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Background: Examine the physiological and psychological components of binge and emotional eating, and several therapeutic techniques, including attuned eating, to help clients reconnect with their inner voices and explore thoughts and behaviors that lead to depression, self-loathing and despair and perpetuate the binge eating cycle.
This session will explore how binge eating disconnects mind from body, separates soul from hope, and leads to the bleakness of despair, self-loathing and isolation.
The physiological and psychological contributors to binge eating, including how restrictive dieting and stress distorts the body’s hormonal guidance system for eating, will be reviewed.
We’ll discuss a variety of therapeutic techniques that can help binge eaters discover what is underneath food commands/rules and disconnection, including a stepped approach to reconnecting with inner cues for eating.
1) A description of body and mind disconnection and how it relates to binge behaviors
2) The relationships between body dissatisfaction, dieting, and stress and their roles in setting up binge eating and weight gain
3) The physiological effects of restrictive dieting on the hormones that control eating cues
- Grehlin
- Leptin
- PPY
4) The psychological effects of restrictive dieting and binge eating, including depression, isolation and despair
5) The effects of weight stigma in reinforcing self-loathing, isolation and despair
6) Techniques to explore what’s underneath food commands and disconnection, including:
- A “creating space” experiential exercise
- A “two-chair work” audience brainstorm
- A “thank you strategy” demonstration
- An introduction to the “the 9-year-old girl”
- Journaling
- Intrinsic movement
- Eating regular meals and eating slowly
- Practicing self compassion
- Practicing “food house” visualization as a technique to invite the exploration of food rules, including good and bad foods, all-or-nothing thinking, the “shoulds” and “should nots”
7) A stepped approach to becoming an attuned eater
The complexities of the factors that contribute to binge eating are physiological, psychological and spiritual. Psychologically and spiritually, binge eating disconnects mind from body, separates soul from hope, and leads to the bleakness of despair, depression and isolation. Physiologically, binge eating enables a disconnection from the body's cues of hunger and satiety. Without awareness of inner voices, including internal cues for eating, emotional or binge eating increases in an attempt to fill the emptiness that is often unarticulated.
Binge eating often occurs before the onset of dieting, but dieting is usually undertaken once weight gain occurs. Dieting, restricting and deprivation then complicate the problem by stunting hunger and satiety cues, which set up and/or trigger further bingeing. This session will review emerging research that shows how dieting sets in motion a hormonal domino effect that dysregulates eating, exacerbating the mind-body disconnection. On a psychological level, the cycle of restricting/bingeing is an invitation to self-loathing.
The practice of attuned eating can help binge eaters negotiate the labyrinth of healing and start to listen to their inner voices and what the emptiness is trying to tell them. As they learn to stay present to the eating experience through attuned eating, it no longer serves as a way to escape from feeling. This session will help eating disorder professionals better understand how to help binge eaters discover what underlies their disconnection using specific therapeutic interventions for reconnecting with their inner voices and their bodies' cues for eating.
In working to unravel the Celtic knot of emotional or binge eating, practicing attuned eating can allow clients to explore thoughts and behaviors and determine how these patterns have served them in the past. To help clients reconnect and think about what they feel and feel about what they think, we’ll explore several therapeutic interventions, including attuned eating, that provide insight to food commands and the disconnection.
Darla Breckenridge, MS, is a Vermont psychologist-masters working at Green Mountain at Fox Run, a women’s healthy weight retreat. She specializes in cognitive behavior therapy and has been using her expertise to empower woman to live fully. Her continued studies include mindfulness, binge eating, assertiveness training and self compassion. Darla’s classes are entertaining and enlightening and she brings a joie de vivre to all aspects of her work. In 2011, Darla co authored Journey into Self: A Hundred Days of Guided Mindful Reflection.
Marsha Hudnall, MS, RD, has been with Green Mountain at Fox Run, a women’s healthy weight retreat, since 1986, where her mission has been to help participants learn to enjoy food and eating while successfully managing their weight and health. Marsha has written seven books and for magazines, had her work published in professional journals, and appeared on radio and television to spread the message that healthy eating isn’t about restriction, but about enjoying food in a way that makes us feel well physically and mentally. Marsha currently sits on the board of directors of the Binge Eating Disorder Association.
