Unlock Freedom from Compulsive Eating with this key strategy
What if the secret to breaking free from compulsive eating wasn’t another diet, but in aligning your eating habits with your circadian rhythm—your body's natural clock?
Allowing both your body and mind to know that food is coming when it's needed helps break the binge-restrict cycle and prevent compulsive eating. You can achieve this by incorporating regular meal times into your day.
Why Regular Meals Matter
Your body has specific times when it expects food. By providing regular meals, you’re telling your body that nourishment is on the way. This routine helps prevent binges by:
Stabilising blood glucose levels: By keeping your blood glucose balanced, you're less likely to experience strong cravings for less helpful foods.
Regulating hunger hormones: Regular meals stop your hunger hormones from spiking uncontrollably, which can leave you feeling out of control with food.
Taming your inner rebel: Many who struggle with compulsive eating have the experience of a rebellious inner voice taking over. When your body trusts that food will come regularly, this rebel is far less likely to sabotage your efforts.
It’s Not About Rigidity, but Planning
Regular meals don’t mean following a rigid plan. It’s about having a flexible approach that ensures you have food available ready for your meal times and possibly snacks too. Many of my clients find that planning meals in advance is a lifesaver. It removes the stress around food and ensures you can make balanced choices in advance.
Relearning Hunger Cues
Many of my clients initially resist the idea of having breakfast because they don’t feel hungry in the morning, however, often end up overeating by the end of the day.
You may believe you’re not hungry in the morning, but this is often because your body has forgotten how to recognise hunger. By starting small, such as introducing a light breakfast, you can help your body relearn hunger cues and adjust to a more balanced eating pattern.
Introducing regular meals at key times, you allow your body to sync up to its natural physiological processes. Eventually, you’ll notice that you're ready to eat and that you feel more satisfied afterward.
Focus on When, Not What (for Now)
At the beginning of this journey, focus on when you’re eating rather than fixating on what you’re eating. This can help reduce the overwhelm and resistance some people feel when making changes to their eating patterns. Once you’ve established regular meal times, you can begin to work on what you’re eating, ensuring you're getting balanced and nourishing meals.
Take a moment to ask yourself why you may be holding off on eating at certain times. Is it truly because you aren’t hungry? Or are you not recognising your hunger cues? In some cases, you might even be intentionally trying to eat less, thinking that saving calories early in the day will help. This only sets you up for stronger hunger and loss of control later on.
Give It Time: Experiment and Adjust
Give your body time to adjust to this new rhythm. Experiment with regular meals for a few weeks and notice how your cravings, energy levels, and emotional responses to food change. Your life style may add extra complications to this such as if you're a shift worker, but don't worry—I cover strategies for challenges that may arise (including for shift workers) in my upcoming book The Binge Freedom Method which will be out soon!
By taking these steps, you’ll set the foundation for overcoming binge and compulsive eating, creating stability in your eating habits and freeing yourself from the cycle of restriction and bingeing.
In the meantime you can begin your journey by downloading my free guide, Breaking the Cycle - Your First Steps to Healing Your Relationship with Food.
This valuable resource will help you:
✔️ Recognise true hunger versus emotional hunger
✔️ Learn the most effective eating patterns to regulate your appetite and enable stability
✔️ Discover the ideal snacks to curb your cravings and regain control