How to recover from a slip up with compassion
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Georgie: [00:00:00] This is the breaking up with binge eating podcast, where every listen moves you one step closer to complete food freedom hosted by me, Georgie fear and my team at confident eaters.

It's okay, we all make mimistakes. You've heard that so many times, I bet it sounds practically meaningless. It's like a bland Hallmark card inscription with zero power for most of us. Many people who are working on improving their relationship with food such as stopping binge eating or emotional eating, say their number one struggle is how to recover after slipping up. Clearly, the pat advice that, oh, it's okay, we all make mistakes, isn't getting people very far.

Christina: It often goes like this. Ben is trying to stop binge eating. Ben reads books, listens to [00:01:00] podcasts, and picks up some great tips. He starts eating more regularly, stops trying to fast for long stretches of time, and brings healthy meals with him when he goes to work. Since arguments with his kids or wife can be a strong trigger for him to binge, He starts seeing a counselor to help him work on these emotional patterns, and to better handle his anger.

Things are going well. For several weeks, he doesn't binge once. Then, the slip. He's at a graduation party one afternoon, and one of his kids embarrasses him, making jokes at his expense, which he finds more insulting than funny. He doesn't want to lose his cool in front of so many people, but he is seething inside.

As soon as he gets home, he heads to the freezer, starts eating ice cream, and after he finishes that, polishes off cookies, granola, snack bars, and anything else that seems appealing. The rest of the night is a soup of self hating thoughts. Anger, now at himself as well as his son, and deep hopelessness.[00:02:00]

_Another failure_, he thinks, _why do I even try to be different_? He decides to cancel his counseling appointment that week, because he is so ashamed of how he acted._ A person like me is never going to get better, _he says. _Why waste my money?_ He thinks about packing healthy lunches, but decides he's lost the motivation.

_I'll start again next month,_ he tells himself, but now, two and a half months later, he still hasn't packed a lunch, hasn't been to a counseling appointment, or really tried to stick to a consistent schedule of meals and snacks. Where in this all too common story did things go sideways? Where should Ben focus doing something differently?

If it were you, where would you focus on doing something differently? To these questions, Ben replies, _I know I should not have gotten so angry at the party. He was only joking. And if I was really infuriated, I should have done something other than eating so much_. Most clients will say something really similar.[00:03:00]

Now Ben's not wrong, but I disagree with him. I think for where he is now in his recovery, the most productive place to work is on the sequence of thoughts and reactions he had after the eating. I would steer him toward looking at this first because it's more a fundamental skill and one that should ideally be addressed as early as possible.

In other words, knowing what to do after a slip is often more important than perfecting the art of preventing them. Yes, we want to prevent them too, but if we focus all of our efforts on the things we need to do to prevent binges or overeating incidents, a client is left with major problems when slips happen.

and they will happen.

Georgie: When a person doesn't have adequate skills in managing slips, it hurts. A ton. If this is you, you'll know because you feel massive distress if you overeat. You might panic. It's highly likely you [00:04:00] consider or actually carry out some self harming behavior like inappropriate ways of purging calories, Punishing yourself or turning to substances because you cannot bear the amount of tension or anguish you feel. I describe the post overeating condition to clients as having four levels of pathology. On the most severe end, which we can call level one, a person is so distressed after overeating That they cannot engage in rational learning or problem solving, and they use maladaptive aka harmful methods to deal with the feelings. There's a lot of shame, self hatred, irrational thinking, and often continued decisions which only make the problem worse. If you get so upset about overeating that you compulsively get more food, you're here. Thoughts like, I already ate X, might as well keep going. Or, I ruined it, no point in stopping now. Or, now it's back to the beginning, I have to start [00:05:00] all over, are also indicators that you may be in this stage. Level 2 reflects significant healing from a person who started at level 1, but you might find yourself in level 2 to start. In this place, the person still feels very upset. But they're able to tolerate it without causing themselves additional harm. It sounds like this. I'm so uncomfortable. I hate this. I'm sad. I'm disappointed. I feel like I'm going to panic and I just want the hours to go by so my stomach will not feel so full. I'm just going to sit here and try and read or sleep or meditate or do something to pass the time. What you can hear is, This person's in touch with what they are feeling. They know it's only going to go on for so long, and they are riding it out. It's brave. It's hard. But it's progress. Getting here means that a person can recognize and resist the self defeating thoughts like, I quit. Might as well, it's hopeless, or I [00:06:00] have to start over. Note, in level 2, a person is still fully engaged with coping to get through the emotions. They aren't in a place where they can rationally problem solve or consolidate learning. If you wonder, why do I keep doing the same thing? Why don't I learn? A lot of the time the answer is because you are too upset. It's not your fault. The human brain is not very good at analyzing or storing new information when it's in a crisis, which is why we want to keep moving up the ladder from stage two to stage three. This is where a person still feels upset and they feel regretful, but it's not so overwhelming. They do have to cope with it, but they still have some bandwidth for thinking about preventing it or problem solving. It sounds more like, ugh, I wish I hadn't done that. Next time I really should just yank my kid aside and say, hey, jokes where you call me your fat, bald, old man really hurt my [00:07:00] feelings. Or the person might think, I could have stopped after the ice cream and just forced myself to go to bed. Do you hear what I'm hearing? Problem solving is in there. Prevention of this happening again in the future is crossing the person's mind. That leads us to stage four, which is where people get through recovery, or maybe they've always lived there if they lucked out and never had food issues. I couldn't tell you, I started in stage one. This sounds like, whoa, I'm totally stuffed. And that's it. No emotional drama. They don't take a hit to their confidence or self esteem. They don't feel shame. It's just a fact. And they move on. So how does a person move from stage one to stages two, three, and four? We'll share some do's and don'ts.

