How You Can Beat Your Next Binge

When you suffer from Binge Eating Disorder, you are in constant need of different ideas to help you curb a binge. Times get tough and sometimes doing the same thing over and over doesn't work like it used to. I know this from experience. I struggled with Binge Eating Disorder for over eight years. Eight years of my life that was spent thinking about my next binge. Eight years of my life that took away from the person that I really was. Eight years of isolating myself from the people that loved me the most. Eight years that stole my personality away from me. Eight years of being absolutely miserable and hating myself. Eight years way too long to deal with Binge Eating Disorder. I have been fully 100% recovered for close to three years now. Throughout my battle with Binge Eating Disorder, I discovered some tricks that really helped me stay on track. The next time that you are looking to curb a binge, try some of these suggestions. I truly believe that practicing these tricks will help you little by little to curb an upcoming binge and bring you that much closer to living your life binge-free! Say goodbye to Binge Eating Disorder! First of all, as hard as it may be, do not focus on any sort of dieting. I believe that the cycle of dieting, which includes depriving yourself of certain foods will only cause you to binge on those foods, thus perpetuating the binge cycle over and over. Focus on healing yourself and forming a healthy relationship with food. Do not focus on calories, fat, carbohydrates, or any of that right now. When you have established a healthy relationship with food again, then you can begin to think about losing any weight that you gained. If you want to read labels so that you can make healthier choices and be more informed, that is one thing. If you are going to obsess about the labels, I would suggest you not doing this yet. While I was binge eating, I tried to think about how certain foods would nourish me. I knew that healthier foods would benefit me more than eating junk (binge food). I started to implement thinking about the balance of eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and protein in every meal. When I focused on getting these items into my daily food intake, there was no room to eat the foods that I used to binge on. When I go out to dinner or if I eat at home, I make sure to eat a dinner salad before my meal. I would much rather get full on spinach lettuce and vegetables, if it meant that it would help curb any hunger that could lead me to binge. While eating out, if I order a regular entrée, I either split it with someone, or only eat half of it. Otherwise, I will order an appetizer since it is a smaller portion. When I use to binge eat, I hardly exercised. Eventually I started to put into practice small things that would provide some kind of exercise for me like parking far away from where I was going instead of trying to find an upfront spot. At least a further walk in a parking lot will count for something! If I was going to a particular store in the mall, I would park at the opposite end of where the store was located. This meant that I had to walk through the whole mall to get to the store of my choice. Again, every little bit helps. I learned this next trick from a forum that I regularly visit online. One of the things that I binged on very regularly was chips. I learned to visualize the ingredients that make up the food that you want. So whenever I wanted chips, I would think about the ingredients that went in to making chips. When I started to think in terms of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, a ton of salt, and potatoes that were probably covered in dirt the appeal was not there for me anymore. Who wants to eat a dirty potato, a bottle of oil, and many handfuls of salt? Not me! Whenever I ate at a restaurant and was full but still had food on my plate in front of me, I would put my napkin over my food so that I didn't have to be reminded that there was still food for me to consume. If this didn't work (because really how hard is it to remove the napkin and eat), I would pour salt, pepper, and anything else that I could find on top of it so that I was guaranteed to be finished eating. Whenever I ate at home and was full, I would douse my food with Windex or some kind of cleaner so that I was sure not to eat anymore of it. Of course, you could throw the food in your trashcan, but it still might be tempting for you to fetch it from inside the trash. I learned to make a list to take to the grocery store and did my best to stick to that list. Another important thing that I learned is to go to the grocery store after eating a meal. If I went on an empty stomach, I would end up buying a ton of junk because everything looked good to me. I never kept the foods that I binged on in the house. Never. It's impossible for me to eat a binge food when I don't have it. When I binged, I did not eat breakfast on a regular basis. Sometimes I would have breakfast and sometimes I wouldn't. When I started eating breakfast every single day, no matter what the day's activities were, it helped jumpstart my day and helped curb my binges because I wasn't ravenous by lunchtime. I always kept healthy snacks in my purse when I wasn't at home. This helped me to continue my regular snacking without having to find food while I was out. The times that I forgot to bring my snacks were the times when I would have a fast food binge or eat foods that did not give me the nourishment I needed. I would get fuller faster when I drank a full glass of water before each meal. This tended to fill me up a lot so that I didn't eat as much. If I had a craving for an unhealthy binge type of food, I would make a healthier version of it at home. For example, if I wanted a bean burrito, instead of going to Taco Bell, I would make black beans and guacamole at home and put it on a whole wheat tortilla with some salsa. At least I was not ignoring my craving only to binge on that food later. Making a healthier version of my craving at home never made me feel deprived and I didn't give myself the option of ordering a bean burrito plus a lot more food from Taco Bell. I learned to never buy a binge food in a big quantity. If I wanted chips, I would buy a small package of single serving chips instead of a whole bag. If you like chocolate, buy the smallest serving that you can find so that it is gone once you eat it and there is no room for going back for more. Finally, something that really helped me curb binges was to create a routine of eating that I could stick to for the majority of the time. This meant that I ate breakfast, sometimes a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner, and sometimes a snack after that. When I ate every few hours instead of just when I felt hungry, my body felt full and I didn't binge as much. The times that I did wait until I felt hungry proved to be disastrous for me. I would end up eating at least double the amount that I would have if I stuck with my regular routine or I would binge. I hope that some of these tricks really prove to be helpful to you and to ending Binge Eating Disorder.

