How to Stop Binging Part I: Exploring The Diet-Binge-Guilt Cycle

how to stop binging
It isn’t the binge, it’s the diet that’s keeping you stuck in binging behaviour.

Have you ever wondered how to stop binging especially when you feel like your urge to binge is so powerful it truly has a life of its own and that no matter how much you know you want to stop binging it just seems to keep happening?

It’s very frustrating to see that night after night, no matter what promises you make to yourself or how you plan your day, you always seem to end up drawn, like the moth to the flame, to the nearest drive thru, local convenience store or perhaps to your own private treat stash.

The lack of follow through on your good intentions to eat well and ‘have a good day’ food wise, has many negative consequences both in the moment and beyond.

For starters, eating more than you are hungry for often adds extra weight to your body. Also the fact that people often overeat foods that are high in carbohydrate and / or refined sugar means that it’s fat we are putting on our body and not muscle mass. Oh, if only we felt drawn to binge on lean protein and veggies rather than on candy and bread. We’d still be overeating but at least the consequence would be less harsh.

These consequences that humans experience from binging are both long and short term, and mental and emotional. Some examples are:

a) Being overweight, or at least not your best self physically; perhaps a little more paunchy or jiggley than you might like which can make you feel less confident with others and less comfortable in your own skin and spend your precious life struggling with diets and weight loss plans to compensate.

b) The extreme fluctuations in your mood from the sugar you are ingesting. (Remember that processed carbohydrates like bread, chips, crackers etc. quickly become sugar in your body too, so even if you don’t have a sweet tooth, those savories are impacting you almost exactly as they would if they were candy).

These foods initially trigger a chemical spike in your body that raises your dopamine levels and makes you feel happy and soothed and comforted. (After all, dopamine is known as the feel-good hormone.) Then just as quickly they trigger a compensatory downward spike in your mood as the sugar rush ends, dopamine levels fall, and now you’re depressed, judging yourself, and tired and wanting more.

c) Then there’s the experience of witnessing yourself break yet another promise to yourself. Where is that damn willpower when you need it anyway? How can we be so competent and capable in other areas of our lives and yet seem to completely lack any stamina and follow through whatsoever when it comes to ourselves and what and how much we are eating?

I could go on, but I’d say that that list alone is enough evidence to support the argument that your life would be much better off if you could just really truly trust yourself to not binge anymore. Wouldn’t you? Agreed!

When I was a little girl I inadvertently discovered that bread and cookies and cakes and chips and sweet things made me feel better, calmer. It seemed at least for that moment that things were going to be okay. This little pick-me-up protocol had a nasty side-effect though and that was to add a little extra weight to my developing frame, giving me rather a stocky appearance and, as my family used to not hesitate to point out privately or otherwise, a tummy that looked like that of a starving child from Ethiopia (their judgement not mine).

My mother’s preoccupation with appearance and weight and her own fears that I might be picked on, just as she was as a child, led her to put me on diet after diet after diet, each of which naturally failed because of what I dubbed my ‘pantry-raids.’

These private little parties consisted on me tucking myself securely in the corner of my bedroom closet after school or late at night and proceeding to gorge myself on whatever I had found in the pantry earlier that day or just a moment before. (As a side note, cherry pie filling is surprisingly tasty out of the can. As was icing, and notably, even bakers chocolate could do in a pinch.)

I’d then hide the evidence of my pantry-raid deep in the garbage can, and if it was after school I’d then force myself to eat dinner so as not to raise suspicion. If it was evening I’d just feel guilty and worry that I’d get caught and get in trouble. Needless to say it wasn’t an entirely pleasurable experience but it gave me something I really needed at that time: comfort, soothing, and numbing from the moment.

Funnily enough no one in my family ever said anything about the disappearance of multiple cans, boxes and bags of sugar filled foods. I imagine my mother knew exactly what was happening and in her own confused way, this was her way of allowing me some comfort in an otherwise stressful and sometimes downright scary environment.

Anyway, my point is, I had many years of binging experience under my ever-straining belt by the time I finally stopped trying to ‘cure’ myself through dieting and weight loss programs and instead started to take a look at what was really going on underneath. In fact I think you could confidently state that I had a PhD in binging and dieting and self-loathing, having mastered the art of the diet-binge-guilt cycle by the age of 10.

The Diet-Binge-Guilt cycle refers to a pattern of restricting something (or of someone else restricting something) and then having it or engaging in it anyway, despite the imposed restriction and then feeling guilty. This is followed by another well-intended commitment to restriction which sooner or later triggers another binge, triggering more guilt and so on.

