Brain Over Binge

I feel that Brain over Binge by Kathryn Hansen hits the nail on the head in so many ways.

'normal eating meant I did not binge and did not diet restrictively.' page 215 

Ah normal eating. It has been a bit of a struggle to get onto the path to healthy eating but I've managed to maintain a healthy approach to different foods and I'm managing to slowly uncover what it means to train and be able to eat what you like while maintaining a good diet. The struggle comes in with junk food but onto this book because it definitely helps with binging. 

The book suggests focusing on the urge to binge as opposed to the supposed issues surrounding it. 

'I began to see that I binged primarily to relieve my cravings  and also for pleasure, but certainly not to satisfy some symbolic inner need.' page 83 

Lately I've been thinking that something is wrong with the way I approach food but Kathryn's approach is that you should focus on the urges of binge eating. She  speaks about the human brain and animal brain. The animal brain, because the survival instinct has kicked in, encourages you to eat large amounts of food. This is not really you and isn't about your needs, it is about the voice in your head which you should begin to observe and stop acting on. The animal brain doesn't have control over your voluntary muscles meaning you can learn to control yourself. That is what I got from the book.

So Kathryn's suggestion for overcoming binge eating is to separate yourself from your urges. So what is recovery? 

'Recovery from bulimia or BED is the termination of all binge eating.' page 104

It is often difficult to be taken seriously when it comes to cravings however this approach is comforting. As well as this Kathryn's experience of an eating disorder means that you get a strong sense of her own battle with binge eating. It has also worked when it comes to wanting to binge eat. I have managed to listen to the voice and instead of doing battle with it, have seen it as not me.

The only thing I worried about was the effect of eating too much food has had one me physically. Not knowing much about the human body I wonder if the cravings are all in the mind. This means that I need to find a way to eat that, while normal, will mean I actual do lose weight. Now that I feel on top of the excessive eating I've decided to explore the book- Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works by Evelyn Tribole and Eylse Resch.

I don't want a diet plan, I'm sick of food diaries and I just want to eat as normally as  I can while losing weight. I want to know about intuitive eating because I feel like this could work. I've heard about it but I'll blog about it once I've read it and whether I decide to begin to eat this way.

All in all this was a great book and I really enjoyed reading it.

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