What do Carol Kane and Count Drakula, wild winds on rough seas and a dead deer in thick trees, have to do with you and binge eating? Keep listening! 

Welcome to The Done Bingeing Podcast. This is the place to hear about how you can pair the emerging brain science about why you binge with powerful life coaching to help you stop. If you want to explore an evidence-based, non-clinical approach to end binge eating, you’re in the right place. 

It’s time to free yourself. You have more power than you know. To find out more, go to www.holdingthespace.co and click Programs.

And now, your host, Internal-Family-Systems-Level-3-Trained and Master-Coach-Certified Martha Ayim.

Hey friends! How are you? I mean, how are you, really?

Are you surrounded by lists and gifts, or maybe candles and carols?

Are you surrounded by blue and white or red and green, and even possibly black?

Around this time of year, many ramp up for end-of-year holidays.

But for binge eaters, the ramp-up may have already started.

Perhaps Halloween signalled a turn toward widely celebrated days, where there was little escape from the hollows of lollies. 

There were everywhere at the end of October, weren’t they?

They were in the ads, in the stores, in the schools and maybe in your home. 

You may have had bowls by your front door on the way out to share with kids crazy for candy.

You may have had bags come back through your front door from your kids, already dazed by jawbreakers and chocolate.

And then, there may have been much left that haunted you for weeks.

Then came Thanksgiving—or, if you’re Canadian, it came a month-and-a-half before.

Either way, turkeys or Tofurkeys got buttered, pumpkins got sweetened, and stuffing got pushed inside or spread all around.

I once heard a CBC host ask, “If Tofurkey is the vegetarian version of turkey, what’s the vegetarian version of duck?”

And now . . . there’s more to come, including Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Years. 

Not to mention, all the while, the monthly pulling of the moon.

When bingeing is held in secrecy and shame, this can be a lonely ride …

• even when the candles of the menorah light up, day by day
• even when lights on the trees twinkle, inside and out
• even when carolers serenade before your door and …
• even as the Kwanzaa flag is draped, east-facing, across a table of honor

It’s one thing to feel alone when you are alone. 

It’s another thing altogether, when you’re surrounded by flickers and family, twinkles and tales, singers and song, and colors and the glory of freedom.

How do I know?

Because, for decades, I spent this time of year feeling alone among the many, dark within the luminescence, divided amid the communion.

I’ve been there before, my friend, and I’m here for you now. 

Why don’t we hang out for 30-minute chat on me and let me show you how I can help you, through it all. Not a pressured sales call, just a friendly conversation.

To book our hangout, go to holdingthespace.as.me/free30.

Not Whole 30, free30, that’s f-r-e-e-3-0.

There’s no better time to have me by your side. 

Why?

Because I can help you navigate the holidays and the new year without feeling driven to binge for the rest of this year, then driven to repent for the start of the next.

Can you see how getting support is essential right now, why it can’t wait?

Go to holdingthespace.as.me/free30 and get on my calendar today. 

You do not want to put this off.

In our last two episodes, we’ve talked about what to do when you feel a binge coming and when a binge is happening.

In both of those episodes, 65 and 66, we risked the glimpse into imperfection.

When we did this in episode 65, When You Feel a Binge Coming, here’s what came out of NOT hating, resenting, or running from the intrusion of the drive to binge. We found enough permission and space:

1. To take the drive 90 seconds at a time 
2. To notice shifts in the intensity of your experience 
3. To be curious about your emotions and their physiological manifestations
4. To be curious about your thoughts and
5. To look for a need 

These five steps allowed you to notice several things:

• That it’s possible to be with the drive to binge, even for short amounts of time 
• That the experience of the urge isn’t uniform throughout
• That even powerful emotions can start to soften when you’re just curious about them
• That even what seem like the craziest thoughts always make sense on some level
• And that the drive to binge often steps in when one of our needs isn’t being addressed

These steps opened up this: possibility waiting inside imperfection, not possibility contingent on perfection.

Now isn’t that a mind warp? 

Let’s pause and just take that in again. 

The hunt for perfection squeezes out possibility.

The space for imperfection draws possibility in.

And how did we create that space? 

We did it by leaning into curiosity, then leaning back to take in what you noticed.

When we risked glimpsing into imperfection in episode 66, When a Binge Is Happening, we found the courage to take in what transpired with six steps:

1. Breathing and taking a moment to acknowledge what’s happening 
2. Noticing any judgements that arise when you do that
3. Letting your brain know you’re not going to fight with it
4. Acknowledging any mixed feelings
5. Allowing the shift into slowing everything down unfold from steps 1 to 4 and
6. Eating with fierce self-care 

These six steps were about staying with yourself all the way through. 

They were about how you being with your binge can transform the experience even as it proceeds into one that is less lonely, less conflicted, and less harmful.

