Binge eating is just one type of emotional eating. In other words, it’s using food in a compulsive way to deal with uncomfortable feelings. Binge eating affects millions of people and is more common than both anorexia and bulimia combined. Binge eating is often used to quell anxiety or fill a gnawing emptiness inside. However, no matter how much food gets stuffed in, binging simply can’t deal with the feelings, whatever those feelings might be.

What the cycle of binge eating does do successfully, however, which is why you keep relying on it as a coping mechanism, is that it changes your mind’s path. For example, if your mental train is on a particular track of thinking, binge eating has you switch tracks and go in a different direction. If you were thinking about something troubling (your job or a relationship or an insecurity), binging stops those thoughts for a few moments, puts you in what I call a food trance, and then redirects your thoughts to ones of guilt and regret about what you ate. These thoughts might not be pleasant but often they’re more acceptable than what you were originally thinking about. Not to mention that the foods that are typically binge foods (peanut butter, cheese, ice-cream, chips, baked goods) alter your brain chemistry in a way that gives you a surge of calm feelings.

No matter how much you are binging you can take certain steps to preventing your next binge:

1.Keep Things Organized

Many people report binging when they get overwhelmed with chores and responsibilities. If you stay on top of things you’re less likely to use a binge to procrastinate or escape. Create systems, pay your bills, ask for help and don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

2. Chill Out

Knowing how to manage your own anxiety is a critical factor in avoiding binges. Whether you use walking, reading, meditating, or sports, to calm yourself down, knowing what particularly works for you is key. Experiment with different things until you find things that reduce your level of anxiety.

3. Have a Solid Support System

Having people to go to when you need to vent, get advice or hear you out is important. Remembering that you’re not alone and having solid people in your life that you can honestly share your struggles with can make a huge difference. A therapist, online community,  or support group can also help.

4. Don’t Keep Binge Foods Around

Most people have certain foods that trigger their binges. If this applies to you, don’t keep those foods in your cupboards or go to places where you know you can’t avoid them. You don’t need treats for the kids, or for guests, or for anyone else. No reason to make things harder for yourself than they need to be until you have more control over what you eat.

5. Go to Bed

You’d be surprised how many afternoon and evening binges happen when you’re tired and don’t just put yourself to bed. Obviously, there will be times when going to sleep just isn’t possible, for example in the afternoon when you’re at work. However, if you stay on top of getting the rest you need, you’ll find yourself looking for food so much less.

It only takes avoiding a binge a few times to prove to yourself that you can. Also keep in mind that the mark of successfully ending a binge pattern happens one binge at a time. No one ever quits cold turkey. By using these five tools you’ll be proactive and aware which will help you start to avoid some binges. Even if you don’t avoid all binges at first, more time between binges, is a huge step on the road to success. Be sure to acknowledge all the small successes on your way. If you need help getting your binge eating under control visit my website www.shrinkyourself.com for more information.

You may not know this but emotional overeating is the reason that 95% of diets fail. You might already know you’re an emotional eater. Or you might not be sure and you may need a little bit more information to decide. The first step is to find out if you are emotionally hungry. Below are the twelve types of emotional hunger that trigger Emotional Eating. As you read through the list, ask yourself how many of these apply to you and your life. If you use food in any of the ways listed below, you'll know that Emotional Eating is the real reason you struggle with your weight.

Type 1. Food: My Adult Pacifier
If you get really hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.

Type 2. I Stick Up For Myself by Stuffing Myself Up
If you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you, or take you for granted, you eat to avoid confrontation.

Type 3. Food: My One Faithful Friend
If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.

Type 4. When I’m Chewing I Can’t Hear My Inner Critic
If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you eat to stuff down self-hatred.

Type 5. I Don’t Have Love but I Have Food
If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you use food to try to fill the gap.

Type 6. Food Can’t Fill Up the Missing Parts in My Past
If you eat to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you eat to forget the past.

Type 7. Don’t Tell Me What to Eat
If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you eat to rebel.

Type 8. I’m Too Busy Eating to Take a Risk
If your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges — if you use food to avoid rising to the test, you eat to protect yourself from the fear of failure.

Type 9. Fall in Love? I’d Rather Fall in Chocolate.
If you stuff your face in order to avoid your sexuality — either to stay overweight so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters — you eat to protect yourself from getting too close.

Type 10. I Use My Body as a Battleground
Emotional eaters often eat to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments. If you do this, you eat to get revenge or control anger.

Type 11. I Won’t Grow Up
If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.

Type 12. I’m Secretly Afraid of Being Thin
If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you eat to avoid the fear of change.


