Hi Everyone, or one person :)

Hope you've had a good few days since my last post.  I'm happy to say I remain binge free 12 days after I committed to my goal of journaling my meals and just committing to do the work. I'll blog Wednesday and report the details of my week and which goals I was able to meet.

I want to keep it short today since I always seem to go on a bit too long. And, I'm tired and am trying to keep my commitment of getting proper shut-eye. I wanted to talk a bit about an interview I heard on the Quit Binge Eating podcast hosted by Alen Standish. He spoke with Kathryn Hansen, the author of Brain Over Binge. The interview was powerful in that Kathryn offered an actual method to stop binge eating.  Her premise is that binge eating is a bad habit that we can retrain our brains to stop wanting. For her, the act of binge eating was not curable with traditional therapy that addressed the personality. This really resounded with me since I had been reading literature revealing food's powerful effect on the brain, inducing the organ to release all sorts of pleasure hormones. And, modern processed foods with the magical "right" combination of salt, sugar, and fat, we've become even more hooked on food.

Since listening to the interview with Ms. Hansen, I've bought the book and it's an absorbing read so far. She is courageously honest about her struggle with binge eating and bulimia. I am looking forward to delving further. Already a few of her methods, revealed in her interview, have stuck in my mind. She said whenever she had urges, she would identify it as the addictive voice and then completely disregard it, giving it no attention, labeling it as brain junk. For two days I've tried this, and you know.. it's working. It's still early, so we'll see.

My last thought is again something Ms. Hansen said. It struck me because I've had to confront this question in recent years as I struggled with my binge eating. She said you must first ask yourself if you really want to quit, because if you don't, then this will not work. I've had to ask myself that after listening to the interview and I believe after nearly 20 years of binge eating, and the inner work I've done this past year, that yes, I'm finally ready. I know that for a time, even though I despised this habit, I savored the total release of binging. That numbed trance we all know and the satisfying feeling of eating. However, now with self compassion and the guilt and shame removed, I can clearly examine whether I need this. The answer is that the cost is too great. The cost to my health, to my kids (because when I binge, I'm an awful mother - impatient and angry), to my marriage, to my joy, to my life. So, I'm ready to be free in a healthy, real way that has no cost. So, I guess I'm posing that question to you.