Binge Eating And Bulimia – What Is The Answer/

Binge Eating And Bulimia – What Is The Answer

Posts Tagged ‘binge eating’

Binge Eating And Bulimia – What Is The Answer

Posted on: May 25th, 2012 by Debbie 2 Comments

Hi,

Its Debbie Williams here from Birmingham UK. I’m one of the first JustBeWell NLP Master practitioners and hypnotherapists and today I’m going to post about binge eating and bulimia.

I did both for nearly 15 years and before that I was the 2nd fattest child in school, so I was pretty messed up weight and food-wise.

Yet it’s one of the areas I now specialise in, after using NLP and hypnosis on myself to fully recover from my bulimia and binge eating. I have been totally free now for about 15 years.

In my Birmingham clinic Ive helped many others to be free of binge eating and bulimia from TV presenters, athletes, teenage boys to 50 year old bulimics.

How do you work with binge eating and bulimia?

Firstly binge eating and bulimia can sometimes be almost the same thing with the only difference being the bulimic throws up after a binge whilst the binge eater gets fatter and fatter until it gets so uncomfortable then they diet!

First 3 letters of diet should be a warning that it’s not a good thing to do as the diet industry has a failure rate over 90%. Why would any sane person diet?

Well, we have been trained, advertised at, promoted at with junk food and extra large portions that we no longer know how to eat in a way that feels in balance with our mind, body and spirit. Its a billion dollar industry which doesn’t always have our health at the top of the list!

Binge eating and bulimia, a solution?

The first thing I do with clients is to help them change their focus onto what they really want. Many do not know and some have burst into tears when I’ve asked them what would they do with the extra time they would have if I could tap a magic wand and make their binging go away for good. It’s the realisation of how lost they have been in their binging they’ve forgotten who they really are.

I suggest we go in training to master skills on how to be lean (they like this) and how to be happy and healthy. When you know about whats really in some of our food it can drop your desire for it instantly.

Lean for life

We can retrain ourselves to eat as a lean, healthy happy person does by copying what they do until it becomes second nature.

With NLP and hypnotherapy we can make it easier to model what naturally lean healthy people do and many, many times 2 or 3 sessions can be the catalyst for brand new behaviours and feelings towards food, leaving the bulimia and binge eating in the past.

For others more support is necessary whilst they not only learn to eat as a lean person does, they also learn ways to process their emotions and other triggers that have led to a binge eating episode as food has been their drug of choice to deal with their feelings.

I give my clients simple tick sheets in which they tick when they feel they are “doing”a new behaviour which is taking them towards becoming lean for life.

The focus is 90% on the solution of learning lean and healthy peoples strategies and “not” on food (although I do get them to have a plan of foods they love to eat and would look forward to, they can check in advance that eating this way this week will actually help them to be lean and it should include a bit of junk type food)

The idea is to get more ticks next week than this week and to “grow into better habits” and to have a record of what they did in case they fall of track they can easily get back on.

I have 7 main areas we work on. One simple one ( which helps all addictions) is using procrastination as a positive. By this I mean saying to the urges to binge “yes, I’ll have this later, not now, later” to help ride over the urges to binge as most people don’t realise any addictive urges only last a few minutes at most.

I also find when clients use my self hypnosis recordings they get quicker results as most of my hypnosis has suggestions of the false appetite going away on holiday for good and to connect with who they really are, learning to be kind,  nurture and like themselves.

I’ve had clients who’ve listened to a couple and got so far, then come to Birmingham to see me, they tend to go out with a few more recordings and focus on the goal of learning to be lean, healthy and happy.

You could study NLP for yourself and gradually work through all the issues tying you to binging. It will take time though as there is no specific trained NLP strategies for bulimia. My colleagues Kathy Welter-Nichols in Canada and Steve Tromans in London also use NLP and hypnosis very effectively to help with  bulimia.

How to be happy

The happy part is covering emotional intelligence also and learning to lighten up and enjoy life. I always suggest keeping a feel good, happiness journal to record their successes and joys in life.