Emotional hunger is real. It’s part of life for everyone. If you address the things that make you emotionally hungry, you’ll have a chance of having real satisfaction in your life. But if you eat each time you’re emotionally hungry, you’ll miss the opportunity of satisfaction, and your emotional hunger will continue to grow along with your waistline. No matter what the source of your emotional hunger you'll find a way to address it at www.shrinkyourself.com

After working with thousands of emotional eaters, I’ve been able to decode the secret of overeating and break it down to reveal some basic truths. You think, the main thing you’re struggling with is feeling powerless over your uncontrollable urge to eat. However, years of experience, have proved to me that that sense of powerlessness over food, although deeply agonizing, is really a cover up, and the consequence, of a deeper experience of powerlessness.

1. You feel powerless about how to deal with your self-doubts
2. You feel powerless about how to get real satisfaction in life
3. You feel powerless to insure your own safety
4. You feel powerless to appropriately assert your independence
5. You feel powerless to fill yourself up when you feel empty inside

You actually eat when you feel powerless in one or more of these five ways, because the experience of powerlessness is almost instantaneously transformed into the uncontrollable urge for food. Let’s look a little deeper in to these powerlessness conclusions that lead people to overeat.

Conclusion # 1 – The Self-Doubt Layer

Someone asks you to do something at work that you don’t know how to do. You come to the powerless conclusion that you’re stupid. To feel this way is so devastating but you don’t have to go to the vending machine and eat to avoid feeling stupid. You’ll need to learn how to talk back to your inner critic and erase the idea that the real you could be stupid.

Conclusion #2  - The Reward/Frustration Layer

You go on your 18th date from Match.com. No one feels right despite all the hope you have going into each date. You come to the conclusion that you’re defeated and there's nothing you can do about it.   The search for a good mate can be disappointing but you don’t have to deal with it by stopping at a fast food restaurant on your way home. You’ll need to learn how to work on your relationships and how to get real satisfaction in life.

Conclusion #3 – The Safety Layer
You were molested or abused as a child, lived with an alcoholic or had a traumatic relationship as an adult. You come to the conclusion that you’re unsafe and can’t protect yourself. The trauma and pain you’re feeling are real but extra layers of fat can’t change what happened to you and won’t protect you from anything. You’ll need to learn how to create real safety by dealing with real issues.

Conclusion #4 – The Rebellion Layer
You’re angry at your kids for never listening. You come to the conclusion that eating is better than expressing how you really feel. You’re afraid that if you don’t stuff your feelings with food you’ll scream uncontrollably or maybe even hit them. Or your parents were controlling when you were a child and didn’t let you eat certain foods. As an adult, you eat to prove that no one can tell you what to do. You’ll need to learn the difference between childish defiance and mature assertion. You’ll also need to learn how to handle anger responsibly.

Conclusion #5 – The Emptiness Layer
You almost never have plans at night. When you’re alone you feel empty inside and can't experience fulfillment. Or you’ve recently experienced a death that you can’t get over. Or you’ve been laid off from your job. Or recently ended a relationship. You come to the conclusion that food is the only thing that can fill you up. You’ll need to learn how to feel full without food.

You can learn to overcome these five experiences of powerlessness by focusing on the fact that you are not really powerless.  Instead you are needlessly giving away the power you do have. Once you realize that, your cravings will be controllable.  You won’t need to overeat.  And what’s more you’ll reclaim your power, not just over your relationship to food, but in all the areas of your life My 12-week program helps you unravel this false sense of powerlessness. You can find more information at www.shrinkyourself.com

Many people report that avoiding overeating, emotional eating or binging during the day isn't nearly as difficult as avoiding it at night. In fact, many people eat twice as much at night than they eat the whole day through. In order to understand night eating you'll need to look at what about the night makes you anxious.

Here are a few tips to unwind at night and avoid food:

1. Look into what the night represents for you. For most night eaters they have some anxiety about the evenings. It might be loneliness. It might be the time you miss a partner or your children. It might be fear of being home alone. It might be dread for the day ahead. You will have to take an inventory of the feelings that night brings up for you. Next to the list write responses of things that could address those feelings. And remember to be compassionate with yourself.

2. Don’t buy your favorite night eating food.

3. If you have anxiety about being able to fall asleep without eating at night you may have to develop a new routine. If you’ve found that food before bedtime make you sleepy. Basically, your mind has found a solution that works and it’s logical that you keep turning back to it. You have to show your mind that there is another option. Create a bedtime ritual for yourself to induce sleepiness.  A bath is a great option. 5-10 minutes in a bath can raise your temperature slightly and induce sleepiness. A cup of soothing tea, a lavender cream foot rub, a meditation CD.  It might be a few things. Play with it until you find what works for you.

4. Buy a hot water bottle and sleep with it against your belly.


5. Try finding some evening activities that you look forward to, a book, a rented movie, a craft or hobby, a visit with a friend. Many people want to relax and make the most of their time off, but don't know how to. Learn to find ways to enjoy your evenings.

Food never fulfills your real need. It just buys you another night of decreased anxiety. If you learn how to address your anxiety directly, you'll feel more satisfied and won't suffer the effects of overeating at night. For more information about night eating and emotional eating visit my website www.shrinkyourself.com