The Diet-Binge-Guilt cycle is human nature. It isn’t about willpower, mine or yours, nor is it about being good or bad or competent or capable. It just is.

You see, when human beings experience a sense of restriction, whether self-imposed or externally imposed, they naturally feel a sense of frustration and an increasing preoccupation with the restricted thing/person/situation begins to develop (Just watch what happens when you tell a toddler that they can’t have a toy, or stay at the park, or stay up any later tonight. The truth is, adults have the same immediate response to being denied something they want. They just handle that response and their desired a little bit differently – most of the time.).

This preoccupation with the restricted object grows and grows until whatever barriers we (or others) erected to keep ourselves within our established guidelines become irrelevant. In other words, in that moment, we just don’t flippin’ care that we aren’t supposed to have X we just want what we want. In fact, in that moment, we are far beyond wanting it’s more like an overriding urgent need and we need it NOW!

And so, regardless of our good intentions; what we said we were and weren’t going to do, and our sincere desire, in the moment of making that agreement, to reap the rewards of following through, we cave, we bail, we give in and experience that all too familiar emotional concoction of guilt, shame, relief and soothing, just like I did in my closet as a little girl.

So much for the diet of the day, and our plan to keep it together.

Sound familiar?

Good, then you’ve come to the right place if you’d like to stop riding the binging train and instead experience complete and lasting relief from binging and dieting and weight loss programs.

Next week I’m going to share a little exercise with you that I teach all of my clients early in our work together. It is the foundation for complete freedom from food stress and I want you to be able to experiment with it in the privacy of your own mind and in your own home and see how it effects your need to binge and how stuck in the diet-binge-guilt cycle you feel.

Homework:

For this week, I invite you to reflect on the points in this article about the consequences of binging and notice when you are being impacted by them and how they affect your day, your evening, your ability to relate well to others, and your overall energy and zest for life. If you were to take just a moment to write down a note or two about what you observe this week you’ll get even more out of our exercise next week.

The more conscious you are of this, the easier it will be for you to add the little experiment into your day and you’ll experience greater benefit from doing so.

And if you’d like to start getting a grip on food today join her on her on line program and immediately have access to videos, audio lessons, her groundbreaking book, a members discussion forum, teleclasses from anywhere in the world, and more.

And if you appreciate these free educational articles, chances are someone else that you know will too. Please pass our link along so they can connect, learn, and grow in a supportive environment too.

Love Michelle  

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Overcoming Your Love-Hate Relationship With Food

Overcoming Your Love-Hate Relationship With Food

Overcoming Your Love-Hate Relationship With Food


If you’d like to understand, once and for all, why you feel so frustrated about your weight and why your relationship with food is so stressful, this article will explain it all and give you a simple exercise to experiment with so you can start overcoming your love-hate relationship with food. Regardless of whether you are an emotional eater, a compulsive eater or struggle with an eating disorder such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder this article will help you understand a key piece of the puzzle of what you need to do to change how much room food takes up in your life and in your brain, for good! 

Last week I told you about the relationship between certain foods and your brain chemistry. I gave you the scientific data behind why you are naturally drawn to eat certain foods (like chips, bread, cheese, ice cream and chocolate) even though you know they aren’t the best for you nutritionally and won’t help you reach your weight loss goals. (If you prefer to watch a video rather than read, my video on sidestepping the food-emotion power struggle explains it all and then some.)

This week I want to introduce you to the real issue; the thing that is at the root of it all.

What is it that makes you want those foods, even when you’re not hungry, regardless of your diet plan or your intention to eat well and your true heart’s desire to lose weight and feel great in your body?  Well, through my personal recovery from binge eating disorder and my 20 years as a specialist in the field of eating disorders, addictions, depression, anxiety and trauma, I came to see clearly that the cause of your overeating or diet dilemma, had very little at all to do with food and instead was triggered by some faulty wiring in the supercomputer that is your brain.

I am happy to say that, through the use of neural mapping and the marvels of brain imaging, science has since proven this to be true.  So, we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if you often eat more than you’re hungry for or binge or diet more than once or twice in your lifetime or struggle with anorexia, being eating disorder, or bulimia or other forms of eating disorders the fact is, right now you have in your brain, some mis-wiring and mis-firing that has created what I call ‘a confused stress response.’

