Today is the day: the WIP article series How to cure binge eating comes to an end. You can find links for all the other installments of the series at the end of this post. But before that, let's cover one last binge battle tool: eating slowly.
Eating slowly is (kind of) another term for mindful eating, meaning that when you do sit down by your dinner table to enjoy your meal, you think about where the food and its ingredients have come from and what kind of process they have gone through to end up on your plate. Eating small forkfuls at a time, you ponder on the life cycle of the food, and swallow each piece before taking another one. To make the act even slower, you can contemplate how lucky you are to be enjoying such a delicious and wonderful meal, and take sips of water between bites.
To wield this tool most effectively, you can set a timeframe and other constraints for the meal - for example, that you sit and eat by the table at least half an hour, and that you empty a large glass of water during the meal, or that you really do go through the journey of that quinoa grain in your mind. You can even discuss the whole process with your meal companion. A light conversation that allows you to eat mindfully while talking between bites also helps you slow down your eating speed.
You can use this technique with any meal, be it breakfast, lunch, snack, or dinner. You can also combine it with all the other techniques explained in this article series. So, to battle binge eating with all you've got, you should:
drink lots of fluids during and between meals that you've planned and/or prepped to eat regularly and slowly by a dining table.
Add your own hacks and your individual stand on the IF/BF choice, and you'll be unstoppable against that binge bastard!
RK
Article 1 about tea and coffee
Article 2 about timing your meals
Article 3 about planning your meals
Article 4 about IF and BF
Article 5 about water
Article 6 about your eating location