I know not everyone will do this but I find when they do it really pays of in more good feelings. We do deal with the deeper issues as and when they arise rather than searching in the past for every negative experience that has made them feel “less than”.

How to be lean and healthy

The lean and healthy part is devising a plan gradually working towards foods close to nature (which is what our system thrives on) plus a bit of junk/ binge food eaten in a specific way which if they follow the guidelines will allow them to have more ticks on the tick sheet.

Discovering how the food makes them feel over time helps to break the hold that food had on them. It also allows me to quickly find out if a food is a real trigger for them if they don’t stick to the guidelines and so in the next session we can reduce the desire for chocolate,  crisps or bread whatever tips them over the edge.

I worked on GMTV with Paul McKenna a few years ago with helping the nation overcome their addictions to certain foods. I helped the “Tamworth crisp crunchers” overcome their crisp addiction and within 20 minutes it was gone.

I have recorded so many around food, binge eating, bulimia and weight loss, stop overeating and lean for life all available from the www.justbewell.com web shop. Including  ‘Ditch the dairy” which can eliminate cravings for ice cream, cheese, cakes,  pizza and chocolate ( I have a specific one for just chocolate).

Even Miles who edited them for me found he ate less as he just didn’t fancy those foods somehow much to his partners surprise.

I normally run my Lean for life courses over 4 weeks but I’m looking to do some one day events in the future. If you want to come to Birmingham for this event please or would like to chat about how I may be able to help you then please feel free to contact me – Debbie’s Contact Page

For further information about my recordings look here – Debbie Williams Recordings

And do also feel free to make comments or ask questions here on this blog

Dealing with Binge Drinking and Binge Eating problems

Posted on: May 9th, 2012 by Nick 7 Comments

In my JBW Leeds and Manchester clinics I regularly see clients who have issue with binge drinking and binge eating. On the surface these can be seen as very different issues, but in my experience there are lots of similar patterns and often the approaches that work best with all binge type problems are identical.
When clients make contact at that exact point in time they have realised that they really need to change this problem behaviour. It may be that they reached a low point or in many cases their relationships in either personal or professional life have been so affected that they have to now find a solution. Often clients with binge issues have developed an “all or nothing” way of thinking and feeling. It’s a bit like a car that only has first or sixth gear as choices and nothing in between. I had one client who had binge eating problems who if she had what she called “a good day” would eat healthily and at a sensible pace. If she had what she called “a bad day” she would go to the local supermarket, fill up her basket with donuts and similar foods and then proceed to binge until she felt better. She had had all kinds of different therapy, kept food diaries and analyzed her situation at some length. None of these approaches had worked to date as many involved her thinking increasingly about food! Part of my role was to assist her in finding out how to create some better choices in what she ate and when she ate. To date all my clients who have had binge eating and binge drinking issues have been types that are highly mentally active and who in most cases use these skills with great success in some areas of life. The difficulty they have is that in relation to food or drink they can’t find any sort of braking system, so everything in terms of how they eat or drink is going far too fast. They literally have adopted this “all or nothing” behaviour and no amount of thinking has any useful affect. It’s like the whole world is now seen through this particular lens.
One of the keys in resolving this is to learn how to start to think and feel differently so the feeling of having to eat or drink in this way simply doesn’t occur in the same way. It’s also important to identify externally typical factors that collude to encourage the problem. One binge eating client found that he constantly bought chocolate bars when he filled up his car with petrol. He only ever added ten pounds worth of fuel each day and each time he also purchased a number of chocolate bars which he then ate once he drove off the forecourt. He was actually not even aware that he did this each day as it had become a pattern of behaviour he just did. Similarly binge drinkers tend to have specific times and places where they adopt this behaviour. Nobody when they first open their eyes on being born into this world thinks to themselves or blurts out loud “Mine’s a pint of Tetley’s” or “I’ll have five of those jam donuts” These behaviours are “learned behaviours” Just as any of us can learn unhelpful habits we too can learn with the right tools to think and feel differently. The key is to change the thinking process which then changing the feeling process and the overall behaviour. Even longstanding issues can usually be greatly helped in a relatively short period of time.

Nick Kemp