- I was out of control around food
and now I'm not.
It used to run me
and now I don't even think about it.
One of the things I specialized in for years is binge-eating.
And it's such an important subject.
How do you fix binge-eating?
Some people don't even know they're bingers. They go,
"Oh, I'm not binger. I need sugar,
"I need sugar to get me going,
"I need cookies for energy, I need chocolate,
"I need all this stuff to feel better."
So, bingeing is a horrible issue
because it starts to run your life.
It becomes not what you're eating, but what's eating you.
And what happens is we use food to tranquilize ourselves.
It's very common we use food to medicate ourselves.
If you're stressed, if you're unhappy, if you're upset,
and you eat a big pizza, or a bowl of cereal,
or some cookies, or ice cream, you feel better.
Because carbohydrates especially
have a very tranquilizing effect.
We kind of medicate ourselves with food
and then we reward ourselves.
"I've had a bad day; I'm going to eat chocolate.
"I've had a bad day, I'm going to eat candy.
"I'm going to send out for pizza, have Chinese."
And then we punish ourselves.
"Well, I've eaten all the cookies,
"I might as well have more.
"I've eaten almost all of that packet of potato chips,
"I might just finish them."
So, we medicate with food, we reward with food,
we punish with food. And here's something else we do,
that most people don't understand,
we push our feelings down with food. Here's your stomach.
Your stomach is the seat of all your emotions.
Even little kids go, "My tummy hurts,"
when they don't know what's wrong with them,
because our feelings start in our stomach.
And as they begin to come up,
"I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling resentful,
"I'm feeling insignificant, I'm feeling overwhelmed,"
we think, "Well, I don't know how I'm feeling,
"but I do know I'm going to push that feeling down,
"I'm going to eat something and then I won't feel."
But the problem is that your feelings
are the most real thing you have.
And if you eat your feelings, swallow your feelings,
stuff your feelings down, and use some donuts
to help you, they just regroup
and they come back stronger than ever.
And here's another problem,
I've never met a client yet
who goes, "You know, I'm addicted to broccoli.
"Once I start with those carrots,
"I can't stop. "Once I start with celery, that's it,
"I can't stop."
But people say to me all the time,
"My downfall is bread, my problem is sugar,
"my issue is candy, or pizza, or ice cream, or fizzy drinks.
"Once I have one scoop of ice cream,
"I finish the whole tub.
"Once I have a couple of cookies, I keep going."
Because these foods
are designed to be highly, highly addictive.
There's something called "the bliss point"
and that's how much sugar you can put in a food
before it makes you sick.
And here's something else
which I've always found fascinating,
there is no food on the planet
that is naturally fatty and sweet at the same time.
Breast milk is a perfect combination of fat and sugar.
And when you're a little kid and you've had a bad day,
you're crying in your crib,
and Mom comes along and feeds you breast milk, bottled milk,
or maybe you're bigger and she gives you ice cream,
your mind picks up a belief, "Oh, I feel good now.
"I was feeling sad, alone, not interesting, not connected,
"and now I've got that milky, creamy stuff,
"my mum has held me, or coaxed me in the highchair,
"I feel better. Food makes everything better."
So, we acquire this limiting belief,
that becomes a fixed belief, that becomes a lie,
"Food makes everything better."
We are told at least 400 times, though probably more,
by food companies, "Eat food and you'll feel better."
You can't go to the cinema, open a magazine,
put on the television without adverts for food.
And they're never an advert for a yummy apple,
or a delicious pear, or some vegetable soup.
You and I know that. They're adverts for fast food,
junk food, candy.
And the problem is that once you start to tell your mind,
"This makes me feel better," you have two problems.
You told your mind it makes you feel better
and you are becoming highly addicted to those foods.
You probably have heard the studies
about how sugar has the same effect on your brain
as crack cocaine, and many people who are addicted
to alcohol stopped drinking and ate a lot of sugar,
or give up one addiction and just switch it to another one.
So, you're becoming physically addicted
by the chemicals of that food, which is not even food.
You're allowing yourself to be dependent on it emotionally,
you're telling yourself all this stuff,
"It makes me feel better, it cheers me up." And people say,
"I need my cake, I need my Frappuccino in the morning,
"I need my coffee with cream and sugar
"just to get out of bed.
"I need chocolate to feel better.
"This is my friend, food is rewarding me, comforting me.
"My date didn't work out, so I bought lots of chocolate.
"I had a bad day at work,
"so I got Chinese takeout on the way home.
"I was suffering with burnout so I drank hot chocolate
"and ate lots of sweets, and told myself I was better."
You know, if your body could speak it would never go, "Yay
"I'm really suffering here.
"So, please fill me up with colorants, chemicals,
"pesticides, preservatives; that makes me good."
If your body could speak, it would go, "I hate that food,
"I don't even like it."
So, how do you stop binge-eating?
Well, here's my favorite way to stop binge-eating.
Every time you're about to put your hand
into the potato chips, or keep taking from that dish of candy,
or have another spoonful of ice cream say this,
"I'm enough, I don't need more."
That's probably going to sound silly and very "Pollyanna"
but here's a fact, when you don't think you're enough,
you will always need more.
And when you know you're enough, you don't need more.
