Breaking Up With Binge Eating

In binge eating recovery, many people believe they should be able to keep every food in the house, eat every food casually, and handle every food environment without support. But recovery is not about proving you can do everything the hard way.
In this episode, we talk about guardrails: practical supports that make desired behaviors easier and reduce the setups that tend to make eating feel chaotic. Guardrails might include buying smaller portions, putting certain foods out of sight, using a Kitchen Safe, asking for help at home, planning food when traveling, or choosing the conditions that make a tricky food feel calmer.
You’ll learn why guardrails are not the same as bans, why needing support does not mean you’re failing, and how to tell the difference between a supportive guardrail and punitive restriction.

New to the show? Start Here: https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here
Pick the listening path that fits what you’re dealing with right now.

In this episode, we’re talking about exhaustion urges: urges to binge, graze, order food, snack compulsively, or keep eating when your system is depleted and food starts to look like the fastest available relief.
Instead of focusing mostly on what to do once you’re already too exhausted to care, we’re moving upstream. Exhaustion urges often start earlier than the urge itself, when your battery is being drained by skipped breaks, overpacked schedules, under-planned recovery, travel, big events, and pushing through when you are already under-resourced.
You’ll learn how to use the Battery Check, why breaks work best before you desperately need them, how to tell growth discomfort from depletion, why rescheduling can be a recovery skill, and how to use the simple in-the-moment tool Get Horizontal when you’re already below 20%.

New to the show? Start Here: https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here
Pick the listening path that fits what you’re dealing with right now.

In this episode, we’re looking at restriction urges: the urges that say, “Get it while you can.” These urges are often not just about hunger or cravings. They are scarcity alarms. Sometimes the scarcity is physical, like not eating enough or going too long without food. Sometimes it is psychological, like food rules, guilt, or the feeling that you are technically allowed to eat something but still shouldn’t want it. Sometimes it comes from the threat of future restriction: “Tomorrow I’ll be good,” “After this weekend I’m stopping,” “I need to drop a few pounds before vacation,” or “This is the last time.”
The main question from this episode is: “What am I afraid there is not enough of?” Maybe the answer is food, satisfaction, dessert, time, pleasure, freedom, permission, comfort, choice, or rest. Once you can hear the scarcity signal, you can respond with reliable permission instead of more control.

New to the show? Start Here: https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here
Pick the listening path that fits what you’re dealing with right now.

Bingeing can be painful and costly, but it often persists because it is doing a job.
Not working because it is harmless or because you want to keep doing it, but because it may have been doing something important for you. Bingeing may provide relief, comfort, rest, numbness, pleasure, rebellion, privacy, or a way to get through moments that feel impossible.
In this episode, we look at bingeing as a coping strategy that may have helped you survive, especially if it began when you were young and had fewer choices. The goal is not to romanticize bingeing, but to understand what need it has been meeting so you can begin meeting that need earlier, more directly, and with less harm.

New to the show? Start Here: https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here
Pick the listening path that fits what you’re dealing with right now.

The First 60 Seconds: Don’t Let the Urge Become a Story (The Urge Proof Life — Episode 4)
There’s a tiny moment when an urge first appears—before the binge, before the “might as well,” before the story starts writing itself. In this episode, Georgie explains why the first danger often isn’t the urge itself, but the meaning we attach to it: I can’t handle this, I already know how this ends, I’m going to binge.
You’ll learn the “two waves” of an urge: the first wave is sensation, and the second wave is interpretation. The skill in the first 60 seconds isn’t to make the urge disappear or diagnose it perfectly, it’s to meet it with boring neutrality: “This is an urge. That’s all. It’ll be here for a while, and then it will leave.” From there, you can choose one small support, and later use the Urge Map if needed.
Try this week: Practice the boring sentence three times when an urge appears. You don’t have to stop eating, solve the urge, or do anything perfectly. Just notice what happens when you decline the story.

New to the show? Start Here: https://breakingupwithbingeeating.transistor.fm/start-here
Pick the listening path that fits what you’re dealing with right now.