Palestrina, I'm not an IEer, but I wanted to offer you some encouragement: Would you feel any differently toward your family member if you weren't intuitively eating? What I mean is that I have experienced exactly the emotion that you're discussing at times when I've either been on diet rebound or on some sort of plan that seemed to make sense but on which I wasn't losing as fast as, say, my sister. It's not that I didn't want her to lose weight; it's almost as if I have this feeling of being left behind or left out---"Hey! She's getting skinny, and I'm still fat!" I really do think those reactions are normal, though. My point as concerns your situation, though, is that even if you were not practicing IE, you would probably feel the same about your family member. Even I, who am not on IE, recognize that traditional dieting is a circular path---i.e., most of the time leading us right back to the point we started (or even worse---heavier). Even if one somehow stays faithful to plan, I can't but believe they do so by being somewhat obsessive about it (this is born out to some extent in the Thin for Life book----e.g., daily weighing).
Our society values the big, dramatic "make-overs" (e.g., Extreme makeover, Biggest Loser, etc.). Unfortunately, most do not value the slow, steady, more permanent changes. It's tough, but we need to keep in mind who we're really doing this for: Us or "Them"
And finally, if you did decide ultimately, that traditional IE has taken you as far as you need to go at this point in your life and that you need another path (not talking about a traditional "diet"), there's no shame in that. As you mentioned in an earlier post, we learn something through all our experiences.
That was rather rambling, but I just wanted to offer you some encouragement.
Thanks lin for the encouragement. Nothing good ever comes from comparing ourselves to others and yet it's so difficult not to. I think a dieter's method especially when they employ a personal trainer and a dietician is a very aggressive path. It's action oriented and other can look at it and say "wow you are really stepping up!" where as IE is more of a slow and internal method. It's not a weight loss method at all - it has helped me start healing my relationship with food and most importantly it has reduced my binging by over 90% where as I was binging daily for many years now I binge only at times when I feel high stress and anxiety. My success rate with IE has been high, but it's also been quiet and imperceptible to others. You're so right that the big makeovers are highly valued in our society, even those who don't need to lose weight need to have fabulous new haircuts and style do overs on occasion so that they don't blend in to the background.
At the end of the day I know that if I went to a dietician who told me what to eat and what not to eat or who gave me a list of dos and don'ts I would spiral out of control in binging. But ultimately it has worked for her, at least so far.
I do plan on continuing with IE, the principles make too much sense to me. But if there is something to learn from other books I'm always willing to, as long as they are not "diet" books.
Interesting. The question here is do Brain Over Binge and IE conflict?
Good question. I actually was thinking about that this morning. I think it depends on what IE book you're reading and your interpretations. Just by making a very slight detour in your thinking, could make all the difference in the world. It's almost like ED therapists and society in general put the cart before the horse.
For me, I always thought Intuitive Eating involved discussion with my emotions, resolving conflicts to help reduce the intensity of my drives. However, after reading Brain over Binge, I realize that the intensity of my drives does not produce a binge. I can choose to binge or not binge. I cannot choose to feel or not feel. My main problem all this time has been: fear of overeating. Overeating is irrelevant when it comes to my emotions. They are 2 separate entities entirely.
For example, my morning routine was as such:
About to arrive at work. Get really anxious about the stress. Tell myself, you better calm down or else you're going to overeat. Run around in circles trying to keep myself "calm." Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Throughout the day. As you know, we cannot predict or completely control the stressors in our lives - sh*t happens! This fact alone is enough to put terror into me. After all, if stress makes me overeat, then I cannot experience stress. I cannot overeat or else I will be fat and on a downward spiral towards, let's face it, death. The logic was: If I cannot control the stressors, then I cannot control my own self-destruction.
The constant effort to keep myself calm and happy is like a hammer driving me into my compulsion. In other words, fear that I will overeat is what urges me to overeat. And then to reduce/eliminate that pressure, I just give up and give in to those urges by eating. Once I've eaten, I no longer feel the urges, because - alas, I've done what I told myself I would do all along - overeat. I succeeded in failing.
