I was going to post this as a comment but I decided it deserved it's own thread. I first learned this in my neurophysiology class when my professor gave this illustration to explain neural pathways. Which translated from nerd speak can also mean habits.

Imagine that behind your house there is a large field. Across this field is your job. Normally you'd have to go out of your way to get to work. You decide one day that you're going to walk to work. You walk out your back door and trek through the field. There isn't a path but you keep walking along. It's a tough hike but you make it to work. You do this everyday for a week. The weeds and grass have bent and broken and the path has started to wear down. It's becoming easier. After a month you decide you want to get to work quicker so you decide to bike. It's tough at first because it's bumpy and uneven. Another week goes by and the dirt starts to get harder and the path gets a bit smoother. By the end of the month it's become a very prominent, dirt path. But you want to get work even quicker. So you decide to pave the path so it's smooth and straight. Now you're able to ride you bike as quickly as you'd like. Another couple months go by and you decide biking is too much work. You then widen the path into a road. Now you can easily drive from your backdoor straight to work.

This illustrates a couple different concepts. The shortest distance between two points is straight line. We are hardwired to find the easiest route that takes the least amount of energy. When we start a new habit or change one it's a lot of work because you are building that path from scratch. The more a path is traveled the easier it becomes, the more prominent it becomes, and also more permanent. A road does not easily disappear. This is why it's even harder to change old habits. It's so much quicker and easier to drive down your old road than it is to stick to hiking a new path. The same thing happens with our neural pathways. The more information that is passed from point A to point B the stronger that pathway becomes.

For me, the road out my back door leads straight junk food and binges. Right now I am trekking a confusing, bumpy, hard path towards a healthy relationship with food. The longer I stay on this path and the more work I put into it the easier it will become. And like with all roads, if they aren't kept up eventually they'll start to breakdown. I need to learn to stick to my tiny, frustrating, little hard path and not go back to the old road and fill it's potholes.

That's a great metaphor. Again I urge you to check out Brain Over Binge, this is what that book is all about.

That's great imagery! It's also great encouragement for people who need to start over on their journeys sometimes (*cough* me *cough*). Getting off track doesn't mean starting from square one, as I'm learning. (:

Thanks for the post!

Great post! I have noticed some things do become habit when it comes to food selection and portion sizes.

I've seen you mention this book on here several times. Admittedly, I had no intention of checking it out, mostly because I read one IE book many years ago and I don't feel like it helped, BUT I think I will check it out. Is it on Ibooks?

I cut out sugar 100% starting Dec 26th. I know your thoughts on that, and I disagree, so lets just agree to disagree however, I have been able to identify the residual binging (most has stopped but not all) as emotional....and I kind of feel like where do I go now??

Leah, the paved road in my life is to binging to comfort emotions too. Its so obvious, I'll say to myself "i'm eating right now bc I'm so stressed or depressed and I know this, yet I don't want to feel that way and I just want to feel better in the moment."

Its so strong that you are working on a new path, and a new way of dealing besides food. For me, eliminating sugar removed any chemical question and let me with only my emotional eating to address, but I don't know how to move forward from here....

oh the book I read was Breaking Free From Emotional Eating. Its in my Ibooks lol...Brain Over Binge is on ibooks so I downloaded the sample.

ok in such a short amount of time (my last post) I started reading the intro and I don't think its for me. The impression I got was that the author is saying for her, her ED had nothing to do with emotion or depression or past issues. I know that is not the case for me. I clearly am eating (or over eating) to help me feel better during very stressful and depressing points in my day. I am aware I am not hungry, and that if I had the option to address my stress in a healthy way, I would not eat. My issue arise mainly in the evening bc with 4 kids, especially a baby and a toddler, I am physically unable to meet there needs let alone mine. Often someone is crying because they need something, I am trying to juggle homework, dinners, diaper changes, a baby that just wants me to hold her and play with her, bath, ed and on my own. I find myself just grabbing handfuls of whatever (mostly almonds) and throwing them in my mouth as I pass through the kitchen in an attempt to almost medicate myself. (Currently the baby is napping and my toddler fell asleep, but I know any moment they will be up and it will start) I do this daily, and I get maybe one or two trips a month away from my kids. I am well aware that I am burnt out and stretched too thin, but I have no help. If I could go for a walk, or take a bath, ro just walk the **** away and have a few minutes to recharge...or if maybe this wasn't my life 24/7 and I had more frequent breaks as it seems other mothers have, I know I would not binge. My dh took a week off a few weeks ago, and I didn't binge the whole week. All around I was calmer. I am basically in "go" mode all. the. time. And food is keeping me sane. No different than lighting up a smoke or pouring a glass of wine. Only food is my poison.

Thank you! Very inspiring.

@GlamourGirl it's not an IE book, although I find it to be very compatible with IE. In fact I think it's almost impossible to do while dieting.