This confused stress response is also present in those who find themselves dependent on alcohol, drugs, tv, the internet and other common human coping strategies. As frustrating as this might have been for you until now, it is actually quite easy to change once you know what to do and how to do it. (more…)

Posted in: 2013, All-or-Nothing Thinking, and Binging, Anorexia and Bulimia, Brain Chemistry, Complete Recovery, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating, Uncategorized

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What’s Causing Your Love-Hate Relationship With Food?

love-hate relationship with food, Woman making a decision Do you have a love-hate relationship with food? Do you love the taste of certain foods and find that once you start you can’t stop? Do you find yourself drawn to eating certain foods even when you know they’re not good for you and you’re going to feel crappy afterwards?Do you find that even when you know that eating as much as you are eating, or the kinds of foods that you’re eating, is only going to put fat on your body and make you feel bad about yourself, in that moment you just don’t care? …And then you beat yourself up afterwards? (more…)

Posted in: 2013, and Binging, Anorexia and Bulimia, Brain Chemistry

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How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight

How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight


This article ‘How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight’ will help you to understand exactly that, and I’ll give you some specific examples for how you can start to trust yourself to think clearly and make choices that you really feel good about.

As I enjoy the peace, the safety, the trust and confidence I feel in my body and in my world, the warmth and love I share with my colleagues and friends, and the time…..yes, the time, it seems so long ago, that there was a time when I truly felt like I had no time. I wasn’t on death’s door by any means, but I sure lived as though a demon was chasing me. Before my own recovery from emotional eating (some may prefer to call it binge eating disorder or overeating, whatever you call it – that’s what I did – 24/7!), I lived in a state of chronic, high-level anxiety. I also felt so fat and ugly that I believed that if someone, anyone, saw me eating anything, they would judge me as fat and gross and bad, and they would be right. Of course, when I examine that story now, it’s just silly. What did I think? Did I think that because I had extra weight on my body I wasn’t allowed or entitled or needing of any food whatsoever? Well, actually, yeah. I did believe that I should just starve myself until I was “good enough” and then I could eat something. Of course I couldn’t actually sustain my self-imposed hunger strike for very long. It always ended, as it would for any human on the planet as studies have shown, with a great big binge. This is where my insecurity and low self-esteem turned into a full blown eating disorder with me trying to control my anxiety and insecurity through restricting food in the hopes that I would one day be thin enough to be acceptable and lovable and to never, ever, no matter what, be abandoned or rejected or judged by anyone. Of course, being thin was going to bring me the love and security and accolades that I so desperately sought. Everything would be better when I was thin. Right? Not exactly. (more…)

Posted in: 2013, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Uncategorized

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Video: Help for Overeating, Emotional Eating, and Weight Loss

Video: Help for Overeating, Emotional Eating, and Weight Loss

Click here to watch this video (or click on the image below) and learn what keeps you stuck overeating and overweight or struggling with body image and dieting stress and what you can do to get a grip on food and on your weight for good.

Michelle Morand will help you understand why you can’t seem to get a grip on food and why your heartfelt commitment to change how you relate to food never seems to stick. She’ll give you some very simple questions to ask yourself to begin to create awareness in yourself for what is really triggering you so that you can begin to change the grip that food and body focus have on you, for good.

In this video: Help for Overeating, Emotional Eating, and Weight Loss, you’ll get the answers you’ve been seeking to help you begin to understand what’s been keeping you stuck and what you can do about it to start to feel confident in your body and trust yourself around any food, in any quantity, any time – even when no one is watching!

I’ve been there – and for over 20 years I’ve been enjoying a stress-free relationship with food and a stable and sexy weight for my body without any focus on diets or rigorous exercise programs. Eating is a natural thing, it doesn’t need to be difficult or at all stressful.
Let me help you to understand what’s gone sideways for you and why, and let me teach you the simple steps that will change every aspect of your life for the better.

Thanks to Fanny Kiefer for the opportunity to share this information with your T.V. audience and for being such a great host!

Love Michelle

Eating-Disorder-Expert-interviewed-on-Vancouver-Talk-Show


Posted in: 2013, Complete Recovery, Uncategorized, Video

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Life Mastery Workshop Schedule and Details

Video~Life-Mastery-Workshops~CEDRIC-Centre-Help-for-Eating-Disorders

Life Mastery Workshops – Feb. 22nd to 24th in Vancouver & March 8th to 10th in Victoria, kick off our 2013 Schedule.

If you struggle with behaviour around food and other coping strategies, join us for one of our ‘Master’ Series Intensive 3-day Workshops and learn why you have been stuck in a stressful relationship with food and the steps to take to achieve to maintain a natural weight for your body, for life, without dieting and exercise regimes.  We focus on Mastering Behaviour, Balance and Relationships and empowering you!