The way out of this loop is a simple thought change. By recognizing that emotions (stress, happy, angry, whatever - even fear of overeating) do not cause overeating, you basically give up trying to control them. They can happen without fear that you will binge. Because binging has nothing to do with being emotional. It has everything to do with choice.
Where does that leave emotions?
I've said it in the past, and I still think it's true: You can fall, but there is no point in falling into a bag of chips. Just fall. Be willing to take the risk of being human - without trying to catch yourself.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who is at odds with who - we all just want to feel better and possibly lose some weight. So, whatever gets us there without having to hurt is the answer.
Interesting. The question here is do Brain Over Binge and IE conflict?
I think they certainly do, but ONLY IF you take both of them as a full, unalterable entity and try to combine them. Like I said earlier, IE is very emotions-oriented. BoB on the other hand insists that emotions do not *cause* unwanted eating, and that we have the power no matter what feelings our brains throw at us. I much, much prefer that philosophy and it's helped me infinitely more than IE's emotion-oriented explanation ever did when I was using it. Plus its a ton simpler to me.
However the basic principles of eating when hungry and stopping when full are definitely compatible with BoB. So is the idea that all foods should be permitted and "trigger" foods should be stripped of their "specialness" through desensitization. And that diets are useless and wreak havoc with your mind & body.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazzy
Good question. I actually was thinking about that this morning. I think it depends on what IE book you're reading and your interpretations. Just by making a very slight detour in your thinking, could make all the difference in the world. It's almost like ED therapists and society in general put the cart before the horse.
For me, I always thought Intuitive Eating involved discussion with my emotions, resolving conflicts to help reduce the intensity of my drives. However, after reading Brain over Binge, I realize that the intensity of my drives does not produce a binge. I can choose to binge or not binge. I cannot choose to feel or not feel. My main problem all this time has been: fear of overeating. Overeating is irrelevant when it comes to my emotions. They are 2 separate entities entirely.
For example, my morning routine was as such:
About to arrive at work. Get really anxious about the stress. Tell myself, you better calm down or else you're going to overeat. Run around in circles trying to keep myself "calm." Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Throughout the day. As you know, we cannot predict or completely control the stressors in our lives - sh*t happens! This fact alone is enough to put terror into me. After all, if stress makes me overeat, then I cannot experience stress. I cannot overeat or else I will be fat and on a downward spiral towards, let's face it, death. The logic was: If I cannot control the stressors, then I cannot control my own self-destruction.
The constant effort to keep myself calm and happy is like a hammer driving me into my compulsion. In other words, fear that I will overeat is what urges me to overeat. And then to reduce/eliminate that pressure, I just give up and give in to those urges by eating. Once I've eaten, I no longer feel the urges, because - alas, I've done what I told myself I would do all along - overeat. I succeeded in failing.
The way out of this loop is a simple thought change. By recognizing that emotions (stress, happy, angry, whatever - even fear of overeating) do not cause overeating, you basically give up trying to control them. They can happen without fear that you will binge. Because binging has nothing to do with being emotional. It has everything to do with choice.
Where does that leave emotions?
I've said it in the past, and I still think it's true: You can fall, but there is no point in falling into a bag of chips. Just fall. Be willing to take the risk of being human - without trying to catch yourself.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who is at odds with who - we all just want to feel better and possibly lose some weight. So, whatever gets us there without having to hurt is the answer.
Mazzy, I love this post so much oh my goodness. You just described to a T my take on the emotional aspect. How you tried to make sure you never got stressed because you thought stress made you overeat, that's EXACTLY the sort of hamster wheel I was on when I was convinced that "fixing" emotions was the key to fixing my overeating.
