How to eat donuts, chocolate and pizza with permission and without bingeing
I write about the psychology of eating disorders. I have personally recovered from bulimia and have worked as a therapist for 20 years. I hope to inspire, educate and improve understanding about eating disorders through my writing. Names used are fictional and stories shared are a combined insight of many client experiences. I believe that full recovery is possible for everyone.
Listen to the audio here: -
If you’re recovering from an eating disorder, you might well desire to eat all the foods that you have been depriving yourself of, as a rebellion against the restriction or dieting fatigue.
You may have an all or nothing relationship with food. You’re either being super-healthy and good, or chaotic and devouring everything in sight.
Maybe you binge on ‘bad foods’ that you would normally forbid yourself.
In recovery, it’s helpful to move towards permitting all these foods into your eating plan.
This doesn’t mean eating donuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or throwing health goals out of the window.
It’s about embracing food neutrality and taking food off the pedestal of maximal pleasure.
It’s possible to achieve healthy eating (not orthorexic eating!), whilst honouring taste, satisfaction and pleasure.
Understandably, you might not know where to start.
This article will give your practical steps to make this possible.
Getting on board with letting go of good/bad thinking around food
If you are reading this article, you are probably oscillating between good, clean, healthy eating and the complete opposite.
You likely maintain the clean regime for a period, before it hits a threshold of sustainability. It becomes increasingly hard to navigate social occasions and real life.
Then, you throw in the towel and abandon it entirely.
When eating is going ‘well’, you feel precariously close to the edge of a cliff, waiting to fall off at any moment.
It’s incredibly hard to win and feel good enough, as there is much misery and deprivation that goes alongside.
Breaking one food rule can lead you into a pit of despair and self-loathing.
Fundamentally, the all or nothing approach is not working for you.
Action point
Face the reality of your current relationship with food. This means no holding onto the romanticised memories of the strict plan, when you miraculously lost X pounds three years ago. If it genuinely worked, you would still be following it now.
Do a pros and cons list of your black and white relationship with food. What do you gain? What is it costing you?
Think about where you will be in five years, if you continue with the old ways of being.
This is not about beating yourself up. It’s about offering yourself compassion and self-awareness so that you can begin to break away from diet culture delusions and false promises of restrictive eating.
Stabilising blood sugar and regular eating first
Before you leap into the deep end of food freedom practices, it’s helpful to have the boring, unsexy work of regular eating firmly in place.
Regular eating is sometimes tedious. If you have a history of dieting, it can feel restrictive and effortful, as it requires some planning and thoughts around food. However, it is a fundamental baseline of self-care.
And it is not the same as dieting. Regular eating offers a scaffolding of eating support. It ensures that you have foods available to eat when you get hungry and within a time window. It is not rigid or specifying amounts.
If you’ve been struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, it’s going to take time to learn body trust.
It’s going to take time to tune in to your hunger and fullness levels. This is completely normal.
But regular eating helps with all of this. It provides a stable platform and baseline to then experiment with flexible and intuitive eating practices.
Regular eating means eating three meals and three snacks (or working up to this).
It is self-caring eating. Thinking about nourishment, health, satisfaction and taste.
You are including balance in your meals. This means including a protein source, some carbohydrate, good fats and fruits/vegetables.
You are eating every 2 ½ - 3 hours. This means that your blood sugar remains relatively stable. You rarely get to ‘I’m so hungry, I could eat my arm off,’ levels, which often end in binge eating or overeating.
Regular eating can be truly transformative when you commit to change. Keep it simple.
Action point
How are you doing with your regular eating right now?
Are there lingering dietary restrictions going on for you?
What are your barriers to regular eating?
What changes could you make?
Reflecting on your current relationship with food
The next step is to create awareness about your emotional relationship with different foods.
Foods that you consider to be healthy, clean, safe, diet are probably ones that you can eat with relative calm and peacefulness.
Foods that you consider to be unhealthy, junk, forbidden, bad will be the ones that trigger temporary excitement and deliciousness, followed by intense fear, guilt, anxiety and self-deprivation.
It’s an emotional rollercoaster and this polarised view of food is not helping you.
One bite of the ‘forbidden fruit’ will trigger thoughts alongside a bodily response that makes overeating a likelihood.
‘I’ve blown it, so I might as well eat everything’.
‘I have no willpower so what’s the point?’
To understand your relationship with food:
Make a list of your foods that are:
Safe
Moderately safe
Forbidden
Highly forbidden.
There is no right or wrong here. Everyone has a different relationship with food. And quantity of foods may also play a role here.
Now that you have made a list of your safe, moderately safe, forbidden and highly forbidden foods, you have awareness of your relationship with different foods.
In time, you are going to vastly increase your variety of foods eaten, in a non-binge or overeating pattern.
To begin this process, you need to start small. It’s best to pick foods initially that have greater safety, and this maybe foods from the moderately safe list. Pick five foods and rank them in order of safety.
My list of 5 initial foods to work towards reintroducing.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Focus on one food at a time. This may feel challenging, as you might feel impatient and desire food flexibility today.
Go with the baby steps and mini victories.
Over-time, you will make considerable progress. Imagine if you re-introduced one new food a week over the next year. That is 52 new foods!
I will now share some tools to help with process.
1. Planning
When you first introduce a new food, plan it into your day.
This might feel forced and unspontaneous, but it is often necessary to start with.
Decide the food type, the timing and the location.
For example: eat a chocolate cupcake at 3pm, in the café and with my friend, Emily.
Planning helps give you a sense of safety and control in the situation. Thoughtfully doing this will increase the likelihood of success and your confidence to repeat the experiment.
Word of warning: -
If you are reintroducing an old forbidden food, avoid doing this from a place of over-hunger, as the endorphin and blood sugar physiological hit will be elevated. This will increase your desire to binge.
