How to Prevent Binge Eating with Intuitive Eating
If you’re someone who binge eats, emotionally eats, or just feels out of control around food, this article is for you. Maybe you feel as though you’re stuck and don’t know what to do anymore. Maybe you’ve been spinning your wheels trying different strategies (like trying to force yourself into using willpower…) that just aren’t working for you. I want to teach you how to prevent binge eating!
So, let’s try something different. I want to chat with you about how to prevent binge eating with intuitive eating. But first, before we dive into all the goodness of that, we’ve got to start off by going over some definitions of intuitive eating and binge eating.
Sometimes we can have skewed perceptions of what these things really are. Diet culture and social media are some big culprits of making nutrition and eating habits super confusing. So, we want to be on the same page here, am I right? Let’s clear the air and look at what these two things really mean.
Remember: this article is for informational purposes only and may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical professional before trying or implementing any information read here.
What is Considered Binge Eating?
In the most simple terms, binge eating is:
- Eating a large amount of food
- Within a relatively short period of time
- While feeling a loss of control
That definition is what I mean when I’m talking about binge eating here. There are more technical criteria involved when it comes to diagnosing something such as Binge Eating Disorder. But from my standpoint as someone who helps folks overcome binge eating, I believe that if you are feeling out of control with food in any way we’d want to work to understand more and learn strategies to overcome it.
You deserve to improve your relationship with food, no matter what label we’re putting on it.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is a framework that’s all about improving your relationship with food. Letting go of all the external “rules” taught to us by diet culture and re-learning your natural internal cues to guide your eating choices and habits. It was created by Registered Dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch back in 1995 and has been revised many times and has been backed up by hundreds of research studies since.
Intuitive eating is a non-diet, weight-inclusive approach to eating and helps you to tune into your intuition through deeply understanding your instincts, emotions, and thoughts surrounding food. There are 10 principles of intuitive eating that help individuals on their journey to improving both physical and mental health.
If this article is interesting to you, episode 002 of the Intuitively You Podcast is all about helping you to learn more about the basics and getting started with intuitive eating. This may sound a little cheesy, but it is truly life-changing! Now, let’s dive into more great information on intuitive eating and binge eating and how this can help you transform your relationship with food.
7 Ways Intuitive Eating Can Help You Prevent Binge Eating
1. Learn how to make peace with food
Making peace with food is really the underlying basis of intuitive eating. This act of making peace with all foods is an important component of how to prevent binge eating with intuitive eating.
Diet culture makes us believe that certain foods are “bad.” Naturally, when we then consume any of those “bad” foods, we can feel very guilty about it. Which could lead to feelings of shame and also the out-of-control feelings around those forbidden foods. Aka. Potentially binge eating!
Make peace with food is principle number 3 of the intuitive eating framework. The process of making peace with food can be a very overwhelming thing for many folks. I know it was for me in the past too! So, within my intuitive eating coaching services, I’ve worked hard on learning from my client’s experiences to tweak this process to be less overwhelming, but just as transformative.
2. Understand how food truly makes you feel
Intuitive eating is all about having a supportive, intuitive relationship with food. This means when adopting an intuitive approach to eating that you’re able to understand more about how food truly makes you feel.
For example, maybe chips are a binge food for you. By understanding more about your body, its cues, and your feeling surrounding food, maybe you learn more about how the chips truly make you feel. Maybe you realize that when you have some you feel good and content, but when you eat half (or all) of the bag, you know you feel really unwell physically afterward. You may be aware of the latter, but getting more clarity surrounding your experiences with food can show you the path forward to a healthy relationship with food.
3. Become more mindful of your eating habits
Mindful eating is something that goes hand in hand with intuitive eating and binge eating. How many describing words can we put before eating, am I right?! This can get a little confusing. But for now, know that eating mindfully is just one piece of the puzzle within intuitive eating.
Often when binge eating episodes, emotional eating, or intense cravings happen, there’s a sense of being there but detached from what’s happening. Some folks describe this as “blacking out” during.
Learning to incorporate more mindfulness with your eating habits all of the time, not just during binge eating, will help you to practice awareness so that when you are finding yourself in the urge to binge you can more easily be present with yourself, your thoughts, and feelings. This helps you to feel more empowered and less helpless in your journey to overcome binge eating.
