If you’ve had one or more binges in the past few weeks that you later felt bad about, keep reading.
I will help you find out what causes binge eating, explain how you can prevent them and I give 9 effective tips that you can apply immediately.
Everything you need to take back control of your own body!
An occasional binge is possible
Everyone has a binge at times. You plan to take one biscuit, but then eat the entire roll.
That in itself cannot do much harm. You usually make up for it by paying more attention to your food the following days and perhaps exercising more.
It is a different story when you regularly or often suffer from (uncontrollable) binges. You are then in a kind of intoxication and even when you are full you continue to eat.
Regular binge eating also has long-term negative consequences. You arrive through it. That doesn’t make you happier. Weight gain can also lead to health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.
When you feel that you no longer have control over your binge eating, it has a major impact on your daily life. It is wise to talk to someone about this.
If you don’t want to or aren’t ready yet, there are plenty of things you can do yourself to reduce and prevent binge eating! Let’s start at the beginning.
Causes of binge eating
If you want to overcome your binge eating, it’s good to know what’s causing it. You can take targeted action with the help of the tips you will soon receive.
Overall there are 3 causes of binge eating:
You have a sugar crash
It’s a habit
You eat away negative emotions
Cause 1: sugar crashes
With a sugar crash or sugar dip, you have too little sugar in your blood. You feel limp and shivery. That does not feel good, so your body wants something quickly to boost your blood sugar level again. The sugar deficiency can then provoke a binge.
A sugar crash occurs when your blood sugar level fluctuates strongly, for example because you do not eat or eat very little for too long. This happens if you are on a strict diet or skip meals.
If you regularly eat sugar, you run the risk of fluctuations. Your body does everything it can to maintain an ideal blood sugar level. The rocking goes like this:
You eat fast sugars
As a result, a lot of glucose suddenly enters the bloodstream
Your blood sugar spikes and you are bursting with energy again
Your body adjusts and produces insulin
The insulin pushes the glucose out of your bloodstream again
When your blood sugar level is back up, the insulin tap can be closed
But: production has been whipped up in such a way by the enormous sugar rush that it does not stop all at once
The result: glucose is still withdrawn from the blood for a while and the equilibrium turns into a sugar dip. You have too little sugar in your blood and you feel weak and lifeless. Your body asks for something sweet again to restore its balance and a binge is lurking.
The solution is to avoid sugar spikes in your blood. You can control this yourself by paying attention to what you eat and by avoiding products with a lot of fast sugars. Tips 1,2 and 3 are especially important if you regularly have binge eating due to sugar crashes.
Cause 2: habit
You may recognize these situations:
When you read your favorite magazine, you always grab tea with a biscuit. Or two cookies. Or three …
You turn on the TV in the evening and grab a bowl of chips.
You take a nice piece of sausage and a block of cheese with a glass of wine.
You once taught yourself this behavior. Or maybe they always did it at your house. So it is automatic.
In your head these things belong together and switching on the TV triggers the appetite for a bowl of chips. And once you start snacking, chances are you are eating too much.
The solution is to realize that it is about something that has been learned and that you can therefore unlearn. Do that by removing the trigger. I give you a concrete example of this in the tips! If you have regular binges triggered by habits, check out tips 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Cause 3: you eat away negative emotions
Sometimes you eat when you are stressed, lonely, or in a low mood. The nasty, empty or sad feeling is then for a moment drowned out by the pleasant feeling that the food gives you.
This is emotional eating. You comfort yourself with food, as it were. Apparently you have noticed that this works in the past. In the long run, this is not a good strategy. You gain weight because of the extra food and you are ashamed of your binge eating.
The solution is to face your negative emotions and be open to what they actually want to tell you.
By tackling your emotion (s), you create a real, lasting solution for your binge eating. That works better than eating away those recurring emotions over and over again, which is actually a fake solution.
If your binge eating is triggered by emotions, tips 8 and 9 will help you break the cycle.
Prevent binge eating: 9 tips
Sugar crashes, habits, and emotional eating can thus cause binge eating. But how do you break the pattern? We give you 9 tips that you can apply immediately.
Tip 1: Stop (strict) diets
It seems like a quick solution: take in very few calories so that you lose weight quickly. But as you may have noticed, crash diets don’t work.
In fact, research shows that if you don’t eat for too long at a time, you are more likely to binge-eat and overeat (1,2).
To do
Instead of dieting, make healthy changes to your diet:
Choose low-carbohydrate food more often
Eat fresh and unprocessed foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds more often
Have a treat every now and then (instead of not at all)
Tip 2: do not skip meals
Skipping meals has about the same effect as not eating for too long. You end up getting so hungry that you cannot control yourself and you are more likely to overeat.
