Ep 58- The Truth About Binge Triggers

March 20 ,2025

Most people believe that avoiding their binge triggers like certain foods, social situations, or emotional stressors is the best way to stay in control.

But in reality, avoiding triggers actually makes binge eating worse.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

• the problem with avoiding triggers

• the science behind rewiring your brain to stop binge eating

• the right way to face your triggers without spiraling into a binge

TRANSCRIPT:

   Hey, confident eaters. Today, I'm talking about a big, giant myth that goes around when you are learning to stop binge eating and overeating. And this myth is about your triggers.

In my journey, I often felt like I was going to have to live in this teeny tiny bubble of a life if I were to avoid anything that triggered me because it seems that anything would trigger a binge for me.

It didn't matter if I was happy, if I was sad, if I was at home, if I was away on vacation, if I was at a restaurant, if I was at a friend's house, anything seemed to set off a binge for me. And when I was in therapy, I remember talking about What are these triggers for me and listing them out and talking about how we could handle them and how we might be able to change my life to avoid them.

So, for example, eating at home more. When I go over to a friend's house, making sure I eat beforehand or not being hungry at restaurants so I don't eat there. And that just made my life feel so small. So, what if I told you today. That actually the truth is avoiding your triggers can keep you stuck. I'm gonna break down  Why facing your binge triggers head on is actually the secret to finally feeling free around food.

So what does it mean to have a trigger? So a trigger can be avoiding something because of how it encourages thoughts about binge eating because of the habit you've created out around it.

So this might be avoiding situations. Maybe it's restaurants, social events, being alone at home, or avoiding certain foods. So if there's a certain type of food, if you always binge on Snickers, you tell yourself, I'm just never gonna buy Snickers,  or you hide the food away. You might try to control your environment. So like I mentioned, eating before the party or the restaurants, you don't have to worry about hunger there.

And the important thing about all of these situations and triggers are that they are just circumstances. They themselves do not force you to act in any way. Okay? They are just existing.

And we know this because not everyone who goes to a restaurant overeats. Not everyone who has chocolate in their house binges on it. Not everyone who is hungry at the wedding goes crazy. There are these situations that exist, but the reason that we might  feel triggered to binge is because of the habit we've created around them and the thoughts we have in these situations.

But when we can learn to face our triggers and overcome them, food will lose its power over you. You will stop fearing certain situations and environments. You will build real self trust instead of relying on external controls, which will help you finally free from the cycle of binging, restricting, and avoiding.

So imagine if you could go out for dinner, order exactly what you want, and leave the restaurant without feeling guilty or out of control. This is what happens when you train your brain to face your triggers instead of avoiding them.  So let's go over what even is the problem with avoiding triggers.

Avoidance keeps foods feeling dangerous. Like something we can't be trusted around. When we tell our brain that something is dangerous or unsafe or needs to be avoided, our brain actually hyper focuses on that thing even more to try to protect us. Think about how this would play out hundreds of years ago.

If we told our brain that berry bush is dangerous, it would start to watch out for Where is that berry bush so I can make sure I don't eat it? It would hyper focus on it. So this can lead you to thinking about food even more.

Trying to avoid your food triggers also creates a cycle of fear and restriction in your life that makes it more likely that you'll binge on these things when you're exposed to this trigger unexpectedly.

We don't always know when these foods are going to appear because there are other people and other situations in life that are out of our control. And we want to make sure that you are able to handle them no matter what other people say or do or act like. And you're never going to get the chance to prove to yourself that you can handle these triggers without binge eating if you never experience them.

So if you are avoiding ice cream in the house because you're afraid of binging on it, you might feel safe for a while. You might think it's working for a while. But then eventually, You see ice cream at a party or your partner brings it home, and then you're way more likely to spiral into a binge because you've never built the skill of eating it in a controlled way of moderation.

When you're avoiding your triggers, it also means that triggers are controlling your entire life. It makes your life small. You end up changing your entire life just for the triggers instead of learning to change your reaction to them.  and ultimately Avoiding your triggers is delaying the necessary change that's required to stop binge eating.

So To explain this, let me do a quick recap of the brain science at play here. In order to change your brain, you literally have to feel triggered. Because what being triggered means is that you're activating a neural network. And when we're binge eating, we're activating that habit of binge eating. We feel like we want to do it because that brain pathway is lit up.

But in order to change, we have to make it lit up. So think about this like a Google document. If you open up the Google document, Then you can go in and you can edit the sentences, you can delete sentences, you can write new ones, but you're not able to delete sentences and write new ones until you open that specific Google document.

You can't just try to open a different document and change those sentences. You can't just think about changing the sentences. You actually have to click on the right Google document and open it in order to change it. So this is the same thing that happens in our brain. We need to activate that pathway by feeling triggered in that situation to open up our specific brain and be able to change that.

Now, once that brain pathway is lit up, if we decide to not do the thing that we normally do, that weakens the brain pathway. It starts fading away. So, when you get this urge to binge, and you're feeling triggered, and then you don't act on that trigger, What's going to happen is that we'll get easier and it will become less triggering. Your brain will learn through exposure And the more you expose yourself to a trigger without reacting with the binge the weaker it will become. So this is how your brain ultimately will unlearn the binge response . Think about it like overcoming a fear. If you're scared of public speaking  avoiding it forever makes this fear worse.

