Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. If you find that you are prone to binge eating, whatever your definition of binge eating really is. I mean, truly, let’s just assume that binge eating means I’m eating way more than I want to be eating, and I’m eating it in a way that feels really out of control.

That was me. At least that was my definition of binge eating. That leaves me feeling not only physically horrible, but also emotionally and mentally horrible, promising that I would never do it again and always end up doing it again. Now, what I want you to hear in what I just said was the doing it again, the doing it again, the doing it again.

And in this podcast, I wanna talk to you about the binge and restriction cycle. So often we’re focused on the binging, and we’re not really focused on the cycle, which means that if it is a cycle, it is repetitive. If it is a cycle, it becomes predictable, and anything that’s predictable we can interrupt.

So today, if you find yourself in that cycle, I want to talk to you more about what is causing the cycle so that you can interrupt it. And I wanted to do this podcast because we have a spiral type quiz at weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. It’s totally free. It takes you two minutes.

And what the spiral type quiz is, it essentially says there are four different spiral types that essentially sabotage your weight loss, and the four spiral types are binging and restriction. The other one is the comment spiral type. These are people who really can’t get over what someone said about them or people who can’t get over what people didn’t say. Maybe they didn’t show you their appreciation. You did all this work and no one noticed.

The other type is the scale spiral type, so that’s the person who is more concerned and thrown off by what the scale says or even how their pants fit. And then finally is the perfectionism spiral, and that’s the person who says, “Oh, if I can’t do it all perfectly, then I might as well not do it at all.”

And these are all different spiral types that lead to the same thing, which is you are sabotaging your weight loss or believing that it’s total despair. You are left with discouragement, and that leads you absolutely nowhere. Because when we’re feeling discouraged and we’re feeling despair, we do not even try.

So as we do this quiz, we’ve been getting the results back, and that’s why I’m doing this podcast, because 60% of you, 60% out of four different types, 60% are the binger restrictors. And so I want you to understand what that truly means. If you are a binger restrictor, you need to know that the binge isn’t the problem.

I mean, it feels like the problem, doesn’t it? ‘Cause it feels horrible when you’re doing it. That is what ultimately leads to you having a weight issue, because you’re eating more. But the real problem isn’t the binge, it’s in the restriction. And I can experience that even today. I’ll give you an example as we get into this podcast a little more.

But what happens when we restrict, and restrict doesn’t mean I’m denying myself food, but it can be by living on some sort of food rule. And so the way it looked for me when I was in the restriction binge cycle is Monday morning. Actually, Sunday morning.

Sunday morning I would start planning how I was going to eat for the week, and it would be usually some flavor of I’m gonna eat really clean, or I’m going to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, or I’m only going to eat protein and vegetables. Or I remember one time I was really interested in the raw food diet because they had live food enzymes, and live food helps you live better.

And so I was in this hyper healthy sort of way of eating. Like, that’s how I would base the way I would eat, is because I would want to be, like, uber healthy and be, you know, live food enzymes or lots of fermented foods or, like I said, raw food.

And you have whatever flavor of food rules you’ve followed before. It might be low carb, high protein. It might be points. It might be only a certain amount of macros. It might be high fat. It just doesn’t matter what it is, but it’s something where you have limited your choices of food. You said, “I’m only eating this way.”

And you might have picked a whole food group, or you might say, “I’m not eating sugar,” or you might say, “Well, I’m not eating brownies unless it’s Wednesday night at this certain event.” The point is, is that you’ve created some sort of boundary that is safe if we stay inside the boundary, and if we go out of the boundary, it is not safe.

Okay, so whatever your limitation or restriction rules are, okay, when you do that, your brain registers restriction as unsafe. It feels very unsafe, and part of the reason is because our brain’s job is to keep us alive.

And one of the things that are necessary for us to stay alive are things like water, are things like food, are things like sleep. And you know if you’ve ever been a sleep-deprived mom how all you can do is think about sleep ‘ Cause you’re not getting it. You’re being deprived. You’re being restricted. I’m assuming it would be the same thing with water. As I take a drink of water.

But when the brain senses unsafety around something with food, its job then is to scan for opportunities to create safety, to feel secure. And so that’s why when your guard is down and you finally say, “Oh, forget it,” or it gets to be too much or you’re too tired and you binge, part of it is your brain saying, “Oh, well, I’m gonna take this opportunity to go ahead and get in all the nutrients that I need, because I don’t know when she’s going to restrict again.”

And I want you to know that this doesn’t happen overnight. This happens year after year, decades after decades after decades of what is innocently called yo-yo dieting, but essentially the brain goes from freak out to, “Oh, I don’t care.”

Freak out to, I don’t care, which that’s what we think it looks like, but the truth is it’s, “Oh, no, there’s not enough,” to, “Oh, good, there’s enough.” “Oh, no, there’s not enough,” to, “Oh, good, there’s enough.” “Oh, no, there’s not enough,” to, “Oh, good, there’s enough.”

And you guys, the crazy thing happened is that once you see this, you will start to recognize it in your own life. So I have a perfect example of this. So something happened where I didn’t order groceries exactly when I thought I would. We had out-of-town guests, and so I ordered groceries on, like, a Thursday for them to come on Friday.

And in my brain I thought, “Well, I’ll just put a grocery order in again on Monday when they leave for anything, for the week that we need.” So I challenged myself to only order groceries once a week, and when my company left, slowly by slowly, it was revealed to me, like, oh, we’re out of almond milk, and I’m the only one who drinks almond milk.