To clear things up, I definitely believe that emotions and urges to binge/overeat can be connected. A certain feeling (stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, etc.) that has been paired with overeating for so long can start to trigger the urge to overeat just by arising. Classical conditioning.
However, Mazzy you hit the nail on the head. Whatever triggers the urges does not have to be "fixed". Feel the emotion, let it be. As you allow yourself to feel that emotion without overeating, the urge to overeat that usually accompanies it will gradually fade away. Also, like you, some of the thoughts that used to have the most power over me & reinforce my urges to binge were the ones like, "You are going to binge/overeat eventually! You can't keep this up for long! What if you overeat, everything will be ruined!" In the past, thoughts like this would leave me anxious and doubtful of my ability to avoid overeating, and ultimately lead me to give in.
As I mentioned earlier, I've now been tracking all of my urges as they arise and describing them in terms of physical sensations/emotions I'm experiencing, and the thoughts that pop up in my head. Many times, the thoughts have been of that variety, and I've experienced emotions of fear and anxiety surrounding the urge. In fact, one of my entries last week said this exactly:
10:29pm faint urge to eat more after finishing my dinner. strong sense of anxiety. heavier breathing. my throat feels tight somehow. thoughts: "There's no way i can make it much longer eating only when I'm hungry, it's too good to be true. I'll probably binge on all those cookies I bought today."
That entry was last Wednesday. Not only have I still not binged at all since then, but I've been consistently eating only when I'm hungry, and the package of cookies my thoughts insisted that I would binge on are still sitting on my bed with one left (there were 8, and I've eaten about one each day since buying them. Did not even come close to binging on them.)
Those types of victories have been occuring for me constantly. I can look back at my entries and be reminded of moments when I felt such strong urges to binge and such seemingly powerful & convincing thoughts, yet I DID NOT DO IT. Further proving to me what I've already learned through so many books and personal experience - automatic thoughts & emotions do not control our behavior and very often they are just plain illogical & misleading. We can't control when they come up but we can control what we do when they do, and with the knowledge that 1. feeling a certain feeling or having a certian thought can never hurt us or make us do anything, and 2. such feelings and thoughts are ALWAYS temporary, it makes it all the more easy to just let them be. We always have the power.
Almost finished with Brain over Binge and I have to say Im totally sold. I see now how society training me to believe that overeating is caused by emotions has done me a terrible disservice. I now finally recognize that eating and feelings are separate. I am free to feel, to fail, to win, to be sad, be bored, be stressed, be happy, be anything I want without the constant fear of overeating. I believe now that for the past 25 years of my life, since I was about 15, I was trying to convince myself as per our therapy hungry society, that my weight problem was due to emotional eating.
What did this mean? For me, this meant that if I felt a highly charged emotion or a build up of emotions, that I would inevitably run to the refrigerator. I did not want to overeat. Overeating was making me fat and ruining my life. I was trained to believe that feeling deeply would ultimately cause me harm, would result in weight gain. Feeling equalled fear. How is this healthy?
It wasn't true, but I believed the lie. Eating a lot was a result of dieting initially. It was habit. All I had to do all along was change my habit and recognize the lie that emotions and eating are inextricably linked.
Freaking awesome post! I feel 100% the exact same way.
How you tried to make sure you never got stressed because you thought stress made you overeat, that's EXACTLY the sort of hamster wheel I was on when I was convinced that "fixing" emotions was the key to fixing my overeating. Emphatic YES
To clear things up, I definitely believe that emotions and urges to binge/overeat can be connected. A certain feeling (stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, etc.) that has been paired with overeating for so long can start to trigger the urge to overeat just by arising. Classical conditioning. YES, agreed...urges to binge for me seem prompted by a trigger, although I can't always figure out the trigger, and it now seems pointless to do so. The point is to surf the urge until it crests and falls and not get too bogged down in intellectual gymnastics and placating your inner rebel.