Continue with your regular eating around the experiment, aiming NOT to compensate around the eating episode.
Why planning helps
If you don’t plan the eating episode, you could be caught out at the cupboard door or walking past an appealing shop front. Planning helps and allows you to give yourself intentional permission.
Work to go into the eating episode with a positive mindset and belief that this is achievable. Naturally, you might feel anxious but think about calming your nervous system prior to eating. Eg: not rushing into the eating episode; listening to a favourite song first or taking some deep breaths.
2. Visualisation and affirming statements
Ahead of the event, imagine yourself sitting calmly and peacefully, and enjoying the food. Visualise yourself not eating too slowly or too fast but being present in the moment and tasting each mouthful.
You can say supportive statements to yourself (before, during and after), such as: -
· ‘All foods are permissible; eating my forbidden foods is inoculation against binge eating’.
· ‘It is safe to eat this food; I am honouring my hunger and no longer want to deprive myself.’
If you’re with a friend, you can ask them to support you in the way that suits you best. This may be talking or not talking about food. You may welcome a distraction topic. The support that benefits you will be very personal.
Afterwards, you may slip into feeling anxious or guilty. You may feel preoccupied with your body image, but you can anticipate this ahead. This will be the time to be a loving friend towards yourself with reassuring statements: -
· ‘I’m proud of myself for experimenting and trying a new food’.
· ‘I’m working hard on my recovery and every little step counts’.
· ‘It’s safe to eat these foods’.
When you have been severely depriving yourself, it is natural to desire to eat more. Do not punish or berate yourself for this. If you can, try to stick to your planned goal so that you are building confidence around the new forbidden food.
You can always bring your next meal forward if you are still feeling hungry later. Try to keep the regular eating scaffolding in place, around your forbidden food experiments.
Remember that every time, you have a victory with introducing a new food, you are building resilience and trust around the process of change.
3. Mindful eating
Aim to eat mindfully, so that you are present and tasting the food. To help with this: -
Avoid over hunger
Don’t go into an eating episode starving 10/10 hungry.
Ideally, you want to be aiming for a 6-8, rather than ‘I’m so ravenous that I could eat anything and everything.’
If you are over hungry, then you will be vulnerable to eating quickly and not registering the taste or fully enjoying the food. It’s so easy to overeat from a place of starving hunger.
Slow down
Slow down your eating, to allow your body to register the food.
Taste, textures and smells
Notice the taste, texture and smell of the food and notice your level of enjoyment.
You might need to relearn your likes and dislikes, as you may have lost your way with this, through disordered eating.
Work to re-engage your senses by noticing colours, smells, sounds, textures, and flavours.
Sit down
Make eating an occasion by sitting down at a table, with some ceremony attached.
Serve your food on a pretty plate and remove clutter from your eating area. Work to avoid eating on the run or standing at the cupboard door, or in the car.
Do nothing else whilst eating
If you’re working to relearn hunger and fullness cues, it’s preferable to do nothing else while eating. The more you make eating a ‘pure experience’ the less likely you are to eat out of habit.
You may have habits associated with eating. Eg: TV watching whilst eating crisps or driving and eating sweets. Aim to be present and intentional with eating.
Allow hunger and fullness signals to catch up
To begin with, it’s going to be challenging to trust your feelings of hunger and fullness. If you are wanting to eat more after a meal, stop and pause for 10 minutes first.
Maybe you haven’t eaten enough? Maybe you are bored or tired or feeling ‘low’ and you might not be hungry.
If you are still hungry after 10 minutes, eat something else. If not, meet the other need. Eg: for stimulation, a break, a distraction, some comfort.
4. Distraction
You may wish to plan a distraction activity after eating, if you feel tempted to binge eat. Do something that occupies your mind, maybe a crafts or art activity. Know that the urge to binge is like a wave and will rise and fall.
When you are introducing forbidden foods, you might wish to eat them in a controlled environment initially, such as outside the house, at a café or with a friend.
Once you get comfortable doing this, you can build up to storing them at home and then helping yourself to portions of the foods. This takes time.
5. Dealing with feeling full
You may struggle with the feeling of being full. You genuinely might feel quite bloated and uncomfortable, if your digestion has slowed from a history of restrictive eating. Realise that this is part of the process, and the way out is through.
Think about creating a different relationship with feeling full. I’m talking comfortably full, after you have nourished your body, not stuffed to the point that you feel unwell.
Interpreting signals in relation to feeling full
· Feeling full is a helpful sign that you have eaten.
· Feeling full is a signal that your body is fuelled and can provide you with energy and nutrition going forward.
· Feeling full means that you can be distracted from food and get on with your day.
· You don’t need to feel anxious for feeling full. This is a perfectly normal and natural body sensation. You are just readjusting to accepting this again.
Listening to your body
It will take time to feel comfortable with being full. This is something you will need to re-learn. You may need to make a note in your diary after eating, to note your current feeling of fullness. You can also note your anxiety and see how this rises and falls.
Living through feeling full, managing your anxiety, and trusting that your body is not going to change significantly through one meal, will allow you to become more trusting and less fearful of the full feeling.
Every time you manage another snack or meal and tolerate the fullness feeling, you are a step closer to reducing anxiety and becoming more accepting of this.
It takes patience, time and commitment to permit your forbidden foods. It will be an imperfect and messy process. Allow this.
Be kind and compassionate with yourself in this process, as there will be many inevitable bumps in the road.
Every time you reintroduce an old forbidden food with permission, you are building your food freedom muscles. Engage with the long game. If you commit to ongoing food challenges, you will look back in a year from now and see how far you’ve come.
How are you doing with reintroducing forbidden foods?
Which foods are you reintroducing now?
To find out more about my work:-
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This is such a great, thanks Harriet!