4. Gets you to tune into your needs & emotions
Simply put, binge eating stems from having unmet needs. The most common reasons for binge eating are physical deprivation, mental restriction, and unmet emotional needs. The process of embracing all of the principles of intuitive eating will allow you to tap into your physical, mental, and emotional needs.
Sometimes we can get caught up in feeling like our lack of willpower or lack of self-control is to blame for binge eating. But the truth is that it’s often much deeper than that. It’s important to find the root causes of why these habits around food are happening, instead of trying to use bandaid solutions.
Want to learn what’s the main reason behind your binge eating? Take our free why do you binge eat quiz now! Plus, you’ll get some great action steps to take now based on your result.
5. Challenge the inner food police
I like to refer to that pesky voice in your mind that tells you “You shouldn’t be eating that,” “That’s a bad food,” “Don’t eat too many,” “You should eat less,” or whatever it may be, as the inner food police. This inner food police voice is rooted in diet culture and all the things you’ve picked up in your life about certain rules around food.
Intuitive eating, principle number 4 to be exact, helps you to combat this inner critic and learn how to silence it. Our beliefs influence our thoughts. Our thoughts influence our emotions. And our emotions influence our actions. The interplay of beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions really is the basis of what we do and how we feel in our lives. So, we want to address this inner food police to change the inner narrative around food to a more helpful one, instead of one that leads us to binge eating.
6. Helps you to nourish your body adequately
Although learning about gentle nutrition may be a later step in your binge eating recovery journey, intuitive eating helps you to learn how to adequately nourish your body. Eating enough and eating consistently is a very important foundational component of a healthy relationship with food.
Think about it, if you’re not eating consistently or enough, your body is smart and it’s going to be telling you it needs more energy. We get energy through the food we eat, and if we’re stuck in trying to eat less (like diet culture tells us to), your body likely could be screaming “Oh my goodness I’m starving please eat MORE!” Which then drives you to feel out of control around food because those basic needs aren’t being met.
7. Gives you tools to build a healthy relationship with food
The intuitive eating framework is filled with so many wonderful tools to build a healthy relationship with food. These tools are similarly keys to overcoming binge eating, just as we’ve been talking about throughout this article.
Some of these tools include but are not limited to ditching the diet mentality, building emotional coping skills, reconnecting with hunger and fullness cues, fostering body respect, boosting satisfaction with meals and snacks, and so much more. I often pair these tools from intuitive eating with other helpful tools to stop binge eating within the work I do with my students and clients!
A Final Thought
While intuitive eating can be a great tool to prevent binge eating, it may not be the best suitable first step for you. Some folks need more intensive care in order to mend their relationship with food. I do hope you’ve learned a thing or two about how to prevent binge eating from this article.
Please always consult with your own healthcare professional or dietitian about what should be your personal plan of action to overcome binge eating. If you want to inquire about working with us here at The Intuitive Nutritionist, check out our food freedom services. We’d love to help point you to the right direction. You got this!
Jenn is a non-diet Registered Dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor that helps women overcome binge eating, overeating, and emotional eating so that they can embody their version of food freedom. Jenn is dedicated to helping guide her clients and community to leave all of the “shoulds” of diet culture in the past and find confidence in their own inner wisdom to guide their eating decisions, increase their self-worth, and embody their most authentic selves.
References
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Babbott KM, Cavadino A, Brenton-Peters J, Consedine NS, Roberts M. Outcomes of intuitive eating interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eat Disord. 2023 Jan-Feb;31(1):33-63. doi: 10.1080/10640266.2022.2030124.
Linardon J, Tylka TL, Fuller-Tyszkiewicz M. Intuitive eating and its psychological correlates: A meta-analysis. Int J Eat Disord. 2021 Jul;54(7):1073-1098. doi: 10.1002/eat.23509.
Craven MP, Fekete EM. Weight-related shame and guilt, intuitive eating, and binge eating in female college students. Eat Behav. 2019 Apr;33:44-48. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2019.03.002.
Linardon J, Mitchell S. Rigid dietary control, flexible dietary control, and intuitive eating: Evidence for their differential relationship to disordered eating and body image concerns. Eat Behav. 2017 Aug;26:16-22. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2017.01.008.