In this episode, we’re talking about when a binge has ended. 

Now is the perfect time to talk about this because for many binge eaters, there has already been an aftermath of Halloween and Thanksgiving binges that led to days or even weeks of continued bingeing.

But that doesn’t have to keep happening.

So let’s be curious about the space after bingeing, so that if you binge in the final weeks of the year, it doesn’t feel a life-sucking experience—you know, like when Count Dracula leaves his mark.

I’m going to take you through the three steps to begin to transform the experience after a binge into something completely different.

Step 1. Explore what came before

What emotion drove the bingeing? For example, maybe it was rage.

Why were you feeling that emotion? In other words, what was the story that hung on to keep that feeling hanging around? For example, if you were feeling rage, maybe a thought like, “That bitch is trying to ruin my life” fuelled that feeling.

Whatever you were feeling, fuelled by whatever you were thinking, what was your thought about? In other words, what was factually happening in your world that moment that thought went through your head? For example, if you were feeling rage, activated by a thought like, “That bitch is trying to ruin my life,” maybe that thought occurred to you the moment your mother-in-law walked in the door bringing to dinner what you’d said was your holiday favorite—a Christmas log.

Listen, I know what you’re thinking right now. 

First, you’re thinking “How did you know, Martha?”

Second, your thinking, “Just because I said it was my favorite, didn’t mean I wanted her to bring 

it! She must know I’m trying to lose weight.”

Step 2. Chew on the thoughts

Ok I’m sorry, that was totally corny.

But the thought I gave as an example and then the thought that may have tumbled out after, 

“She must know I’m trying to lose weight,” we actually have two thoughts now.

I know we’re having a bit of fun here, and I’m asking you to play along with me, but so often it happens just like that.

And the thoughts we talking about together right now aren’t at all uncommon or far off from many thoughts this time of year.

So . . . what now? 

Let’s take a closer look at the first thought—and you can follow this process with any thought that fuels an emotion that drives you to binge.

Upon closer inspection, you might say, “You knoooooow, when I think something like, ‘That bitch is trying to ruin my life,’ I’m kindof sounding a bit bitchy myself.” 

Sometimes this is very enlightening and enough to want to reconsider what we want to make it mean when mother-in-law brings a log to dinner.

And that, might be enough.

But when it isn’t, there’s more we can do.

We can be genuinely curious about why your brain would offer you a thought like, “That bitch is trying to ruin my life.” 

Why did I so obviously stress “genuinely”?

Because our brains and the thoughts they offer us can sense judgment from any angle, just like a bear can smell a dead deer in a dense forest 20 miles away.

While the bear might run toward the scent of the deer, your brain will turn away from criticism, veiled as it might be as interest.

If we can stay truly open, we might notice something different—an intelligence with a kindness that few ever notice or even look for.

The thought, “That bitch is trying to ruin my life” is a red flag waving, like the ones that signal a wildfire dangerously blazing or like the ones that warn of rough seas willing enough to pull swimmers under and away.

This red flag is for a food that’s a major trigger, the Christmas log that’s always lined up, one end to another, straight line back to weeks of binging. 

What happens inside you as ponder that your brain never really meant to be bitchy—what it really meant to do was warn you and protect you from the last thing you want to happen?

Is there any tenderness in your heart as you hear this? Any amazement of the kind intent? Any appreciation for a message sent, despite any judgment returned?

Step 3. Makes friends with the enemy

Perhaps you remember the 1979 psychological thriller When a Stranger Calls. Carol Kane plays a babysitter, Jill Johnson, who receives increasingly threatening calls from a man asking, “Have you checked the kids?” Jill calls the police who trace the call and say, “The calls are coming from inside the house.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but the hairs on the back of my head went up, just like they did all those decades ago in the theatre.

What’s it like to consider part of your own brain and some of your own thoughts as enemies?

And what possibility might open, what internal calm might present, what unheard wisdom might be offered if you pondered the prospect that nothing inside you is your enemy?

That nothing inside you means to harm you?

That all that’s within holds the intent to help you in the best ways it can? 

And that listening deeply to these intentions could line up, end to end, not to weeks of infighting and bingeing but to a life of food freedom?

That’s it for Episode 67. Thank you for listening! 

Remember, I’m here for you.

You know in your bones that something profoundly important awaits on the other side of bingeing.

And I know in my bones that the passion of my life is to help you get there. Let’s talk.

Go to www.holdingthespace.as.me/free30 and get on my calendar today.

Thanks for listening to The Done Bingeing Podcast.

Martha has the highest-level training in both the evidence-based Internal Family Systems approach and in life coaching, and she’s available to help you stop bingeing. You can learn more about her programs by going to www.holdingthespace.co and clicking Programs.

Stay tuned for the next episode on freeing yourself from binge eating and creating the life you want.