To do
Set up a regular eating schedule and stick to it. Research shows that a regular diet can help reduce binge eating (3).
Tip 3: eat more fiber
If you want to avoid excessive cravings and blood sugar swings, it is good to eat foods that are high in fiber. Dietary fiber ensures that carbohydrates are slowly absorbed into the body, so that the blood sugar level remains stable.
Fiber-rich food also gives you a feeling of fullness faster, so that you have less appetite. You also eat smaller portions (4,5).
To do
Supplement your diet with vegetables, nuts, seeds and kernels – all products that contain a lot of fiber. Do you want to know which products belong in a healthy diet? Download Jasper’s shopping list!
Tip 4: change your habits
Less good habits are there to change to make way for new, healthier habits.
It is very difficult not to eat snacks at the TV in the evening when you have always been used to that. It works better to remove the trigger, so not to watch TV. The binge eating then does not occur.
To do
If you are unable to remove the trigger, or if you do not want to, then consciously choose bite-sized healthy snacks.
Tip 5: drink more water
Drinking plenty of water is a good habit. Drinking water makes you feel fuller and prevents you from feeling hungry.
Research also shows that if you drink 2 glasses of water before a meal, you will consume fewer calories during a meal (6).
To do
Always have a bottle of fresh water with you and get used to drinking it regularly. Water is healthy and good for you. Knowing more? Read all about the benefits of drinking water!
Tip 6: eat less sugar
The more sweet you eat, the sweeter it has to be to find it sweet enough. You are therefore inclined to eat sweeter and sweeter.
Any excess sugar is converted to fat. You do not lose weight, but kilos are added. So start with less sweet food today!
To do
From now on, stop taking sweets and no longer use sugar or honey. That can be difficult at first, but very quickly (much faster than you think) your taste changes.
After a while you will find those sweet soda, juices and candies very sweet. Not good anymore. Try it! Once you get used to it, you won’t even miss that sweet.
Tip: a great alternative to sweet soft drinks is flavored water. You can easily make this yourself: put cold water in a carafe with slices of cucumber, mint or a few slices of lemon. A delicious thirst quencher without sugar.
Tip 7: tidy up your kitchen
In a binge you often reach for processed ready-to-eat products that you can eat quickly and easily. So make sure you don’t have these at home.
Clear out your fridge and pantries and get rid of all junk food, snacks, chips and candy. If you don’t have it at home, you can’t get it.
To do
Instead of those unhealthy foods, get plenty of fresh, unprocessed foods like fruits, vegetables, protein foods, nuts, and seeds. You will naturally make healthier choices and reduce the risk of binge eating.
Tip 8: keep a binge eating diary
Keep a diary for at least a week in which you write down when the binge eating occurs, how it makes you feel and what goes through your head during such a binge.
Also write down what you feel in your body. This makes it clear which feelings and signals in your body trigger your binge eating. That is important to know, because then you can change something.
To do
Use the journal to find out which emotions trigger your binge eating. Be open to what these emotions actually want to tell you. In other words: for the underlying message.
For example, when you feel lonely, that bad feeling is actually an incentive to reconnect with others or improve your relationships. Put energy into that. The bad feeling will diminish, and so will your binges.
Tip: also watch our video on how to prevent emotional binge eating. In it, we discuss how to prevent emotional binge eating and what you can do to limit the damage.
Tip 9: talk to someone
Have someone to call if you feel a binge coming on. Research shows that people who have a social network that they can ask for support have less binge eating and that those binge eating is also less intense (7,8).
To do
Confide in someone. That’s difficult, but it can really help you. The moment you think a binge is coming, you can call them and talk about it.
Finally
No matter how hard you try to address the causes, you can still give in to a binge. Therefore, make sure you have healthy snacks at home.
If you violate healthy things, the damage will be limited. Also, don’t be too hard on yourself if it happens once. Then you just continue.
Conclusion
Do you want to get rid of your binge eating and feel healthier and slimmer? Then tackle the cause of the binges.
Start with the tips from this article. You will see that the binges decrease quickly so that you can eventually burn all your excess body fat.
What’s the next step?
Are you ready to fully get a grip on your nutrition? We have developed the Stop Binge Eating Program for everyone who wants to put an end to binge eating.
In this, you will get 7 effective anti-binge eating techniques to get rid of
• Emotional binge eating
• Snowing force and snack pull
• Sugar addiction