Christina: First, don't. Focus on how much food or calories you consumed or the weight you imagine gaining. This is upsetting and distracting you from actually learning from the experience, which is what we're [00:08:00] after. Getting more upset is part of staying in stages one and two. So the goal is to be less upset.

Do focus on calming yourself. and moving into thinking about the behavior or decisions that you want to make differently next time. Don't put off restarting until Monday, the first of the month or some other arbitrary time point. You can start making better decisions immediately. So why wouldn't you Do clean the slate right away. Focus your mind on what you can do now to ride out the immediate discomfort. Maybe you do this by wearing comfortable clothes, laying down, going for a walk, or taking a drink of water. And at your next meal, making the healthy choices that move you closer to your goals.

Georgie: Don't tell yourself you're starting over. This is massively disheartening, and it's also not accurate. Forming new habits is a process which [00:09:00] always involves slip ups and mistakes. To put it another way, trying to change a complex array of food habits and thinking patterns without a single slip up? is an impossible task. If every time you make a mistake you say, well now it's back to square one, you've created a situation in which you literally cannot succeed. You'll never do it perfectly from start to finish. No one does. The people who make lasting changes don't tell themselves they are starting over each time they slip up.

Christina: This idea of starting over or having erased our progress most frequently comes about because people think of their goals only in terms of weight. In this one dimensional view, pounds lost are really all that matters. If you lose five pounds but then regain them, You can make the argument that in terms of gravitational pull you are back to where you started, but then you are making the choice to walk all the way back to the start line when you could have [00:10:00] just kept walking forward.

There's no reason to choose an outlook which is depressing and demotivating, so don't accept it if your mind offers up this interpretation.

Georgie: Instead, here's a do. Tell yourself you are wiser for each lesson learned. You're continuing the journey where you left off. Imagine the distance between your current self, and the goal as being a really long plank, like a series of 2x4s laid end to end through a muddy field or swamp. You have to walk that whole distance along the plank, and I can tell you you're not gonna make it without stepping off to the left or the right. When you do step off, your shoe's gonna get muddy, but you just get back on and keep putting one foot in front of the other. You start moving forward again. Every step is you gaining more practice at the behaviors and skills you need to be at your goal. You don't lose practice because you have a few steps in the [00:11:00] mud, you only gain it. Even the slip ups help you improve because you can learn, oh those wet algae covered spots in the wood are really slippery, next time I'll step a little over them instead of directly on them. From times that you've slipped and wiped out, You learn the things that are essential to build confidence and resilience.

Christina: That brings us to another don't. Don't call yourself names. Do practice self compassion. Recognize the difficulty you are or were dealing with. Treat your pain like something that matters. Comfort yourself. Be kind and gentle with yourself while you are sorting this out. If you need a friend to talk to, or are considering hiring professional help, getting that support is much more productive, Then calling yourself all the worst names and labels, you know,

Georgie: Don't make it part of a fixed mindset story. For example, this is one more piece of evidence that I can't [00:12:00] do this. That I will never be a healthy eater. That I'll never be able to control myself when emotional. I'm just broken. Permanently. I can't learn or change. You've probably heard Christina and I talk about a fixed mindset on other episodes of this show.

And you also can learn a lot about it by googling or watching some of the excellent YouTube videos. Instead, here's a do. Try a growth mindset, or in other words, make your slip up part of the you overcoming story. That might sound like, I've learned a lot of things in my lifetime, and this is the one I'm in the middle of learning. It's not easy, which is why so many people fight with food and health behaviors for years before they have them ironed out. I'm not quitting. This is part of what everybody goes through. The setbacks and slip ups are part of the process.

Christina: Don't try to compensate or undo. This effort to fix things underlies many maladaptive [00:13:00] behaviors, like compulsive exercising, under eating, purging behaviors, and fasting. Do, instead, apologize to yourself and commit to making the healthy choices you want to be part of your new normal, not a more extreme or overcorrection.

If you want to get to the place where you eventually eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full, then aim for that, even in the immediate aftermath of a binge. Don't try to ignore your hunger once it returns, or you're more likely to continue that dysregulated eating.

Georgie: Don't shame yourself or believe that you are differently or uniquely flawed. Do look at examples of how other people who have succeeded handled their setbacks. If part of your mind is thinking you must be the only one who has this problem, I guarantee you can find evidence to the contrary if you set your mind to finding it. Every single person I've worked with has had setbacks. [00:14:00] And no one made a clean run from start to finish. I still have times I overeat. And I've been working at this for a long time. I was a solid stage one for many, many years. And getting to stage three or four has taken practice. But it's not magic. It's taken exactly the lessons outlined in this podcast and some one on one help from professionals. If you've got questions or just want to say hi to Christina and I join the breaking up with binge eating Facebook group, look for the turquoise cover art that looks like the podcast and let us know what's on your mind. You may also find it helpful to look for the mistake management episode of this podcast, where we talk about how to deal with making mistakes that aren't per se, overeating or binge eating. But as we know, any sort of slip up or error can put us into a negative mind state. So there's extra skills in that one that we didn't cover in this episode. Until next time, take care, be nice to yourself and know that we believe in [00:15:00] you.