The Restriction - Overeating Cycle

I firstly want to say this post if from my personal and professional experience as a Personal Trainer. I have supported lots of clients alongside their clinical support through their recovery journey. If you need clinical professional support I can help you to find the support you need if you don't already have that in place.

How This Cycle Keeps You Stuck

You deny yourself of foods you deem to be “bad” you build a very restrictive and unsustainable meal plan and struggle to stick to both and then feel “bad” and a failure, know that you didn’t fail, the plan failed you, big difference!

If this sounds like how you work towards changing your body composition, it doesn’t have to be this way.

You get home, you have restricted so much that day that when you get home ravenous. You think I’ll just have something to tide me over, but it doesn’t stop there. A small snack becomes the equivalent of a meal or a period of overeating and then you start to feel guilt and shame.

The “I’m not good enough to stick to this plan” “I don’t have enough willpower, I need to work harder” “I’ll be good tomorrow, I’m not doing that again” thoughts make you feel that you are the failure when in fact it is the plan that’s failing you!

However, if you continue to force yourself to stick to the plan that already isn’t working for you, the next day you do the same. This can happen over and over until eventually you give up and decide “you can’t do it”.

This cycle has a clinical term “the binge-restrict cycle”.

How The Cycle Can Occur

1. Overeating: Events can trigger you, anything from being too hungry or stress or to numb the feelings of difficulties in your life

2. The Result = Self-loathing, shame and guilt, powerful emotions that you don’t want to experience again.

3. “Must Do Better” You don’t want to feel those extreme feelings again, so you decide to “never overeat again”.

4. Restriction: You are determined to not overeat again, but you start restricting. You feel the need to balance out what you have previously eaten and to regain a sense of control.

5. Overeat (again): Some time after the restriction and not honouring your hunger, a day, a few days, a week something happens, and you overeat.

Some Ways To Prevent This Cycle

Two important factors are physical hunger and your negative feelings. There are the areas we want to direct our focus.

Stop Restricting Yourself

The urge to restrict after you have overeaten can be very powerful, it’s not easy. It’s entirely normal but we must fight the need to repeat the restriction.

Make Sure You Eat Your Next Meal

To not restrict forever might be an unrealistic goal.

Start small, eat at the next mealtime, plan what you are going to eat and ask for support if you are finding that difficult.

 

Plan Your Meals and Snacks

Instead of eating as little as possible the next day and setting yourself up to overeat again, plan what you are going to eat that day in a way that fits around your life. Ideally eat something every few hours. You are trying to eat enough to fuel your body to do your everyday tasks. Fuelling your body every 3-4 hours can have an extremely positive impact preventing the overeating triggers from taking over.

If you need professional support to break this cycle Beat is an excellent place to start to look for the right support x

Food Is Neutral, Not Good or Bad

Labelling food Good or Bad can be a pre cursor to developing a difficult relationship with food.

Carbs are bad, chocolate is bad, this type of unhelpful thinking isn’t true, and it creates more problems for people who already are unsure how to eat in a healthy way for the rest of their life.

Ever noticed the minute you say you are not allowed to eat something; it is pretty much all you can think about? This is just one reason why people crave certain foods and then end up overeating them.

One important step towards Food Freedom is to realise that food is simply food.

Food does not have a moral code. There is value in all the food we eat, some have nutritional value, and some have mental value. Think of all food as equals. Honour your cravings by including those foods in your daily meals and snacks. The power to overeat them is significantly diminished.

If you don’t want to have large amounts of certain foods at home, buy smaller amounts of them. In time you want to be able to have a normal sized amount of them in your home.

Once you have been able to be satisfied with just eating a smaller amount of those biscuits/cake/crisps etc you can begin to trust yourself around those foods.

Triggers

These are different for everyone. Once you identify yours you can work towards removing them and cope better with ones you can’t remove. We need to work towards replacing our trigger situations with strategies that are more beneficial to recovery.

Trigger situation I have had or seen in my clients:

Snacking at night from boredom or hunger

By eating enough to satisfy you and eating regularly you can significantly impact how often you do this. Also try getting to bed earlier, especially if you are awake late at night and that is when you snack. The health benefits of a little more sleep is worth trying, at least once.

Mindless Eating in Front Of the TV

If you find yourself unable to sit and relax and watch tv in the evenings without eating food, try moving. Go for a short walk, do some chores around the house, take an online course to learn something new. If you are feeling anxious about something/someone talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling and try to express your emotions.

Stressful Situations

An argument with a loved one, your boss/colleague says or does something unkind, whatever the stressful situation is work towards finding a way to deal with the emotions you feel.

Talk to a trusted friend/mentor/therapist, do something non-food related that makes you feel good. If our only strategy is to eat in times of difficulty, it is incredibly difficult to break the cycle.

If you don’t have or know of any strategies, then maybe think about CBT or another strategy to help you overcome these situations.

CBT 

Therapy does not have to be lifelong; you will be amazed by how much you can learn in only a few sessions that changes how you react. Therapy is about finding ways to help yourself, not a therapist doing the work for you.

Be Self Compassionate

More important than not restricting and dealing with triggers.

Guilt, shame, and anxiety fuel restriction. Restriction fuels overeating. Stop guilt and you’ll have a much easier time around food.

The most self-compassionate people often have the best body self-image.

Accept that you will have slip ups along the way, we all do. It’s normal to fall into this restrict-overeating cycle, many of us have, it’s also normal to have difficulties getting out of it.

If you have a slip up, give yourself grace. Try to avoid using negative self-talk.  Work on reframing your thoughts. Try reframing in this way “I am a failure and I’ll never achieve this” to “I had a slip up. I am still learning. What can I do that will make it easier?”

You do not have to be perfect, try to practice Imperfect Action, it’s a much kinder way to live your life.

Please remember it is possible to get out of this cycle, but you might not be able to do it alone and that’s okay.

If you are suffering in this type of cycle or know someone who is, please find someone to support you/them through this difficult process.

Some trusted places are listed below:

Mind 

Beat

I have personal experience in this area. If you would like to talk through this before seeking professional support I am always here to listen and give you some support to make the first steps to a life outside this cycle x