Take away Tasks

For Binge Eating

1. When you feel a binge coming on, ask yourself what you are actually feeling anxious or sad about?  Binge eating is not only habitual, but emotionally triggered.
2. Have a notebook ready to chart what you feel, what may have triggered your feelings.  Self-awareness is an important key to recovery.
3. Make a decision to wait ten minutes before what would be the start of your binge.
4. Sit down at a table to eat your food.  Never eat standing up, on the run, to music, or in front of a television.
5. Wear an elastic bracelet at all times and snap it hard to bring you back to your sense of self control and capacity for self determination.
6. Think about other places, times, or instances in your life where you might also feel this compulsion to do something destructive to yourself. Write about them in your journal.
7. If you find yourself bingeing despite your efforts not to, forgive yourself.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.
8. Be sure to have a supportive person to talk with about this…preferably a therapist who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders.  A friend will do “in a pinch.”
9. Try to find someone at home to eat with when you begin to feel the urge to eat.
10. Don’t buy binge or trigger foods at the market. Keep them out of your pantry.
11. Eat three square meals each day.
12. Understand that any mistake presents a wonderful opportunity for learning about yourself.  Notice how you felt before, during, and after the binge.  What was the hardest part for you?  What might be a reasonable step you could take next time to change this self-destructive behavioral pattern?