How can you put cheesecake and sucker-punch in the same sentence? Keep listening!

Welcome to the Done Bingeing podcast, where you’ll hear about powerful life coaching strategies that empower you to end binge eating.

Binge eating is no joke. So explore all your options. If you’re functioning well in your life and you want to explore a non-clinical approach to stop bingeing, coaching might be perfect for you. Life coaching isn’t therapy, but it may help you on your journey whether you also choose to do therapy or not. Trust yourself, take good care of yourself, get the support you need, and see what works for you. If you want to hear how life coaching can help free you from binge eating, you’re in the right place! You have more power than you know. Why not take it back? And now, your host, Life and Weight-Loss Coach Martha Ayim.

Welcome to Episode 1 of the Done Bingeing Podcast. Thank you for being here with me. This first episode is going to lay the foundation for the podcast series.  We’re going to go into detail:

• about where I’m guessing you are if you’re listening to this podcast
• about what’s known about binge eating medically
• about treatments available for binge eating
• and about how I came to be a life coach driven to helping people end their pattern of binge eating.

The reason I want you to cover these bases is so that you can know where coaching can play a valuable role in ending binge eating. Doing this groundwork will be so worth it! In future episodes, we’re going to work on resolving binge eating from the inside.

But first, I have some questions for you:

Have you ever dreamed of ending your binges, only to find yourself bingeing again on food you don’t even like?

Have you ever felt like you so desperately wanted to stand up to your urges to binge?

Have you ever wanted to drop your excess weight but just couldn’t stop bingeing?

Have you ever tired of approaches to ending binge eating that lacked a body-positive perspective?

Have you ever longed for an approach that did more than just help you stop bingeing, but also helped you reach your ideal weight without triggering more binges?

Have you ever dreamed of going out for a meal with family or friends and feeling totally calm about it?

Of walking by a buffet table without getting sucker-punched by the cheesecake?

Of actually waiting until you were hungry to eat?

Of being able to stop eating when you weren’t hungry anymore?

Of following through on eating healthy food without being hijacked by junk-food binges?

Of the vibrancy that would come from regularly fueling your body with nourishing food?

Of feeling confident in your body?

Of having one wardrobe that actually fits you all of the time? And not bins of clothes that go three sizes up and three sizes down, depending on how much you’re bingeing?

Of putting your time, money and energy into something besides shopping for food to binge on, finding a secret place to eat it, bingeing on the food, feeling crappy after the binge, and paying for more diet programs to make up for the bingeing?

Of living a full, unapologetic life without the depletion that comes from cycles of bingeing?

Does this sound like you? Can you relate to any of this?

This podcast is for you if you’ve ever had these hopes and dreams. This podcast is for you:

• if you want to stop binge eating
• if you want to feel like an adult again and in charge of what and how much you eat
• if you want to lose the physical and emotional weight that comes with binge eating.

If this sounds exciting for you, you’re in the right place. And I’m so glad we’ve found each other, because I want to teach you everything I’ve learned about how to stop binge eating.

I remember having all of these hopes and dreams, but feeling that they were unachievable. I remember feeling absolutely desperate to stop bingeing. I felt sick with all the food I was eating. Sometimes I ate so much that my throat was raw. Sometimes I ate so much that my mouth bled. I got ten cavities in a year-and-a-half and lived for decades with a mouth full of mercury. I felt confused about why I couldn’t stop bingeing even when I wanted to so badly. I felt exhausted from lugging around almost 100 extra pounds of weight.

My bingeing began in my early teens when I started to overeat like many people around me. Food was fun and yummy and I was lucky that there was plenty of it. Like many people in my life, I was able to “get away with it” because I was so active. My body didn’t hold on too much extra weight. Then one day, I coped with schoolyard stress by eating a liter of ice cream. And my 30-year battle with bingeing began.

At times, I was bingeing almost daily. I felt heavy with the physical weight and heavy with the emotional weight. My life felt so stifled by the bingeing. I used every dollar I had and borrowed every penny I could to get better. I tried every conceivable treatment I could find. I begged my dentist to wire my mouth shut. I tried lap band surgery. Financially, it was killing me to try to solve this problem. One program after another drained my bank account.

I even went back to university to try to figure it out—only to learn that for a substantial number of people, binge eating does not resolve even with first-line treatment. I’d had cognitive behavioral therapy, and my therapist helped me a lot. I’m a true believer in cognitive therapy if you need it. And there are other well-researched treatments that help a lot of people. But I was still one of those people who needed more.

I felt scared that I’d binge forever. I felt broken. But in my heart, I also knew that there had to be an answer. And, I was determined not to stop until I found it. And then one day, I did find it.

I found my answer through two life-altering events. The first event was a workshop I attended on addiction recovery where I learned about the brain science behind binge eating. The second event was my work with a life coach. Finally, my binges ended.

Now, interestingly, I was very open to learning from a physician about neuroscience. But I was very skeptical that a life coach would have anything of value to offer me. In fact, I never would have given life coaching the time of day. I was an academic who wanted peer-reviewed research out the wazoo. Luckily for me and for my clients, I gave life coaching a shot. I only did this because I knew the beautiful, brilliant woman who had just become a coach. She was offering free sessions as she got her business off the ground. I was fascinated. I thought, “What’s Suzy doing becoming a life coach? She so smart! Oh well. At least it’s free . . . and it can’t hurt.”

I was never the same.

Life coaching, learning about the physiology behind binge eating, and my 30-year journey to heal from bingeing changed my life forever. Everything I tried along my journey taught me something important about what did and didn’t work for me. I had a healthy respect for the breadth of approaches available to treat binge eating. I also developed an awe of how powerful life coaching is.

Life coaching literally flipped a switch for me.