10:29pm faint urge to eat more after finishing my dinner. strong sense of anxiety. heavier breathing. my throat feels tight somehow. thoughts: "There's no way i can make it much longer eating only when I'm hungry, it's too good to be true. I'll probably binge on all those cookies I bought today."<<<< THIS
The way I see it now, Obsessive Compulsive eating, or whatever you want to call it, is so similar to OCD. I had suspected it before, but wasn't sure how to reconcile with Intuitive Eating. But, as I'm sure you already know, your quote above is laden with cognitive distortions that can be easily altered by simply changing the language: "Eating when I'm hungry is something I can continue to do, for the rest of my life. It's awesome and exciting to finally find normal again. I'm not going to binge on those cookies I bought today."
I did a comparison of the 2 methods, as I understand them from studying IE since the 1990s:
Similarities:
1. For both, the emphasis is on eating when hungry and stopping when full.
2. Neither specifically relies on diets to alter habits. The impetus is on changing a person's behavior, not their meal plans.
3. Neither method advocates one type of food over another.
4. Neither method advocates cutting calories well below nutritional needs.
5. Neither method advocates beauty as an ideal.
Differences:
1. BoB says that overeating is an intellectual choice, whereas IE suggests that the individual is at the mercy of her emotions (the choice is dictated by "intution").
2. BoB says that feelings do not make a person eat, and therefore, you do not need to focus on them, whereas IE suggests that manipulating feelings will help to reduce overeating.
3. BoB says that you are better off not responding to urges by eating, whereas IE recommends eating in response to urges (they say urges are your inner rebel speaking up - you must give it what it wants so it feels satisfied).
4. BoB is not at odds with practicing eating restraint, if it means nutritional needs are met, even if losing weight is the goal (for an overweight person). IE is against restriction of any kind, including intellectually supervised restraint of nutritional choices and portion sizes. In IE, all eating choices are governed by the "intuition," a term that is subject to some debate. IE promotes putting weight loss "on the back burner," which really means, never, the idea being that your intuition will help your body settle into its natural weight.
5. In BoB, urges to binge go away if you DON'T indulge them. In IE, urges to binge go away if you DO indulge them.
6. In BoB, your capacity to exercise free will choice grows (i.e. self-confidence as well), while in IE, your capacity to exercise free will is dictated only by your animal nature (you are at the mercy of your fluctuating desires).
I feel like your list of differences is not accurate. That's not how I interpret IE and I feel that your observations on IE are tampered by your negative feelings towards it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazzy
Differences:
1. BoB says that overeating is an intellectual choice, whereas IE suggests that the individual is at the mercy of her emotions (the choice is dictated by "intution"). I've been seeing a NT who specializes in IE and I've never been told that I am "at the mercy" of my emotions. On the contrary I am continuously encouraged to stand back from my emotions so that I can view them objectively rather than get swept away by them. Your statement here is inaccurate.
2. BoB says that feelings do not make a person eat, and therefore, you do not need to focus on them, whereas IE suggests that manipulating feelings will help to reduce overeating. By manipulate do you mean change? Because I've never been encouraged to change my feelings. I've learned ways to cope with my feelings that are authentic and effective. I've lacked these skills for a long time and nobody ever asked me to change my feelings. That said I do know that I do try to change my feelings, but that's not because of IE.
3. BoB says that you are better off not responding to urges by eating, whereas IE recommends eating in response to urges (they say urges are your inner rebel speaking up - you must give it what it wants so it feels satisfied). No no no, again nobody has recommended that I give in to my inner rebel. The inner rebel is a sign, an indication that I am restricting myself in some way. Whether we give in to the inner rebel or not is not the point, the inner rebel NEVER feels satisfied by the way, therefore IE principles would never encourage anyone to satisfy their inner rebel.
