Since the phrase “emotional eating” entered the lexicon in the 1980s, diet culture has been exploiting it. Our diet-obsessed society equates hunger with feelings, and we are taught to resist, suppress, and stigmatize it accordingly. While deep emotional wounds are certainly at the heart of some eating disorders, “emotional eating” should not be automatically assumed as…
Tag: binge eating
When all you can think about is food, you’re probably hungry
Do you ever have a day when you’re just living your life, minding your own business, trying to eat intuitively, when suddenly you get hungry…like REAL hungry. Okay, fine. So you eat the lunch you packed, but you’re still hungry. Fine. So you eat the snack you packed, and you’re still hungry. What is going on?…
I don’t slip up
I eat beyond fullness sometimes, sure. But “slipping up”? Nah. That’s the guilt-trip language of diet culture, trying to pull me back into its orbit. Slipping up goes hand in hand with getting back on track, and I already know how this story goes for me — restrict, binge, restrict, binge, forever and forever amen. A slip-up…
What is diet culture?
When you’re surrounded by diet culture, it can be hard to see what’s right in front of you. In light of NEDA’s Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I want to talk a bit about the words and actions that perpetuate diet culture every day. It’s not enough to discuss eating disorder symptoms and prevalence and call it…
Binge eating is a symptom
Binge eating is not a choice, or a reflection of willpower. But it’s not the real problem, either; it’s merely a symptom. In order to stop binge eating, you must dig deeper and address the underlying root of the issue: hunger. I know it’s hard to believe that hunger could have anything to do with…
The difference between binge eating and “normal” eating is permission
Seriously. That’s it. So if you’re looking for strategies to stop binge eating, the solution is so free and easy that it probably seems too good to be true. But it isn’t. Hear me out. The only thing that separates a binge from a non-binge is permission: Permission to eat what you want, when you…
six months to sanity 