Dr. Kerri Fullerton ND

Intuitive Eating. Health At Every Size Doctor

overeating

Stress Eating: how to handle the next day

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The stress eating from last night woke up in the middle of night, bloated with gas pains. My pyjama bottoms felt like they were digging into my swollen belly. There was no way to get comfortable.

It would’ve been easy to blame it all on the food. After all, I did have a take-out burger, some fries and about six Halloween candy bars. Much less than I would’ve eaten of the past, but still more than my body needed at the time.

My stress eating food choice
My Stress Eating choice: Fast food hamburger and french fries

But the story begins way before the stress eating started…

It’s been a long couple of weeks. Heck it’s been a long year lol

If you read my last blog you’ll know that my child was in self-isolation because of classmate testing positive for Covid-19.

Being that I work from home, thankfully, I didn’t have as much a routine change as others would. But I still had to adjust to another person in the house all day with a different schedule than mine. I’m tired.

Then the washing machine died. Add laundromat to the list. My hubby is very handy and took it apart to fix it…only to get sick himself. So now he’s home all day and my laundry room/pantry is filled with a disassembled washer. I’m more tired – my sick husband isn’t able to do his share of the load right now.

Finally, yesterday afternoon, while on a Zoom meeting with a patient, the power went out. Sigh. Hotspot computer to phone, carry on. And now it’s dark at 5pm; we have no heat; no way to cook supper; AND I was supposed to attend a virtual conference at 5pm.

So I asked the boys what they wanted for dinner. I messaged the conferenced organizers and told them that I wouldn’t be attending. Then I drove into town to hit the drive-thru of their choice. We ate by flashlight at the kitchen table. Then we retreated to bed with a down duvet, Netflix and the Halloween candy.

By this point, I’m exhausted. My ability to pivot with the changes is diminishing quickly. My reserves are almost gone.

And then it happened

That’s when it happens isn’t it? That’s when old coping strategies re-emerge. In the moment they feel easy and right even if they’re not in our best interest.

In intuitive eating we talk about attunement. This is about being able to hear our bodies needs and responding to them in a timely manner.

I’m in need of a tune up. And it was the bloat that woke me from my sleep that finally got my attention.

This morning as I reflect on the last couple of weeks I can identify some of the warning signals. These are like the gas light or the oil light on the dash of the car. Warnings that I need to tend to something that I’m perfectly capable of doing. My dashboard lights include: mindless social media scrolling; struggling with my body image; not feeling my hunger cues; waking in the night and having a harder time falling back to sleep; feeling the siren call of the scale; overeating or eating foods that I know don’t feel good physically.

When I don’t notice these warnings then I get the full on Check Engine light. This also happens when I see them and choose not to respond to them. The “this is now serious” light. This could look like waking with gas pains and bloat; pain; swelling; extreme fatigue; difficulty concentrating; overwhelming overwhelm (vs the ‘normal’ overwhelm). In the past, binge eating fell into this category.

Again, I have the opportunity to look at what needs adjusting, do the tune up and carry on. If I choose not to, then I get the “this car ain’t safe to drive” notices from my body: losing it on my family; melting down when I can’t find my hairbrush; inability to make decisions or plan my next step; anxiety or even complete shutdown where I cannot answer the phone, get out of bed or put on clothes.  In the past, my ED behaviours showed up here.

My reflection today revealed a few missing warning signals: difficult body image and the scale calling to me has been going on for a few weeks; the mindless social media scrolling started a few days ago; yesterday I didn’t feel hunger once and maybe even the day before; finishing off with the dinner and snack choices of last night.

In the past, I wouldn’t have looked at this way.

Food guilt and body shame would’ve driven the reflection instead of self-compassion. I would’ve decided that clearly Halloween candy isn’t safe in the house (not acknowledging the Halloween candy has been safe for two months now). That I need to get my shit together. That would’ve included a kitchen purge and meal plan that didn’t include take-out and some sort of exercise plan to go with.

What I know now is that the stress eating is the last part of the story. The stress eating is simply what finally got my attention. It’s not about the food and it never was. Instead, it’s about what led up to me not being attuned. By either not being able to see my needs or not responding to my needs in a timely fashion.

Diet culture and the current health and wellness trends would have me believe that all of this can be solved with the right plan or pill; that all I need is a commitment and will power and I’ll be good to go.

Thankfully I’ve chosen to stop buying what they’re selling. I’m choosing to look at what’s been in the way of my ability to listen to and respond to my body signals. It’s time to cull my list of responsibilities and expectations again. It’s time to Delegate, Delay and Delete again. I need less stress and pressure right now, not more imposed under the guise of ‘health’.  I need more compassion and less judgement.