4. BoB is not at odds with practicing eating restraint, if it means nutritional needs are met, even if losing weight is the goal (for an overweight person). IE is against restriction of any kind, including intellectually supervised restraint of nutritional choices and portion sizes. In IE, all eating choices are governed by the "intuition," a term that is subject to some debate. IE promotes putting weight loss "on the back burner," which really means, never, the idea being that your intuition will help your body settle into its natural weight. actually, our eating choices are governed by self care. Lots of us IEers are bound to dietary restrictions because of allergies, medical conditions, religious restraints etc. Here you are promoting the same old IE stereotype that we eat at every whim.
5. In BoB, urges to binge go away if you DON'T indulge them. In IE, urges to binge go away if you DO indulge them. Absolutely not. We learn how to distinguish between physical hunger and mental hunger, maybe what you call your monkey brain hunger? I don't know, I can't speak on BoB. Cravings come and go, we are encouraged to respond to them but not always by eating. We respond to them by observing how our body feels, perhaps the craving is triggered by an anxiety or fear. An urge is an opportunity to tune in.
6. In BoB, your capacity to exercise free will choice grows (i.e. self-confidence as well), while in IE, your capacity to exercise free will is dictated only by your animal nature (you are at the mercy of your fluctuating desires).I don't see it like that at all. As a matter of fact when I'm binging I feel very constrained in my food choices and behaviors. When I'm well and not binging I feel freer than ever since I've started IE. It's so freeing to not be hungry!
With BoB, emotions are not considered as something to "stand back from." I think emotions should sweep you away. You just don't eat. Coping with feelings is irrelevant when it comes to BoB. You just don't eat, and let the chips fall where they may. Coping happens without focusing on it. When you focus on your coping strategies, you feed the beast, so to speak. With BoB, your inner rebel (yes, monkey mind - this is not a term I made up) is not a sign that you are restricting in some way, it is just neurological junk - to focus on it is to feed the urges. BoB does not discourage attempting to lose weight or eat for health (intellectual food choices vs. listening to your body.) - this is what I mean by restriction/restraint, a subject you brought up yourself earlier. I was not speaking about medical/allergy issues. In BoB, tuning in to the urges is not encouraged as it gives the urges power (just like a child who seeks attention by being naughty in some way...to indulge the child is to encourage the behavior). Per BoB, unused neural pathways eventually fall away.
So, the question now is....how often do you binge?
I've read several books on IE and I'm in a group therapy program for eating disorders that uses IE as a methodology. I've never, ever read or heard anyone say that IE gives you permission to binge eat. The closest I've seen is addressed in the book Overcoming Overeating, which encourages new intuitive eaters to recognize that they are binge eating and to try to understand that it is a sign that they are not taking care of their emotional or physical needs. Recognition and acceptance with loving kindness is different than permission to binge whenever you feel the urge. I'm actually talking about a medically defined binge, by the way, and not just eating two donuts or something that a dieter might define as a "binge" because it's off plan.
The intuition part of IE is important during the earlier part of the program. Lifting restrictions from food and acknowledging that you're an adult and can eat however you want is an important step in the process. That doesn't mean that you eat only by intuition. That would be impossible. When you're hungry often times you don't have a specific craving. Also, your "cravings" are influenced by the types of food that you usually eat. Once you are mindful of these things you realize that it's really not about eating food whenever you have a craving for it. It's possible to feed yourself a wholesome diet that honors your taste and nutritional needs.
IE is a process. How you eat in the beginning isn't how you will be eating in the long term. It is necessary to give yourself permission to eat junk food, even overeat if you need to to learn how to feed yourself. If you are a binge eater then that's probably not going to disappear when you first begin IE. You will binge, but hopefully you will be mindful of that binge and how it makes you feel before and after.
On my drive to work in the mornings sometimes I will have a fleeting thought that says "I would love to stop at Rainbow Donuts and get a couple of donuts for breakfast." I then think about the times that I've done that and how I haven't felt my best afterwards. I would rather have a balanced breakfast that will give me sustained energy and won't make my stomach hurt. I don't have to play mind games with a monkey brain. I let the thought go because it's not what I really, truly want in the moment. But I only got here through indulging in those urges a couple of times and being sick to my stomach.
