Binge eating is not a coping mechanism for complicated emotions, personality problems, or other life issues. Binge eating is a dysfunctional, ingrained brain habit that can be extinguished without (long-term) therapy. That is in a nutshell the message in the book Brain over Binge, by author Kathryn Hansen, who suffered from bulimia for years and discovered a simple way to stop binge eating.
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder in which you suffer from recurring binges, while losing control and consuming large amounts of food and being unable to stop eating. Binge eating is often compensated with vomiting, periods of fasting or eating very little, the use of laxatives or excessive exercise.
Bulimia or binge eating disorder is an emotionally, physically and mentally draining condition that causes shame, anxiety, depression, social withdrawal and low self-esteem. People with bulimia often suffer for years in silence and shame without the people around them realizing what is going on.
Within regular therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy is recommended as the most researched and effective psychological treatment for bulimia. This mainstream approach to bulimia assumes that eating disorders are maintained by a number of underlying factors, such as body obsession, low self-esteem and past trauma.
A general assumption within mainstream psychology is also that eating disorders function as a coping mechanism. In other words, the binge is a way of coping with life and complicated emotions. In therapy you learn to deal with life in a different, positive way, so that you no longer need the binges.
The fact is that only a small portion of people with bulimia benefit from this regular approach to bulimia. About half the people are cured of bulimia with regular psychological therapy and the prospects are mostly good for young people who have not suffered from bulimia for very long. For people who suffer from bulimia or binge eating disorder for a long(er) time, the prospects are not so promosing…
Kathryn Hansen herself followed therapy for years, delving into her past and her personality with therapists. In vain. In Brain over Binge, she explains clearly why this regular approach did not help her, how she came to understand her bulimia in a new way – as a function of her brain – and how she then used the power of her brain to quickly and permanently repair herself.
Hansen takes a simple, straightforward view of bulimia. She puts the problem of bulimia in a new light. It is not past traumas or a complicated personality that causes the problem, the problem of bulimia is simply not being able to resist or ignoring the urge to binge. Kathryn’s recovery plan is aimed at exactly that: learning to ignore that urge.
If you can ignore the urge to binge eat, you will no longer binge eat and therefore no longer have bulimia. With a simple step-by-step plan, Brain over Binge will teach you how to ignore those ‘urges’. The primary condition is that you eat enough, because only if you eat enough and are not hungry, while you learn to ignore the ‘urges’, they will decrease and eventually disappear.
Kathryn starts her book by explaining why people binge eat. Binge eating does not help you to deal with life (coping mechanism) as mainstream therapists and psychologists often say. Binge eating generally only makes life more difficult. You don’t binge eat because you want to, you binge eat because you can’t resist the urge to binge. So the question is: where does that urge come from and how can you learn to ignore that urge?
Instead of diving into psychology, Kathryn delves into how brain funstions to understand and cure bulimia. The urge to binge usually develops for two simple reasons: (1) as a survival instinct – binge eating is a normal response to dieting. Calorie restriction puts your body and brain in survival mode, in which you crave (large amounts of) food. This is a normal reaction, a symptom of a healthy brain.
And (2) as a habit (conditioning) – once you binge eat regularly, your body and brain become conditioned to expect and demand the binges, your brain starts sending out the urges automatically, as if binging is necessary for survival. Forming habits is a normal and vital brain function.
What Hansen is really saying is: there is nothing wrong with you, you are not broken or crazy. Your brain has just learned and automated a wrong habit. She explains how these automatic signals are activated by the reptilian brain and that focussed attention and new insights from your higher brain, the prefrontal cortex, can help learn to ignore the urges, so that they eventually extinguish themselves.
With this insight, Hansen also explains why regular cognitive therapy often does not work very well. Cognitive therapy is aimed at the conscious personal brain, our prefrontal cortex. But the urges come from the reptilian brain, they are automatic and unconscious. They arise from ingrained behavior that no longer has a function, it is actually ‘neurological junk’ that you listen to.
By seeing the urges in a new light and practicing not responding to the urges, you create new behavioral patterns (neural pathways) in your brain. You train your brain, as it were, to respond differently or not at all to the automatic urges. The techniques in the book are similar to Buddhist meditation techniques where you observe without reacting.
Brain over Binge provides a framework and step-by-step plan for recovery. It provides clear information about the functioning of the brain and insight into the how and why of your binges and urges by asking personal questions. Using practical exercises and tips, you will learn to view urges differently and approach them differently. You learn to no longer listen to the automatic voice of your reptilian brain, and to consciously not act from your prefrontal cortex. In short, you learn to ignore the urges.
The Brain over Binge’s method works! It is confirmed by several co-authors, all of whom are experts and have found recovery from bulimia or binge eating disorder through Kathryn Hansen’s method. A second edition of Brain over Binge has now been published and there are also podcasts and a newsletter.
All in all, Kathryn Hansen’s book sheds a completely new light on what bulimia is and how you can heal from it. Brain over Binge is a plea for a much simpler view of what bulimia actually is and an inspired step-by-step plan to recover from bulimia once and for all. Highly recommended for anyone struggling with this condition.
More info: brainoverbinge.com