Until next time,

Kerri

Looking for a new kind of plan? Registration for the next Living Life As A Rebel is now open. Learn more

Recovering From Binge Eating

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When my patients come to me struggling with binge eating they feel desperate, ashamed and skeptical.

The desperation is about wanting this behaviour to stop. It’s something that they’ve been struggling with for years (sometimes decades) and they’re so sick and tired of the cycle.

These patients show a great deal of shame around their relationship with food. They feel like they ‘should’ be able to get this ‘under control’ and that they ‘shouldn’t’ need help. It’s been their own private struggle for so long that they feel alone and scared.

Skepticism is seen when we start talking about actually recovering from binge eating. As much as they want to be done with it, they’re not convinced that they’ll ever be free. After-all, they’ve tried EVERYTHING!

The progression of binge eating recovery

An important part of the process, it to understand that it’s a process.

Recovering from Binge Eating isn’t a one-step process!

Recently a woman was telling me about her recent ‘binge day’. She woke up and just knew that today was going to go sideways.

She’s been struggling since childhood with emotional, stress and binge eating. Over the last few years she’s had great success with reducing her binge eating as she really started to embrace the concept of ‘pleasure food’ and found new ways to cope with uncomfortable feelings.

Covid has changed her life so much, as it has for most of us. And she’s starting to struggle a bit more.

Key learning here! When old patterns start to re-emerge, it’s not a sign that you’re failing. It’s that your stress now outweighs your ability to cope.

If we look back to a few years ago this woman would’ve eaten her way through the day, feeling guilty the whole time, beating herself up the whole time, and then she would’ve carried on with the guilt and self-deprecation into the next day or two (possibly longer).

This time, she pulled out a journal and decided to write about her feelings all day. She still ate all day, but she was ALSO writing.

Key learning here! When the way that you engage with unwanted behaviours start to change, you’re making progress.

I created the graphic above to help her (and you) understand the progression of recovering from binge eating, stress eating and/or emotional eating.

It’s quite specifically a horizontal line and not a linear graph. Sliding between the stages is normal and expected. It’s not failing. Let me say that again. It’s not failing to slide into a stage that you’ve already passed through. It’s simply an indicator that your stress has surpassed your coping strategies so you had to pick up an old one to get through.

Time for some maintenance

The opportunity now is to practice self-compassion, examine what’s happening in your life and if you can, make adjustments.

When you’re using coping strategies that don’t serve you, ask yourself what you can delegate and what you can delay. It’s time to take something off of your plate.

Women are culturally trained to put everyone else’s needs first. You can only do what you can do. It’s okay to say ‘no’ or ‘not right now. What you can handle ordinarily will be very different than what you can handle when other stressors are added on.

When these old behaviours or thought patterns return, it’s like seeing the check engine light on your dashboard go on. This is bigger than regular maintenance. You may be able to put gas in the car, change a tire, check the pressure or even change the oil. But check the engine? Nope. That’s time to see the mechanic.

It’s the same for you. If these old behaviours are showing up, you can try some of your usual maintenance. Maybe that’s all you need. But if it’s not, it’s time to bring in a professional.

And just like the car, the earlier you bring yourself in, the less extensive and expensive the damage will be.

Dedicated to helping you find peace and power with your body,

P.S. I’m always happy to connect. You can book a free Food Freedom Discovery call here.

Overcoming Food Issues For Good

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If you’ve struggled with your weight or food at all, you’ve likely spent a good number of hours googling different diets, lifestyles, cleanses, and hormones. You know that overcoming food and body issues can be overwhelming and confusing.

Did you know that the first low carb diet was introduced in 1863? Since then it’s made many comebacks under different names with different tweaks, the current version being keto.

The first vegetarian society was formed in 1847. Currently we have Game Changers promoting a plant-based diet and the more politically driven vegans.

What’s my point?

We have been talking about ‘what’ to eat for centuries. We love to talk about the biology of food and weight; the merits and pitfalls of certain types of foods and ways of eating.

One would think that after hundreds of years we would have come up with a consensus right? But no, the debate rages on.

So what have we missed? Why is it that more and more people are struggling with their food and their bodies?

The Triad that is YOU

To overcome, like really-deal-with-overcome, food issues, we must deal with the triad of what makes us human: our mental, physical, and emotional beings. And we must deal with them all at the same time.

It is this triad that makes up YOU. And YOU are unique. YOU bring your history and experience and beliefs to every single part of your life, including your diet*. It’s no wonder that we haven’t found one way of eating that suits everybody. *Note: when I use the term diet here, I mean simply ‘what’ you eat. A cow’s diet is grass. 

We’re very comfortable working in the physical sphere. This space feels safe – let’s talk about hormones, sugar, carbs, fats, animal protein, plant protein, leptin, weight… This is where we’ve kept the conversation for centuries.