Because BoB is based on SMART Recovery, originally developed for drug and alcohol addiction. For this reason programs like it and Overeaters Anonymous focus on "abstinence" from problematic behaviors rather than moderation or a harm reduction approach.
Because BoB is based on SMART Recovery, originally developed for drug and alcohol addiction. For this reason programs like it and Overeaters Anonymous focus on "abstinence" from problematic behaviors rather than moderation or a harm reduction approach.
Ahh, I definitely would not compare Overeaters Anonymous to BoB in any way. I think Kathryn even calls out OA in her book for how much their philosophy didn't resonate with her.
OA actually places a lot of the control out of the individual. From what I've read they tell members that white sugar/carbs are to be abstained from because those "cause" binging (which is simply not true, I've been eating as many carbs/white sugar as I feel like). BoB has no sorts of food restraints whatsover. Also one of the principles is "We admit that we're powerless over food" /: And it's super drenched in religion, like relying on god to help them stop overeating. Which I guess is fine if you're religious but all in all the whole program doesn't seem to do much to empower the individual.
BoB only really focuses on avoiding binge eating - that specific behavior. Not avoiding any specific foods, and there is no prescribed diet plan to go off of or anything. Outside of binging, the individual is free to enjoy food however they feel is best. It's focus is only on recognizing the urges that lead to binging and learning to sit with them without giving them unnecessary significance or power. Then going back to your regular life once they pass.
I like to see the technique in BoB more as a skill one learns, then builds upon and gets better at as they go along, rather than merely an iron fist willpower-driven commitment to stop binging forever no matter what. I mean we've all done that at one point and as we've learned through experience it doesn't mean much on its own.
IE is a process. How you eat in the beginning isn't how you will be eating in the long term. It is necessary to give yourself permission to eat junk food, even overeat if you need to to learn how to feed yourself. If you are a binge eater then that's probably not going to disappear when you first begin IE. You will binge, but hopefully you will be mindful of that binge and how it makes you feel before and after.
On my drive to work in the mornings sometimes I will have a fleeting thought that says "I would love to stop at Rainbow Donuts and get a couple of donuts for breakfast." I then think about the times that I've done that and how I haven't felt my best afterwards. I would rather have a balanced breakfast that will give me sustained energy and won't make my stomach hurt. I don't have to play mind games with a monkey brain. I let the thought go because it's not what I really, truly want in the moment. But I only got here through indulging in those urges a couple of times and being sick to my stomach.
I think the perception that IE gives permission to binge eat stems from the fact that in IE there are valid explanations for binge eating. There are "reasons" for it besides just having an urge then giving in to that urge. The reasons could be emotional, situational, whatever. But because the individual is allowed valid reasons and explanations for their binge eating, it becomes rather easy to accomodate for. It's like, "well, I was feeling anxiety, so it makes sense that I binged. Well I haven't solved my stress issues yet, so of course I'd binge." With BoB there is never any valid reason for binge eating. You just felt the urge to do it, and so you gave in to that urge to get rid of the discomfort of the urge.
I guess the issue for people who go from IE to a more direct approach like BoB is because they feel like they already know how they're going to feel after a binge. I used to tell myself during my urges, "I'll feel so much better if I make good choices for my body!" but many, many times I would still binge because the monkey brain isn't logical. It won't be like "Oh yeah, you're right, let's not overeat/binge" and turn off the urges. No, most of the time it will still keep pumping out that adrenaline, trying to get you to give in. It's automatic and does not listen to reasoning. It's a machine.
I agree with the permission to eat junk food thing. For me, eating junk food, or any specific type of food, is no longer connected to binge eating. I don't have "trigger foods" anymore and I recognize that any food can get me from hungry to comfortably full so I don't really focus on specific foods, besides what I'm in the mood for when I get hungry (which is pretty often healthy food, surprisingly enough. That's one cool thing I learned from IE). For me, "neutralizing" junk food was one of the first steps for sure.
