My name is Dr Emma Gray, and I'm the Lead Clinical Psychologist at the British CBT & Counselling
Service.
And in this video, I'm going to explain how to stop binge eating.
Now, binge eating is a really common problem.
At the milder end, it causes weight gain, low mood, and anxiety, and at the more severe
end, it's a symptom of an eating disorder.
Now, if you are bingeing about two to three times a month, this video should help you
to resolve the problem.
If you're bingeing more than that, it's likely that you'll need some professional help to
support you—to sort things out.
Okay, so, there are four strategies to help you to stop binge eating.
The first one is to develop a balanced and regular pattern of eating because one of the
main triggers of bingeing is hunger.
So if you can stabilise your blood sugar with three meals, and two to three snacks a day,
you will reduce your vulnerability to having a hunger-driven binge.
Your meals need to be a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fruit and vegetables, and your snacks
need to be carbohydrate-based—complex carbohydrate-based—in order to stabilise your blood sugar.
The second strategy is to limit your alcohol intake.
Now, alcohol lowers your impulse control, but it also lowers your blood sugar; and both
of these make you vulnerable to bingeing.
So you want to try not to have more than one to two units of alcohol at any one time.
The third strategy is to look at your mood—this is the other trigger for bingeing—so, your
first trigger is hunger, the next trigger is your mood, in particular, feeling angry,
feeling depressed, feeling anxious, and feeling lonely.
So what you want to do is identify the source of your mood—the reason that you're feeling
bad—by identifying the thoughts behind that feeling.
This is quite tricky to do, so, again, you may need some professional help to do this,
but at the end, I'm going to recommend a book that can talk you through the steps to do
this—and maybe I'll do another video as well.
The final strategy is to try and build your self-esteem and your confidence.
A belief that you're not good enough seems to be strongly related to bingeing.
Now, building self-esteem and confidence is quite a complex process and, again, you may
need some professional help to do this.
But I will be doing another video quite shortly about building self-esteem.
In the meantime, you can start by trying to keep a positive log, so this is a log of the
things that have happened in the day that you should be proud of, that have gone well,
that you've managed okay.
And this is a way to start to counteract that self-criticism that seems to drag down our
self-esteem and confidence.
And it's also a way of building your self-acceptance.
Quite a good book to help you with binge eating is a book called, 'Overcoming Binge Eating'
by Christopher G. Fairburn, and I'll put a link to that book in the description—it's
readily available on Amazon.
That's a book based on CBT strategies which is currently the most effective treatment
for binge eating.
Okay, so, I hope this video was helpful, if it was, please like, subscribe, and share
with your friends.
And if you still have questions, please post them in the comments below.
I'll see you soon.