7 Rituals To Improve Your Life and Business

What do Valentine's Day, Christmas, dating, dinner and a movie, marriage and couples have in common? Rituals. A ritual is defined as 'any method of doing something in which the details are always faithfully repeated.' To relate this to your life, rituals include: the time you wake up, how your brush your teeth, the route you take to work - you get the idea. Rituals give life meaning and help us celebrate milestones in our lives. They offer security, stability and routine and a sense of calmness to an otherwise chaotic existence. Rituals date back thousands of years with the ancient Egyptians. Theirs was a culture seeped in traditions. Eating, drinking, bathing, hunting and burying the dead were a succession of rituals. Over centuries, mankind lost the importance of rites. However, many of us in the 21st century are reconsidering traditions and adding them to our lives as we desperately seek meaning during this increasingly shallow and disconnected time. If you want to relax, enjoy your life and feel more connected to others, consider adding rituals to your life. Try these seven secrets: 1. Create a morning ritual to help you wake up refreshed and ready to tackle your day. You might get up a few minutes early to: read, walk your dog, jog, play an instrument, write, do yoga - it doesn't matter, just claim this time as your own. That way you have time for yourself and don't feel resentful if your day is hectic. 2. When you're at work, create a ritual to start your day. This might include: having a coffee at your desk, checking your PDA for appointments, not answering phonecalls for 15 minutes while you read and respond to urgent emails. You might also: set an agenda for the day, plan goals for the week...the list is endless. 3. At work, find ways to meet colleagues and socialize during a lunch hour instead of running a million errands. Also, if you're challenged and need help, you'll have some friends that can work with you. If you work alone, join a network group that is conveniently located near you, cost efficient and helps you build your business. Make it a ritual to attend the meetings and meet new people and create a ritual to record new contacts. 4. Create time saving rituals for work. For example, only check email three times a day, organize your files, file away unused papers as soon as possible; create 'time boundaries' where you can't be interrupted. Close the door, let the message machine take a call, get up and take mini breaks every 90 minutes (for productivity). 5. At the end of a busy week, designate a night as Movie or board game night with friends or family. If being at home doesn't excite you, you could sign up for sports and get out your weekly frustrations. The key is to make time for something special once you complete work; this offers you a buffer to help ease you through a hectic week as you have something to look forward to doing. 6. Create home rituals to ease into your time off. These rituals may include a half hour nap before you start dinner, a walk with your dog, watching your favorite T.V. show, etc. Be sure to add play to your list. Include ways to decompress, times to exercise, time with your partner, friends, family and time alone. 7. Create self-care rituals that put your needs first. If you think this is selfish, consider the rules on airplanes. Parents have access to oxygen masks before their children so they can care for their family in the event of an emergency. You're no good to anyone if you're exhausted, resentful or angry because you don't have time for yourself. For example, get enough rest, make time for things you enjoy such as: walking, yoga, working out at the gym, playing an instrument, biking, reading, writing...whatever makes you happy.