See the details below for each of our 3 day events that are sure to change your life forever!

2013 ‘Master Series’ 3-day Weekend Workshop Schedule

Hours: All workshops run from Friday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day.

Cost: All workshops cost $636.00 + tax with payment plans available.

Vancouver Workshops with Michelle Morand, MA, RCC:

‘Master Your Brain – Master Your Behaviour’

Dates: Feb. 22th to 24th; May 17th to 19th; Aug. 9th to 11th; Oct. 18th to 20th

‘Mastering Balance: Creating Solid Self-Esteem and True Inner Peace’

Dates: March 15th to 17th; June 21st to 23rd; Nov. 15th to 17th

‘Mastering Relationships: The Relationship Equation’ – July 26th to 28th; Dec. 6th to 8th

Venue for all Vancouver Workshops: Century Plaza Hotel,  1015 Burrard St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 3B6


Victoria Workshops with Dawn Cox, M.Ed., psych, RCC:

‘Master Your Brain – Master Your Behaviour’

Dates: March 8th to 10th, July 12th to 14th and November 8th to 10th

‘Mastering Balance: Creating Solid Self-Esteem and True Inner Peace’ Date: Sept. 13th to 15th

Venue: Common Room at 1246 Fairfield, Victoria, BC, V8V 3B5


Calgary Workshops with Michelle Morand, MA, RCC:

Master Your Brain – Master Your Behaviour Date: July 5th to 7th

‘Mastering Balance: Creating Solid Self-Esteem and True Inner Peace’– Date: July 12th to 14th

Venue: MacEwan Conference Centre, U of Calgary, 2500 University Dr NW Calgary, T2N 1N4

There is a hotel at the University, if you would like to stay there as well.


Master Your Brain – Master Your Behaviour’ 3-day Intensive Workshops

The best way to achieve mindful, balanced eating is to address the root cause of why you are not able to achieve and /or maintain it.   That’s where our specialists come in.  They teach you everything you need to know about why you struggle with food, what is really triggering the frustrating way you think and behave, why you haven’t been successful in changing your behaviours, and, most importantly, what you can do to gain a new and healthy approach to food and the world around you.

We’ll explore why you do what you do with food, relationships, anger, procrastination, depression, anxiety, isolation, exercise, drugs, alcohol, work/school, and many other harmful coping strategies.  

You will also learn 3 simple tools that enable you to simply eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and manage life in ways that enhance your self-esteem and lead to greater peace and happiness in all areas of life. We will teach you how to:

  • establish a healthy relationship with food that lasts;
  • follow through on commitments to self-care;
  • relate to others in ways that enhance your relationships and self-esteem;
  • feel more confident in your own skin;
  • meet your basic needs (without feeling guilty or needy!);
  • change your harmful ways of coping with stress to helpful ones, once and for all.

When you have simple, logical steps to follow, the process of creating lasting change isn’t hard. Regardless of how many programs, methods, tools etc. you’ve tried before, you can do this because it’s simple and it just makes sense

‘Mastering Balance: Creating Solid Self-Esteem and True Inner Peace’ 3-day Intensive Workshops

In this transformative workshop, you’ll learn how to build trust and confidence in your ability to know what you need and to follow through on providing that for yourself. Our participants are often amazed how simple it is to figure out what they really want and most importantly, to see themselves following through on making that happen!

We’ll uncover and teach you how to change your past training in how you think and behave towards yourself and, others, and the world around you, that has prevented you from listening to and valuing your own feelings and needs.  This, sadly, may have naturally led you to feel anxious and to use harmful patterns of behaviour like overeating, restriction, isolation, anger, drinking etc., to cope with that anxiety and frustration!

This has created a vicious cycle of doing things that don’t really demonstrate kindness and caring for yourself – feeling anxious as a result – and using those harmful coping strategies to numb out – leading to more anxiety and a great need for those coping strategies….and round and round we go!

But not after this weekend! We’re going to be identifying the thoughts and behaviours that keep you stuck and then you’ll learn clear and simple strategies for making the changes that you’d like to make in all areas of your life, that feel safe and authentic and most importantly, doable!

Click to read Participant Feedback on ‘Mastering Balance’

Vancouver – ‘Mastering Relationships: The Relationship Equation’ 3-day Intensive Workshops

Relationships are really quite simple when we understand the basics of human evolution, development and relating. In this transformative meeting of minds you’ll come to understand why people do what they do.