More recently we’ve acknowledged the mental and emotional parts of ourselves as contributing factors but we’re still not comfortable there. They’re mentioned in passing in most of the current weight loss systems out there. Even if their massive impact on your well-being is acknowledged, they’re rarely addressed with as much focus as the physical. You’re expected to figure this part out on your own. And when it’s not part of the program, it’s left as ‘one more thing’ and we all know how that goes. So we keep on talking about the biology of food and weight.

Just like a stool needs it’s three legs to be strong and present to hold YOU up, so does your overall well-being. If you’re consistently neglecting even just one, the stool cannot hold YOU up.

So the next time that you consider making changes to your diet, ask yourself if you’ll be giving attention to the other parts of the triad as well.

How will you work on the emotional part of eating?

What steps will you take to manage your food habits and external triggers?

And as always, I’m here to help if you need it.

Dedicated to helping you find peace and power with your body,

Kerri

P.S. Have you downloaded your Body Appreciation Meditation yet?

Can you be addicted to food?

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Ten years ago if you’d asked me “can you be addicted to food” I would have said “absolutely, yes”.

In 2009 I attended my first Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meeting. I started out with phone meetings because I just couldn’t bring myself to walk into an in-person meeting. Shame whispered “what if you see a patient or someone else that you know?”.

Back then I was part of the 90% of people who believe that food can be addictive. I believed with all of my heart that I was an addict – a compulsive overeater. The pattern after all – craving, loss of control, excessive consumption, tolerance, withdrawal and distress.

So I got a sponsor, made my list of ‘trigger’ foods that I would abstain from, and attended my meetings.

As with any diet before, I threw myself into it fully. I read all of the books, did all of the work, and recorded my food intake and weight with the diligence of any ‘good girl’. 

But I started to notice something the longer that I stayed in OA: nobody was actually getting food freedom. The lists of trigger foods were getting longer. I thought that was really weird. How could a food that they were eating without issue last month now be a trigger food? Instead of  bingeing on junk foods they were bingeing on vegetables and meat. The foods may have changed but the behaviours hadn’t.

That was when I started to question the whole food addiction theory. I started to do a deep dive into the research and I was surprised by what I found.

Food Addiction Research

It’s not very clear cut at all. Consensus isn’t even close to being achieved.

When self-proclaimed addicts were assessed using the Yale Food Addiction Scale, only 12% actually met the criteria. Using the scale assumes that food addiction is real, which is still up for much debate, but even based on that assumption, almost 90% weren’t addicts.

Researchers have not been able to identify the addictive substance. And that’s a problem. Those who are in the food-addiction-is-real camp believe that sugar is the addictive food. But it’s blurry. All sugar? Just some sugar? Foods that converts to sugar?

The other sticky bit is that Food Addiction is eerily similar to Binge Eating Disorder (BED).

Another interesting thing about food addiction studies is that they’re not corrected for restriction (read dieting; read hunger). In animal studies the way that they get the animals to exhibit the food addiction behaviours that I was going through they had to starve them first – or at least restrict them.

In a hungry state our brains create chemicals that lead us to obsess about food. And those chemicals make us vulnerable to hyperpalatable foods (junk food, fast food) because we’re not going to let ourselves starve.

Why does this matter?  Because as a society right now, we’re focused on restricting. We’re watching what we eat and trying to eat smaller portions. We’re forever putting ourselves into this vulnerable state.

So, are you addicted to food?

Maybe, but you’re probably not.

More likely, you’re overeating because of one of two things.

  1. You’re vulnerable due to restriction.
  2. Food is being used as a distraction.

I’ll dive into using food as a distraction in another blog/video.

For now, let me share a few tips on how you can start to overcome binge eating:

  1. Stop skimping or skipping. Hunger wins every single time. Shift your attention away from maximum calories and start focusing on minimums. Eat regularly so that your body doesn’t ever think that it’s going to starve. *this step speaks from my privilege; food scarcity is very real for a lot of people, do the best that you can with what you have
  2. Find a community. Shame kept me from addressing my binge eating disorder. I didn’t dare tell anyone about my binges and nobody asked. Everyone seemed quite content to help me lose weight and restrict but nobody talked about the binges or the emotional side of things. I created a Facebook Group called Applaud Your Bod for this purpose. A safe place to share and feel normal and to feel inspired. Consider this your cordial invitation. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1437974869844063
  3. Take the Binge Eating Quiz. https://psychology-tools.com/test/binge-eating-scale We don’t know if Food Addiction is real but we do know that Binge Eating Disorder is. Treatment for Binge Eating Disorder is available and effective. If you’d like to talk, you can book a free Food Freedom Discovery Session with me. You don’t have to go it alone.

Dedicated to helping you find peace and power with your body,

Kerri

Neuropsychopharmacology 2018 Dec; 43(13): 2506–2513