I suggested it to the OP because it is all about forming habits and laying new neural pathways. I have to correct you that the author does not really mean that emotions have nothing to do with eating. What she actually says that it doesn't matter if emotions have something to do with eating, everyone's binges start for different reasons whether it stems from severe restriction, childhood trauma, response to stress or whatever. Whatever the start of binging is doesn't matter, what matters is that the habit is formed and the neural pathways are set and the only way to change that is by forming new neural paths. She doesn't discredit emotions only that addressing your emotions will probably not cure binging.

I don't have any agreement or disagreement about you quitting sugar. You have to do what makes your body feel good. I like sugar and a tiny amount is great for me. But if I go over that small amount I feel terrible beyond terrible. I have short bouts of laying off sugar, then I go back to it, then I lay off again. Somewhere in there is balance haha.

Palestrina, thank you. Once I read the opening where I had interpreted it as her saying binging is not related to deeper issues, I skimmed lightly over what was remaining in my sample. But I will revisit it, maybe purchase the book. I know I am eating to relieve stress. I don't know how to stop it. Other stress relieving techniques dont give me the level of relief as fast as eating, and when stuck home with the kids in the evening, I'm often looking for a quick fix. Many years ago I was running regularly, more so than now, and with 2 kids I was more free to do so more often. I was also much lighter and running was more enjoyable, which it's honestly less so at my current weight. I started using it as a stress coping tool and I do remember a point when I would crave a run over food when I felt stressed. I remember thinking how wild that felt as if always used food instead. But I couldn't keep that up. As I had more kids and my husband schedule has changed, it's more demanding and he's gone nights and days now. Anyway, I can't seem to find something that offers the same level of ease as eating. It's easy to do anytime, anywhere and I can have the kids with me. Exercise is unfortunately not something I can't run off and do in the middle of caring for the kids.

Do we have to replace old paths with new ones to break old habits? I can't seem to find a replacement.

The struggle is real. Those of us who battle our weight and an eating disorder have to live with this all our lives in one way or another. Sometimes our success is temporary and the fight feels endless. But we must always remember that we are not failures, we are fighters. Hopefully one day there will be an easier answer for us, but for now we rely on tedious self reflection and redirection. It is what it is.

IE is a constant for me, I can reliably go back to the principles and they soothe and guide me- mindful eating, learning to be gentle and kind to myself, treat my body with respect, learn self care etc. but I'm not a cult follower and I knew where IE falls short for me. BOB has also helped me to disconnect from the emotional intrinsic personal part of my ED and understand that a habit is a habit, so what are the mechanics of that and how can I use that knowledge to create new ones?

You don't have to replace habits. Just know that when you repeat a pattern you strengthen those neural pathways. So like the OP says imagine that using food for stress relief is that well worn down shortcut you take to work. It's so easy to go that way because it's familiar, you know you're gonna get there in a jiffy, you can do it with your eyes closed. Let's say you decide you will find another way to go to work, you know it's better for you and it's safer and it's the right way but that road is plagued with traffic, speed bumps, road blocks and it will take you 5x longer to get to work. You do it for a while but it's such a pain and all you can think about is that handy dandy shortcut right behind your house! The more you try to convince yourself that you shouldn't go down that path the more logical sense it makes to actually use it again. So you go back to it again and again. And you feel like a failure.

But in the BoB book she'll tell you that as long as you think about that shortcut you will never stop using it. Every time you think about this short cut you must steer your mind away from it. Do not even engage in the thought of it for even that will keep that road strong and open to you. Focus on the road ahead instead. Over time if you do not engage with the shortcut it will start to slowly become unusable. Weeds will grown, trees will fall and block the way, rain will cause a mudslide and block the path, over time that road will cease to exist.

That's the key to creatin new neural pathways, it's not just about building a new habit, it is about erasing an old one and the only way to do that is by not repeating a bad habit which you do by not engaging in any thoughts with it. Don't know if this makes sense.

Wow! This post is so helpful! Thank you

This is an interesting thread. You girls took the same example and presented it in 2 completely different ways.

Leah's example showed that by doing something over and over you could form a new habit and it would become easier by repeating it over and over. She was creating a new habit that was a good one. Instead of driving the long way around to her job, she found a short cut. This short cut saved her time in the morning and she could get a little more sleep. She started getting needed exercise that didn't feel like exercise, she was just walking, then riding a bike. And she was saving money on gasoline. She did, however, go a little too far when she paved the road because then she didn't get the exercise, and she started spending for gas again. And once the road was paved, more people started using it and then she was back to the traffic congestion. Plus, she really made the farmer mad that she created that road through his field. LOL

Palestrina turned it around, and illustrated that using the path was taking the easy way out and wanted to break that habit, and she compared it to eating being the easy way out to relieve stress.

In Leah's example, the path was a new, good, beneficial habit that was formed. In Palestsrina's example, the path was a bad habit that was difficult to break, because it was so easy.

And congratulations to Glamour Girl, who is dealing with 4 children who all need her for different reasons, and doing it as a "single parent" since her husband's schedule keeps him away for longer periods of time. I don't know how you do it!!