• I learned that I did have power over binge eating. And not the willpower that we’re all so sick of from years of chronic dieting. I learned how to find a truly accessible power and how to use it.
• I learned how to eat in a way that put my body at ease and made my brain much less likely to send out alarm signals in the form of urges to binge.
• I learned how to manage my mind so that when my urges to binge came (and they still did for a while even after I’d stopped bingeing), I was ready.
• Learning how to manage my mind also left me prepared for when life happened—because, let’s face it, it still did even after I stopped bingeing.

My binges ended for good. Now I help people like you end yours.

I’m not a therapist or a health care professional. I can’t offer therapy or medical advice. And binge eating can become a serious disorder. So if you need therapy or medical support, please take good care of yourself and get the help you need. Figure out and trust what works best for you.

Let’s talk more about binge eating as a disorder. In May 2013, binge eating disorder was included for the first time as an official diagnosis in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013)—that’s the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. According to the DSM-5, when a person meets the criteria for binge eating disorder, they experience recurring episodes of binging. A binge episode is characterized by two things:

• First, a person eats more food than would be considered normal in a similar situation and in the same amount of time. (Some binges can last for hours.)
• Second, a person feels a loss of control over the quantity or kind of food being eaten.

And bingeing episodes are associated with at least three of these five behavioral indicators:

1. eating past the point of feeling comfortably full
2. eating large amounts when you’re not hungry
3. eating unusually fast
4. eating by yourself to avoid embarrassment
5. feeling shame, depression, or guilt following a binge eating episode.

A person experiences clear distress about binge eating, and the binges occur at least once weekly for three months. A person with binge eating disorder doesn’t try to make up for the bingeing with intentional vomiting, excessive use of laxatives, or excessive exercise. These are called compensatory behaviors and they’re what define bulimia (Herpetz et al., 2011; Tanofsky-Kraff et al., 2013). Binge eating disorder happens outside of episodes of bulimia or anorexia.

Binge eating disorder is the most prevalent of the eating disorders. Researchers estimate that 3.5% of women and 2.0% of men will develop binge eating disorder in their lifetime (Hudson et al., 2007).

Coaching isn’t the only approach to ending binge eating. Other options include cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, mindfulness eating awareness therapy, and self-help. There is strong empirical support for cognitive therapy as the first-line treatment for binge eating disorder (White & Grilo, 2013). As I said, I tried cognitive therapy and it helped me a lot. But it didn’t completely resolve my binges. I binged less often and on less food for sure. But I still binged and still felt extreme distress and lack of control about my eating.

And I’m not alone. Researchers (e.g., Wilson & Grilo, 2007) have puzzled over why some interventions, like cognitive therapy, that are known to be effective for binge eating disorder still fail to help many people fully or sometimes even partially recover.

So, binge eating is no joke. Explore all your options. If you’re generally functioning well in your life and you want to try a non-clinical approach, the coaching strategies in this podcast might be perfect for you. Or, maybe it would be helpful to try building these skills to complement your work in another form of treatment. For example, coaching strategies can be helpful:

• if you’re on a waiting list to get into a treatment program and could use some support while you wait
• if you want additional support as you go through another program
• if you’ve completed another program and want follow up
• if you don’t have access to other programs in your area

Or, if you just plain want to give powerful life coaching strategies a try. It’s up to you. Take good care of yourself, trust yourself, reach out for the help you need, and see what works best for you.

Remember, this podcast doesn’t provide therapy or medical advice. But it does offer powerful life coaching techniques to help resolve binge eating.

When life coaching taught me how to end more than 30 years of bingeing, I knew had to share everything I’d learned. I took the training my coach had taken. I’m now a certified life and weight-loss coach, going on advanced-level master coach. I bring to this podcast solid coaching strategies and decades of work and research on how to heal from binge eating. I’ll teach you everything I know.

So what’s next? I want you to really get in touch with your motivation for wanting to end binge eating, and that’s what Episode 2 is all about. We’re going deep. So buckle up.

Remember, life coaching was a game-changer for me.

Maybe it can be a game-changer for you.

That’s it for Episode 1. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe so you never miss an episode! And let me know what you thought of this podcast by leaving me a review on iTunes at holdingthespace.co/itunes. I’m offering 10% off my programs for the first 100 people who leave me a review. Just email the title of your review to martha@holdingthespace.co and I’ll send you the discount code. Please click the show notes for easy-peasy instructions to leaving an iTunes review.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Done Bingeing Podcast. Remember, although life coaching can complement therapy, it’s not a substitute for therapy if that’s what you require. Make sure you get the support you need. And let Martha know if she can help you along the way. Come back next week for more on saying goodbye to the binge.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author.

Herpetz, S., Hagenah, U., Vocks, S., von Wietersheim, J., Cuntz, U., Zeeck, A., et al. (2011). The diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders. Deutsches Arzteblatt International, 108(40), 678–685. doi:10.3238.arztebl.2011.0678

Hudson, J. I., Hiripi, E., Pope Jr., H. G., & Kessler, R. C. (2007). The prevalence and correlates of eating disorders in the national comorbidity survey replication. Biological Psychiatry, 61(3), 348–358. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.03.040

Tanofsky-Kraff, M., Bulik, C. M., Marcus, M. D., Striegel, R. H., Wilfley, D. E., Wonderlich, S. A., et al. (2013). Binge eating disorder: The next generation of research. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 46, 193–207. doi:10.1002/eat.22089

White, M. A., & Grilo, C. M. (2013). Bupropion for overweight women with binge-eating disorder: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 74(4), 400–406. doi:10.4088/JCP.12m08071

Wilson, G. T., Grilo, C. M., & Vitousek, K. M. (2007). Psychological treatment of eating disorders. American Psychologist, 62(3), 199–216. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.62.3.199