One of the things that is you need to add to your life if you want to walk free, and stay free from eating disorders or food addiction is CONSISTENCY. Unfortunately there is something that will keep you from being consistent in any area of your life: Perfectionism. We’ve just completed Week 10 on the forum that deals with PERFECTIONISM. Please have a look at my 12 Week Online Program for Women Struggling with Food to find out more.
Here is a previous post I wrote that goes well with this week’s lesson:
How do you Break the Power of a Binge?
How do you prevent a Binge from turning into a whole day (or month) of overeating?
A friend asked this question on our forum, and I realized that it is a very common question that I might best answer here on my blog.
Of course it would be best to not binge at all. However, preventing a binge is easier said than done. If you are on a journey of finding healing for the root issues behind your eating disorder, you might not quite be at the place where you recognize the early signs of a binge (starting in the thoughts and emotions) and thus find yourself still binging from time to time.
You can easily undo all the progress you’ve made with one lousy binge! So how do you keep a binge from taking over your life?
The answer lies in TURNING YOUR BACK ON PERFECTION FOR GOOD!
In Week 10 of my 12 Week Online Program for women with eating disorders I speak about the huge link between Perfectionism and Eating Disorders. If you have strong perfectionist tendencies then you might have a very difficult time trying to break away from binging. The reason: You want to have a 100% perfect day or NOTHING – No middle ground.
In order to find healing in this struggle and to BREAK THE POWER OF THE BINGE, our focus has to shift. We have to ask the Holy Spirit DAILY (maybe even hourly) to help us shift our focus from:
WEIGHT LOSS to HEALTH
AND
24 HOURS OF PERFECTION to A YEAR OF HEALTH
So what am I trying to say?
If you can change your focus (only with the help of God of course) to not see your life in 24 hour compartments of “today-I-will-have-a-perfect-day” but rather view your progress over a period of a year, you will not be so devastated by a binge. As soon as a binge loses it’s power over you, it will start fading into the background of your life, until you don’t binge anymore.
We are so scared of those binges because it makes us spiral down. But if we remember every day that a 90% successful day will give us a 90% month, which in turn will give us a 90% year, things will start to change.
Do you realize that if you throw every binge in the 10% “failure-basket” and just get on with doing the 90% of healthy eating, exercise, rest, and drinking a lot of water YOU WILL HAVE AN AMAZING YEAR? You will be healthy, stronger, peaceful and yes some weight loss will be on the agenda.
However, if you keep having “100% success days” and “100% failure days” (the days when you binge and just keep eating because you’ve already “failed”) then you either end up at the same place after a year, or worse…
Ask God today to help you change your focus FOR GOOD! A binge has no power over you if you know exactly where to “file” it and remember that it’s just a drop in your big sea of 365 days!
Don’t wait for January ladies, start asking God now for that CHANGE OF FOCUS AND CHANGE OF HEART. Even if you don’t do everything perfect (like eat some pumpkin pie), if you start focusing on ways to get yourself healthy 90% of the time, you’ll feel peace return to your life!
Lots of Love to all of you beautiful women of God!
Heleen
PS: Please check out our brand new forum if you are a member and have not done so yet. Lots of ladies have joined in and God is using it for His glory!
Here’s a link: Member’s Forum