or maybe it thinks “I’m tired of suffering and I deserve this” or “I have to do this because I can’t calm down and there is no other way to soothe myself.”

And next thing we know we’re sitting on our crumb-covered quilt wondering where the hell our good intentions went. After a day of binging, self-hatred reignites itself. You feel overwhelmed by thoughts of how your thighs rub together, how your stomach protrudes over the rim of your pants. You can feel your flesh eating the air, daring with every second to grow larger and larger. Fueled by loathing, you vow to never binge again. When morning comes, you awake with a single aim: DON’T BINGE.

So the process continues.

How to Work With Your Brain to Stop Binge Eating

Focusing on the negative, emphasizing the “DON’T” will only keep you caught in this cycle, like trying to spin your way out of spider’s web by making yourself look more appealing to your hungry host. While I know the desperate attempt to NOT BINGE comes from good intensions, a manic dash to prove our worth and cleanse us of our “sins”, it serves no purpose in our lives. It cannot alter our behavior or actions.

As much as you may not like it, you must work with your brain.

You can do this by concentrating on positive, measurable actions.

Try to replace “DO NOT BINGE” with a specific action on which to focus. Give your attention to statements that make you feel nourished and excited rather than deprived and fearful. Here are a few examples:

Today I WILLnourish my body by eating 5 vegetables. Tonight I WILL celebrate my body by taking a relaxing, hot shower. Today I WILL relieve stress by going for a 20-minute walk.

I don’t recommend adding anything related to binging or other addictive behaviors you’re trying to avoid to these statements.

For example, you wouldn’t want to say, “I will take a bath instead of binging” because you are still bringing “binging” (and hence the “NOT”) to the forefront of your mind. Furthermore, they should be something you can quantify. If you simply say, “I will eat vegetables,” your mind has no clear indication of where to go. How many vegetables? When? Keep these statements as short and explicit as possible.

If you feel even the slightest bit of dread bubble up inside of you while reciting a statement, you may be doing something wrong. Play with the wording until it feels relieving and manageable.

Aside from a lot of smart stuff about relativity, Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Of course, this notion is harder in practice than in theory, but that doesn’t make it any less true. If focusing on NOT binging makes you more likely to binge, attempting a new way of thinking may be a way to escape the punishing cycle.

Let me know if you need help coming up with replacement thoughts. I will be happy to help!