Throughout the weekend, you’ll be learning and practicing the basic equation of relationships and trust that you are doing the best you can in every relationship. This is understanding and trust in yourself and your relationship skills is fundamentally important to healthy relationships and good self-esteem because when you know you are doing your part as best you can, you naturally feel confident, secure and peaceful, regardless of what the other person is doing/thinking or feeling. Imagine that! Now, come and experience it!

You’ll also learn how to tell, and what to do, if you find that you’re doing more than your fair share of the emotional work in a relationship. And you’ll know how to create a sense of true safety, trust, respect and intimacy with all the key people in your life.   And we’ll explore:

– How you can truly feel deserving of love;

– How to ask directly and respectfully, with confidence for what you need, from anyone, anytime, anywhere – without feeling scared, selfish, or having heart palpitations!; and

– How to feel confident in your ability to communicate in a way that demonstrates respect and dignity for yourself and creates safety and trust in all of your relationships.

Relationships really are quite simple. It’s just a matter of knowing the relationship equation. So join us, learn the equation, and see how easy relationships can be.

Click for Participant Feedback on ‘Mastering Relationships’

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Please Register at least 2 weeks before the event.  Agendas for the event are sent out the week before the date.

If you want to set up a subscription of more than 3 payments contact our admin office.

Let us know if you would like suggestions for accommodations to suit a variety of budgets. as well as local transportation routes in the cities we hold events in.

As always, our team is here to help you one way or another.  Just let us know how we can.

And if you live elsewhere in the world or simply prefer the convenience of working with us from your home we will meet with you via Skype, Google+ or telephone – whatever works best for you.

Posted in: 2013, workshops

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Tips for Happy Holiday Eating

tips for holiday eatingThe holidays can be stressful enough without adding stress about food to the mix. On top of thoughts about family (some we may love dearly and some we’d like to never have to see again), friends, travel plans, money and gift stress, and increased time pressures we certainly don’t need anything else to fret about at what is supposed to be a most fun and peaceful time of year. But if we are stressed about our relationship with food and uncomfortable with our weight, we naturally have another layer of stress, a chronic 24/7 chatter in our brain, that cranks up a few more notches at this time of year. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating, Uncategorized

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Laura’s Story: Help for Anorexia, Orthorexia, and Chronic Dieting

Laura was 19 when she first came to see me for help for anorexia, orthorexia and chronic dieting. She was wafer thin, and with the exception of her face and hands, every inch of her yellowed skin was covered in layers of thick clothing. It was June. She sat across from me, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes firmly attached to a spot on the floor that seemed to have captivated her interest rather keenly for a tiny speck of lint. Her opening volley, which she directed generally towards my side of the room through clenched teeth, was something along the lines of: “I’m only here because my mom thinks I have a problem and she said if I came to see you once she’d lay off and leave me alone.” (more…)

Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Anorexia and Bulimia, Complete Recovery, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

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Food and the Holidays

Are you eager to make it through the holidays without succumbing to the stresses of the season, without feeling restricted and without overeating and gaining weight? We’re revisiting ‘Helpful Tips for a Food-Stress Free Holiday Season’ to help you through all of the food and the holidays traps that people often fall into.  If you’re a natural eater then the holidays are nothing special in terms of the abundance of food and the treats that are unique to this time of year. If you’re someone who would define themselves as having to “watch their weight” or who has a stressful relationship with food, the holidays can be a particularly stressful time. Learning how to navigate stress without losing your grip on healthy eating is fundamental to enjoying the holidays fully and freely. The easiest way to make this your reality is to educate yourself on the ways that you might get tripped up in your use of food to cope this Christmas season and to have clear and effective strategies for turning yourself into a natural eater rather than a mindless eater. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating

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Workshops

Master Series 3 Day Eating Disorder Workshops:

– ‘Master Your Brain – Master Your Behaviour’:  Feb. 22nd to 24th, 2013 in Vancouver and March 8 to 10, 2013 in Victoria.  Our ‘Master’ Series of workshops is designed to help those who are emotional or stress eaters, struggle with bulimia, anorexia or binge eating, or are caught in the diet cycle with no lasting results, find peace and freedom with food and maintain a natural weight for their body, without the need for chronic dieting and rigorous exercise programs.  CEDRIC Counsellors teach everything participants need to know about what is triggering their frustrating thoughts and behaviours around food and other aspects of life, and how to change them once and for all!

(more…)

Posted in: 2012, Complete Recovery, Upcoming Events, workshops

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