So I was like, “Okay, well, that’s no big deal. I can make it a few days.” Oh, I’m out of my egg wraps. Okay, well, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll just go a couple days. And there were a couple other things. I think one was this cream cheese that I like to use. One was probably some sort of mustard, but there were a few things that I use on the regular that I didn’t have.

And I thought, “Okay, well, I can use this as an opportunity to sacrifice or offer it up, or mortification, or work on detachment. Totally fine.” So that was on Monday, and then on Tuesday, I noticed, oh, I don’t have my almond milk. And I thought, “Well, this might be a good opportunity to become creative.”

And every time I wanted one of those items, I would think, “Aw, I want that.” But then I would say, “Well, it’s only a few more days.” Okay. Well, then come Thursday, when it comes to the time that I am ordering my grocery list, you guys, I’m getting so excited and I am like, “Almond milk, cream cheese, egg wraps,” and whatever else.

And I can tell I’m kind of having a low-grade stress response to the point where as I’m ordering my groceries, I wanna over order. Like, I wanna order two almond milks and two packages of the egg wraps, and you guys, they only really last a week in the refrigerator, and I never go through more than one pack anyway in a week.

And I could just tell, I wanted to over order to make sure, quote, I had enough. And I just had to step back when I noticed myself doing this and get so interested and very curious. I thought, oh my gosh, Denise, that’s that restriction binge cycle. I went without and now my brain is thinking, oh no, we need to stock up to make sure we have enough. And I just thought that was so interesting.

Because if you start to notice it in yourself, just recognize, oh my gosh, my brain was sensing unsafety by not having the things, and it’s thinking that if I have the things, I will feel safe. That’s just a thought. That’s not true at all. When I could say, Denise, we don’t even go through one almond milk a week. Why would we order two? Why would we order two egg wraps? You only go through one a week.

Then I can notice that it’s my brain trying to seek safety, and I can create safety in my brain a different way by actually thinking rationally. I can calm my brain down and not over order. And to just recognize the desire to over order or the urge to over order was just there, but I didn’t have to follow it.

Now, what I think is really interesting is that I posted this in our community about that instance and just noticed watching my brain, and then someone said, okay, but how do you not feel deprived by not over ordering?

And remember that feeling deprived is a function of a thought. So I could be thinking, ” I’m not gonna have enough,” and that would make me feel deprived. Because my brain really thought, “You’re not gonna have enough.” When I slowed down to say, “But that’s not even true. I will have enough. I do have enough. I don’t even use that much.”

Then I could logically, with my best thinking brain, accurately order groceries, and not do it from a stress response, not do it from feeling graspy, but in my calm, best thinking brain order. And I offer this to you today because if you are stuck in the binge restriction cycle, or maybe not even stuck in it, if you find that you’re doing it sometimes the binge isn’t the problem.

I want you to start looking at the places feeling restricted, where you’re not allowing yourself to eat certain foods. And I’ve said this before, but the women who take the longest to get results in our programs are the women who have such a hard time letting go of food rules and following that food rule of eating food that you enjoy, of giving yourself unconditional permission to eat any food.

That’s one of the ways that women really slow down their progress in this program. So the quicker you can get over that, the quicker you will have results. Because why? Because you’re creating safety in your brain. You’re creating safety in your body, that there’s no food off limits. And so what you’ve been clinging to for safety, those food rules, actually are making the problem worse.

And that’s why I believe secular dieting truly makes the problem worse, because it perpetuates that restriction binge cycle, because you are restricting yourself to someone else’s food rules, something that works for someone else’s life, their plan, instead of truly developing a plan that works for you in this season of your life.

You might even be using a plan that worked 20 years ago for you, and that’s not your plan today. Your plan today is what works for you in this season of your life. And so even if you developed a plan 15, 20, 10 years ago, give yourself just so much love and respect and attention to say, “Yeah, but what works for me now in this season of my life?”

And the answer to the binge restriction cycle truly is creating unconditional permission for yourself to eat any foods so that you have safety no matter what you’re eating. So that the safety isn’t created by the restriction. Because when the safety is created by the restriction, then unconsciously your brain is trying to create safety by binging.

So if we can consciously create safety by unconditional permission to eat any food, the brain will feel safe and the binging happens less and less and less. Now, the caveat to that. Well, there is no caveat, but I know what you’re thinking. “Denise, I can’t eat food that I truly enjoy because I will overeat it.”

Well, then let’s face that. Let’s address the real problem. The real problem isn’t restricting that food. I really find that the majority of women don’t need to restrict any foods. Now, some people may have a strong reaction to food, but in general, if we can learn to eat our food calmly, calm brains don’t stress eat.

And so let’s just address the real issue on teaching you how to get through the ups and downs of life without stress eating, how to calm your body, and then we won’t even have to worry about any specific food, ’cause you will be able to calmly eat any food and be at your healthy weight.

Okay. So I hope this has created some clarity for you on the binge restriction cycle or the restriction binge cycle. And if you aren’t clear on what your spiral type is, then go over to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and take the spiral type quiz to find the hidden spiral that’s sabotaging your weight loss.

And remember, at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, this is where we make God our God, not the scale, not our pants size, not the magic food plan. We keep God as our God. He’s the one that tells us we’re worthy. He’s the one that tells us that we’re doing it right. Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, where we keep God our God.

Have a blessed day.