But past that I had to get to a point where binging was just not something that had any place in my life anymore. I didn't see binging as an opportunity to "learn more about myself"; the only thing I could really learn from binging is that I had an urge to binge, and then I gave in to it. (Also a big key with BoB is to not look at yourself as a "binge eater" - you don't want to identify with the behavior so closely. You want to remain as mentally separate from it as possible, because when the line between what you want and what "it" wants start to blur, that's when overcoming urges becomes unnecessarily difficult.)
Of course, as per BoB, it's incredibly helpful to try to look back and see what your mindstate was when you decided to binge and why you gave in to it - but not really in the context that IE recommends. BoB advises one to look at what they were doing mentally when the urge came up - Were you struggling/arguing with the urge? Were you resisting it instead of just letting it flow through you freely? Were you tricked into thinking it was truly you who wanted to binge, if so what thoughts caused that temporary blur?
This is pretty different from the take in IE where you analyze each binge to figure out what was missing in your life emotionally that "caused" the binge. Or the one you mentioned, where you look at the adverse effects of a certain way of eating, in hopes that you'll simply decide not to do it later because you remember how that felt. The latter is a good idea in theory and might work for less intense eating issues, but its simply not enough for some people in the context of actual binge eating. A lot of times the urge will persist regardless, and if you don't know how to sit with it without struggling, then a binge is often inevitable.
I don't have enough time to argue with you point by point. However, you have a very simplistic view of intuitive eating. On many of the points you're just plain wrong. Remember that there is no one way to eat intuitively. There are several different authors and health professionals who have written books on the subject, each with a slightly different take on the concept and methodology for helping with overeating. Of course it's easy to compare one woman's work (BoB) to a body of work that isn't cohesive.
Also understand that BoB was written specifically for people with eating disorders and not for people with different patterns of disordered eating who are not on the eating disorder spectrum. Of course IE isn't going to help someone with AN/BN/EDNOS/BED alone. Neither is BoB. They're each a single tool in the arsenal that it takes to overcome an ED. BoB helped me immensely in sorting out my disordered thoughts. Did I gain recovery through that book alone? **** no! In my program we've learned all sorts of different ways to deal with urges, including IE and some aspects of SMART recovery. I've also had to start taking drugs to help with depression and anxiety.
If you've been helped with BoB good for you. There are a lot of people who have. There are also many people with ED that aren't helped at all by it (I've talked personally to several). In the end you have to do what works for you. Coming in and trashing a method that is working for others here because you think you've figured it all out is really not helpful for those who are struggling and on a different path. I'm all for having good arguments but this is just getting silly.
But past that I had to get to a point where binging was just not something that had any place in my life anymore. I didn't see binging as an opportunity to "learn more about myself"; the only thing I could really learn from binging is that I had an urge to binge, and then I gave in to it.
So this is the part that makes sense to me. And I'm definitely inspecting these thoughts closely. I do recognize in myself that I am on a constant quest to aleviate my anxiety, to be "happy" and "not stressed out" and falling short because duh, stress is there. Furthermore, there is one aspect of IE that may totally embrace what you point out here which is to sit with one's feelings. I've talked to my NT a little bit about NT and the general idea is to allow the feelings to just be, don't try to control them, don't try to change them, and I think that idea really ties or at least I think it ties in with what you describe.
That said, I don't think it's beneficial to anyone here to do an IE vs BoB analysis. There is much to agree upon, mainly that diets do not work, food is not the enemy, and we are not food addicts. We can all agree that eating/binging is a behavioral issue. But let's not derail the IE thread, it's the only thread that the IEers have on the forum amidst the diet noise. It might be a good idea to start a BoB support thread similar to this one, I'll be sure to participate there without having to go into an IE vs Bob thing.
