Don’t Substitute Activities for Overeating

Substitution to avoid compulsive eating is a band-aid approach. Instead, we must slow down and heal.

Advice that is often given for preventing compulsive eating is to distract with, or substitute, another activity in order to delay or stop that eating.

Often it is recommended that when you want to compulsively eat, to instead take a walk, or call a friend, or listen to a podcast, or knit or some other activity.

While this may temporarily work in some instances, I've never known anyone to be able to use this strategy every time they want to overeat and then successfully stop the compulsion every time. It does not always work.

Substitution is a band-aid approach that does nothing to address the root cause of why we want to overeat in the first place.

It will never lead to lasting change, and it means you are forever dependent on being able to spontaneously take walks or call people or knit, for the rest of your life. That is not freedom with food!

I know that hearing that substitution and distractions are not the best method, can make people feel hopeless and lost about what to do.

If we can't distract, then won't we be doomed to the binge eating with no help to slow down the destruction of it?

However, this concern comes from the understandable lack of faith that we often have in our ability to emotionally address the root causes of compulsive eating to the point that we don't even need substitutions, because we don't want to binge in the first place.

What we need to do instead when we want to overeat, is stop, slow down and feel how we are feeling.

How am I feeling? Why do I want to compulsively eat? What would I feel emotionally if I didn't?

Soften to the lifelong emotions you've been suppressing and allow them to flow and express instead and seek the truth about why you have this pain and anger and sadness instead.

This will help you work towards a life where you don't need substitutions to prevent or delay emotional eating, because you just don't feel inclined to do it anymore.

Photo by Zoya Loonohod via Unsplash