You might like more praise but you don't need it.
And I worked with so many binge-eaters
who say, "You know, I just feel empty inside, I just feel hollow,
"I don't even know what full is. I'm empty,
"and I use food to fill that gap."
Which I understand, except it's an emotional emptiness.
You cannot fill an emotional emptiness with food.
So, next time you're about to take the 25th
tortilla chip, or potato chip, or piece of chocolate
say this, "I'm enough, I don't need more."
Eat slowly, engage with the food, and help yourself out
by not having food in front of you. In tribal times,
we needed to survive, and so we ate food if we saw it.
If the hunters came home with some fish they'd speared,
or a goat, they'd go, wouldn't have went, "Oh, no.
"I don't like goat, I think I'll just pass today."
We learned to eat food
when it was in our line of vision,
that's how we survived. And to this day,
we're not hungry and someone comes in with pizza,
we're not hungry, and then we see food and we want it.
So, when you see food, you are hard-wired, super-coded to eat it,
even if you're not hungry.
And if you binge-eat,
you have to take some better actions.
Don't have dishes that can be out on your table.
No one who's stopped smoking said, "Yeah, I don't smoke
"but I still have cigarettes on the coffee table
"in case somebody else wants one."
No alcoholic says, "I've stopped drinking,
"I have a full liquor cabinet
"in case my friends want to drink."
They understand you've got to get that stuff out.
So, if chocolate is the problem, if sugar calls your name,
if junk food has you go back for more,
don't have it in your house. Of course, I get it,
you've got kids or a partner that likes it.
But if you have to have it in the house,
put it where you can't see it.
When you see food, you want it.
When you eat sugar, you are wired to go back again,
and again, and again. 500 years ago finding honey
and bingeing on it
was a very good thing to do
because sugar was scarce. Now it isn't.
So, you can stop bingeing by recognizing
if you have one piece of chocolate,
you'll have another and another.
If you eat sugar, you want more.
If you wake up in the morning and have a crispy,
toast and jam, toast and jelly, a croissant, a bagel
with jelly or jam, or a muffin, you are just eating cake.
That is not a sunrise muffin,
it's not a breakfast bagel,
it's not a croissant. It is cake.
Very few people will go, "I'm going to have cake for breakfast."
But these things are cake.
And when you wake up your body with sugar
you want more, and more, and more.
I had a problem with sugar for years and years.
I couldn't keep it in the house.
I ate my daughter's Easter eggs,
I ate all the chocolate Christmas decorations off the tree
within an hour of putting them up.
And I found for me that if I had a little bit,
I just wanted more and more.
If I have cereal and milk, which is nothing more than cookies,
you might as well take a packet of cookies,
break them up, put them in a bowl, and add on milk.
Toast and jam, you might as well eat a bar of chocolate.
So, don't start it. It's easier to not start it
than start it and stop. Nobody can eat one peanut,
one potato chip, one piece of candy. It's easier to have none.
And I tried to give up sugar so many times
and I'd succeed for a week, or two weeks,
until I stopped eating it for three months.
That was the day when I ate
all my daughter's chocolate decorations off the tree,
climbed underneath to get the last one,
poked myself in the eye with with a pine needle,
and made myself so ill.
Then I didn't have any sugar
for four months. I knew what it costs me.
And after that, I could always have a little bit.
I often don't, sometimes I do.
And if you binge-eat and you love sugar, try and do this.
Say, "I only eat sugar on a Saturday."
I know in Scandinavia, for instance, they do that.
Children have candy one day a week and it's very effective.
So, you don't have to give it up forever
but if it's affecting you, and running you,
and controlling you. People say,
"I can't have cookies in the house,
"I'm terrified of them." They're not real.
Kill the monster when it's little, don't start it.
No alcoholic says, "You know, I really shouldn't drink
"but I'll just have one little glass of wine."
They understand one glass becomes five
and it's better to have none than some.
But many people who had a problem with drinks
say, "You know, after six months,
"I could have just one glass of wine.
"I learned to moderate it.
So, only you know what to do.
But if you're a binge-eater, you can stop.
No baby is born going, "I can't leave food,
"I don't know what full is."
You know, my little girl in the highchair,
if she didn't like the food, she would go like that
and turn her head away. They start to spit it out.
You cannot make a small baby overeat.
And on birthday parties, she gets so excited about the cake.
So did all her friends and they'd all go, "I want cake, I want cake,"
I'd dish out the cake, they take three bites and go to play.
You know why? Because they didn't have this mind that went,
"Yeah, but that's forbidden, that's naughty,
"that's bad food, I really shouldn't have it.
"Let me binge on it, I don't know when I'm getting it again."
Sugar is the cheapest food. It's not even a food.
It will always be there.
Dialogue with your mind better.
"What will it cost me to eat this? Do I really need this?
"Why do I keep saying it's going to make me feel better?
"I know it makes me worse and I get a sugar hangover,
"a food hangover." Sugar is not your friend, fat is.
And if you're about to binge on chocolate,
try and eat something fatty like just almond butter
from the spoon or an avocado.
Stop eating sugar. If you don't give it to your body,
your body will stop asking about that.
It may take a while, but it absolutely works.