How To Stop Binge Eating & Overeating - Your Guide To Nutritional Freedom

Are you perfect all week & then the weekend comes & you lose control?

Maybe you’re perfect all day & then when night comes you eat everything.

If you struggle at all with binge eating or overeating - sometimes until you feel sick…this article & VIDEO(click here to watch on youtube) was made for you.

You & I are going over what you should absolutely NOT do unless you want to keep overeating & stay frustrated. Then we will go over what you can do today to help you stop overeating & bingeing.

Quick Disclaimer - I am a fitness & nutrition coach if you are severely struggling or if you have separate disordered eating habits other than binge/overeating - go to a specialist/therapist if you want to - they will give you more individualized help than I can from this video/article.

What not to do…

You shouldn’t ignore it… you need to work on this & put effort into improving it so you can have a good relationship with food. & You clicked on this video/article so you’re doing something right.

Should you continue or start to count calories?

This isn’t as black & white, it depends. Let me give you an example of when you SHOULD count calories:

One of my online coaching clients Kody, & now a friend, struggled heavily with the binge/restrict cycle. When he was struggling with binge eating he wasn’t using a food scale, only myfitnesspal sometimes. Before coaching, he was eating 1000-1200 calories a day during the week & then on the weekends he’d binge, or if the scale went up he’d binge for a week. He simply wasn’t feeding/fueling his body nearly enough energy, so bingeing was inevitable. Your body RUNS off calories. If you heavily restrict your body of energy your body will make sure it gets energy. So Kody & I worked together agreeing to track but most importantly agreeing to eat the prescribed range of calories I gave him. He lost 26 lbs eating nearly 2.5 times the amount he was before coaching, nearly 3000 calories! He’s currently 3 months into coaching & is almost ready to transition into a muscle-building phase. If you’re in a similar situation I’d suggest greatly increasing your calories, even if that means slower, more sustainable progress.

So when should you NOT continue to count calories?

You should’’t track, or you should take a break from tracking if you find yourself trying to take advantage of calorie counting. What’s that mean? That means if you know you’re maintenance is around 2000 calories & you’re eating 1000-1300 calories a day. That is straight-up taking advantage of your knowledge of calories. So take a break. If you take a break now to better your relationship with food so that you can lose the weight & keep it off later, that sounds like success to me. Although, If you still need some type of structure in your nutrition I have a video (click for video) & article (click for article) going over a plan for how you can lose weight without counting calories.

Intermittent Fasting (IF)

Stay away from IF until you have control of your overeating / bingeing habit. IF is basically controlled bingeing. You eat in a specific amount of time, 8,6,4, sometimes even 2-hour windows where you’re allowed to eat. This will only perpetuate your binge eating habit.

Calorie Cycling

This is where some days you have lower calories & some days you have higher calories. Calorie cycling is amazing but if you have bingeing habits this is NOT a smart idea to try until you have control over those habits.

WHAT you need to do…

Normalize all foods

GOOD food VS BAD food needs to die. Stop labeling food as good/bad. ALL food is good. Some food is more nutrient-dense & other food is more comforting or enjoyable.

Stereotypical GOOD food: chicken/salads/veggies/fruit

Stereotypical BAD food: Burgers/fries/donuts/pizza/ice-cream

One donut doesn’t make you fat just like one salad doesn't make you skinny or shredded.

What does make you fat? Eating in a calorie surplus consistently over time.

What does make you skinny/shredded? Eating in a calorie deficit consistently over time.

That is a fact, so once you accept that, you can realize & accept that all food is okay in moderation.

So practice moderation, eat the foods you regularly binge on every day. Have 1-2 servings of it every day. If that doesn’t work & you end up bingeing on them…do this: Give yourself a challenge for 7 or 30 days to not buy those foods, not have them in your house, don’t go places where they are. After you prove to yourself you don’t need that food & you can go without it, then try to bring it back into your life/diet after that period of time, IF you even want to.

Burst The Snowball Effect

Just like all these tips, it’s not only for now but forever.

This is how a binge works:

1) You either restrict certain food/foods or you restrict calories

2) It becomes too overwhelming after 3-6 days & you have a little “mess up” then you say fuck it, & you go all out on those foods you restricted until you’re absolutely stuffed & feel sick.

3) Then you go back to restricting. Then step 2 & 3 Repeat forever. Unless…

You stop doing step 3. STOP restricting.

If you set a personal spending budget per week & you go over it. Are you going to say fuck it and spend ALL your money? No. you’ll get back on track & stop going over your budget

The same goes for your nutrition, if you go over your calories for 1 day DO NOT allow yourself to say fuck it and eat as much as you can for the next 3 days, get back on track as soon as you can & you won’t lose any progress. Even if you do say fuck it and eat everything you can for 3 days just get back on track the worst you can do is stall or slow progress, you won’t lose any.

The key to stopping bingeing is to stop restricting after a binge. AKA just getting back on track after you overeat. NOT severely restricting calories, NOT adding in crazy cardio routines. Just getting back on track

Accept YOUR progress in overeating/bingeing 

Imagine this: Let’s say you binged once a week for the last month. Now, today, you start working on it. Let’s say one month from today you only binge once or twice. THAT IS PROGRESS.

“But Ted, I still binged!”

No, you went from bingeing 4x per month to only 1-2x. Imagine what your progress will look like one month from then if you keep working on it & focus on being persistent rather than perfect.

Remember failure Is quitting & giving up forever. Small mess-ups along the way are normal & inevitable.

I hope this video & article helps you! If you need tips/advice I always answer my Instagram DM’s or emails daily & I’d be stoked to help you out.

Next week’s video/article is going to be about figuring out how much weight to use in the gym. Going over questions like: Are you using enough weight? Are you using too much weight? Are you using too little weight? & how to find the appropriate amount of weight to use.

Thank you for reading or watching!

I hope this has helped you and if it has…

Please let me know via email! tedgormanpt@gmail.com

Also, if you have any questions about what we talked about today…

Email me, I’d love to answer your questions and give you some advice 🤝

MY LINKS 👇

🤝 Work with me: 1-on-1 online training & nutrition coaching 👉 https://tedshredsfitness.com/workwithted

🥼Transparent Labs - save 10% with code TED 👉 https://athlete.transparentlabs.com/tedshredss

📚 Two 100% FREE guides (1 free training program & 1 free nutrition guide) 👉 https://tedshredsfitness.com/free-guides

📧 Email me your questions or if you want tips/advice 👉 tedgormanpt@gmail.com

📸 DM me on Instagram 👉 @tedshredss https://www.instagram.com/tedshredss/

—————————————-———

Talk soon,

-Ted :)