But if you gradually expose yourself to it, if you start by practicing a speech in your alone, if you then practice your speech with your partner, and then with a friend, and then to a small group of people, and then you go on a stage, it makes it easier because your brain learns that it's not actually dangerous. It's a safe thing to do.

So, facing your food triggers is the same process. By practicing eating your trigger foods in controlled ways, your brain starts seeing them as a threat. So, what if instead you didn't try to eliminate or avoid your triggers, but you used them as your friend, as tools in order to change your brain?

So, here is the right way to actually face your binge triggers.

I want you to intentionally put yourself in situations that you know might challenge you, or at the very least, stop avoiding them. But I want you to start small. This does not mean you have to go turn your cabinet into a Willy Wonka chocolate factory, okay? This does not mean you have to go to the dinner restaurant starving.

You can practice going out to eat with a little bit of hunger. Or practice going out to eat with someone you're comfortable with. If you're going on a first date, maybe not the best idea because you're going to have other things on your mind. So practice going out to eat with a best friend that you know very well, or your partner. Or you can try going alone, if that feels better, so you can look at your thoughts. Or maybe it will be easier to have restaurant food at home, where you can be in your own environment, you can really slow down with it, you can really pay attention to it. So find little ways to make it easier to do this.

Another example is to practice buying and keeping foods in the house. But that doesn't have to be everything. You could start by buying just one truffle chocolate, that are like individually wrapped. And bring that one home and practice eating it slowly and mindfully with your lunch. And then maybe you go by two or three and you practice having them one at lunch each day.

Maybe you show up to the party without bringing your own food so you can practice being a confident eater, making your own decisions, and trusting yourself to feel aligned in what you want.

Now, I said intentionally here for a reason. When people say to me, I just can't get through my triggers. It's usually because they are going through these situations on autopilot and default mode, but your default mode right now is to binge.

So instead, we want to be really careful to do these experiences very mindfully, so we can be aware of our thoughts and feelings while we are doing them. And this is something I help people with in coaching, is we make really concrete plans of how to handle those thoughts and feelings so you don't just do the same old thing you've always been doing.

I also have a worksheet in the show notes that will guide you through this process. So make sure you go download that worksheet that accompanies this podcast episode.

I want you to befriend your discomfort. Make it something that you're excited to be around. You don't have to get rid of the urge to act in order to act how you want to act.

Meaning it's okay if you feel the urge to binge. That doesn't mean you have to binge. Just because you have a thought doesn't mean it's true. You can feel that discomfort of sitting and doing something new and just bring it along with you, like a purse. Not letting it make the calls on what you decide to do or don't do.

Triggers will bring up urges to eat at first, and that is normal. That's how habitual brains work. But instead of fighting with the urge, sit with it and observe it. Remind yourself, I can have this food anytime. I don't need to binge on it now.

And then finally, you need to make sure you're repeating this exposure. One time exposures won't rewire your brain. They will help. Every time adds up, for sure. So make sure to celebrate when you do get through this.  But you need to practice this consistently.

And the truth is, while you're practicing it consistently, you might fall down and slip up at times. That is also a normal part of the process of learning and growing and changing your brain. You need to get back up and continuing practicing these exposures. So you can continue weakening the urges.

Now if this is something you feel like you want to put off to a later date I just don't want to sit with this discomfort right now. I just don't want to feel triggered right now. I want to remind you that the sooner you face your triggers the sooner you will get one the reward of doing this because after you get through a trigger and you realize that you didn't binge and That will release a big old hit of dopamine in your brain. You'll feel so excited and it will be done and over.

And You're also going to get the reward of urges becoming easier each day. So every day that you wake up from now on You will have less things that trigger you and that will make your life so much easier.

So I would rather you challenge yourself to get in as many triggers as possible sooner rather than later, So you can make your life better sooner rather than later.

Wouldn't you rather have the next? 40, 50, 60 years of your life binge free by sitting in a little discomfort now than spending 40, 50, 60 of your years uncomfortable because you're continuing to binge? Like I know what I'd rather have. I'd rather have a little bit of discomfort today for like five minutes while I get through this urge and feel triggered and don't act on it so I can get all the years of my life back where I don't have to worry about this anymore.

You will be able to get the maximum pleasure and enjoyment out of life. When you get the hard things out of the way as quickly as possible. And you'll feel a greater sense of authority over your life too when you don't let your triggers control you anymore.

And the ultimate reward of doing all of this work is that you become so good at facing your triggers head on that this is a skill you can use to face other challenges head on in your life too.

Let this be a practice of embracing the hard and uncomfortable parts of life, which will still also exist after you stop binge eating, and watch how you'll be able to change every single other area of your life, and every other area will skyrocket into success. I promise you that is what happened to me.

Once I learned the skills of being a natural, normal, intuitive eater, I was able to apply those skills to building a business. To finding a healthy relationship, to deepening my connections with my friends, to putting more boundaries up so I have more time for me and I'm doing what I actually want to do instead of saying yes to everything and no to nothing.

That's what will happen when you build this skill of facing your triggers head on and actually working through them. Have a good week. Talk to you later.