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Last updated on December 5th, 2024 at 08:40 pm
Intuitive eating is the process of learning to listen to your body’s physical and emotional hunger needs. Learning to eat intuitively can help you to create a peaceful relationship with food and properly nourish your body. But how do you eat intuitively without binging?
Intuitive eating might lead to binging because:
- You’re eating foods you’ve previously restricted
- Your body is not properly nourished
- You need more practice navigating hunger/fullness cues
- You’re not honoring your emotional hunger
This article will explore why binging happens during intuitive eating and what to do if you experience binge eating during your intuitive eating journey.
Intuitive Eating Basics
Intuitive eating is about learning to recognize and honor your bodies internal cues. There are ten steps to intuitive eating.
The goals of intuitive eating is to
- Learn to navigate your hunger
- Eliminate food rules
- Get rid of food guilt
- Properly nourish your body
Diet culture has taught you to ignore the mental and emotional signals that your body gives us to help us know when and what to eat. Intuitive eating principles are designed to help you get back to a point where you can trust your body.
Why You Binge With Intuitive Eating
When you first start intuitive eating, binge eating is often part of the process. If you are just starting the intuitive eating journey you might notice that you are experiencing extreme hunger, or that you’re not even hungry but they want to eat!
Binge eating happens with intuitive eating because:
- Your body thinks it won’t get these foods again and sends out signals to convince you to eat more
- Your favorite foods are now available in the house and easy to go to
- You’re probably still mentally restricting your food in the beginning of intuitive eating even if you’re eating more food which will cause you to eat more
- You have to learn how your body feels after eating certain foods you’ve previously restricted.
- You haven’t learned to navigate your hunger for all types of foods yet
- Your digestive system is changing
The more you allow yourself unconditional access to all food types, work on healing your body image, and give yourself grace after a binge the sooner they will go away.
Overeating Vs. Binging
There is a difference between overeating and binging. It’s very important that you stop to think about and clearly call out whether you are hungry, overeating, or truly binging if you feel like you have eaten a lot of food.
Labeling the experience you are having when you eat a lot of food during intuitive eating will help you know what tools and strategies you will need to use to work through the challenge.
Binging during intuitive eating feels like:
- Intense cravings
- Urgency to eat the food
- Eating large quantities of food in on sitting
- Feeling out of control or like you can’t stop eating
- Extreme guilt and/or shame after the meal
You can overeat without it being a binge. Sometimes you might overeat if the food tastes good, if you don’t get that food often, or if you just aren’t paying attention to your body. While this can be uncomfortable, it is not a binge.
Both overeating and binge eating are common as you start your intuitive eating journey. This will go away as you truly learn to let go of mental and physical food restrictions and listen to what your body tells you it needs.
It’s important to remember that if you have binge eating disorder, intuitive eating is not appropriate until you have made a full recovery.
How To Eat Intuitively Without Binging
Most people will experience a binge at some point in their intuitive eating journey.
The quickest way to get rid of binges with intuitive eating is to:
- Acknowledge that binging is normal as you learn about your body
- Determine whether you are truly binging or eating for other reasons
- Use coping strategies when a binge comes on like urge surfing
- Eat regularly throughout the day
- Ditch the scale
- Identify where mental food restriction is happening
- Make sure you are eating enough at each meal
- Don’t restrict your food after a binge
Most binge eating is the result of some sort of physical or mental food restriction. In order to stop binging during the intuitive eating journey, you must eliminate all types of food restrictions.
For people just beginning their intuitive eating journey, binge eating happens because your body is still learning that it can trust you to keep providing the food that it enjoys.
A HAES dietitian can be a great ally for helping you recognize and eliminate any food restriction.
Intuitive Eating With Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating disorder happens when you are experiencing binge eating episodes many times per week or per day. People with binge eating disorder are experiencing significant disruption in their day-to-day activities and relationships because of their eating disorder.
Binge eating episodes are not the same as having binge eating disorder.
If you have a diagnosis of binge eating disorder or you suspect you might have binge eating disorder, intuitive eating is not right for you until you have recovered from your eating disorder.
Intuitive eating is not appropriate for someone with binge eating disorder because:
- You probably can’t feel hunger and fullness cues appropriately
- You may need a structured meal plan
- You will need to build coping skills outside of binge eating
While intuitive eating can be an important part of eating disorder recovery, you must be able to physically feel when you are hungry and full to intuitively eat.
Having structured meals and snacks carefully tailored by an eating disorder dietitian to meet your need will be important in your initial stages of binge eating disorder recovery.
Tools To Help You Stop Binging During Intuitive Eating
Some tools that can help you move past binging during intuitive eating include:
- Learning to respect your body
- Practice intuitive movement you enjoy
- Practice food neutrality
- Ditch any food rules
- Eat all types of foods
- Don’t restrict yourself after a binge
- Use body positive mantras
In order to eat intuitively without binging, you have to get rid of all dieting behaviors. You have to honor all of your body’s physical and emotional desires for food.
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