The fitness lifestyle and binge eating

The fitness lifestyle and binge eating

As many of you already know, I've made it my mission to understand the different types of eating disorders, how they arise, why so many of us deal with them, and what you can do to end this struggle once and for all.

In my many hours of research on emotional eating, I have come across hundreds upon hundreds of articles and various research studies. What all of the “cure suggestions” seem to have in common is that the affected person only eats when hungry and does everything in their power to divert the focus from eating at all other times.

This made me realize something: If eating hungry and not thinking about food at other times is the prerequisite for getting rid of emotional eating or overeating disorders, then serious trainees have a real problem!

Are binge eating disorders more common in fit people?

Just think about it – people who eat by the clock, regardless of their hunger level; those who constantly think about food, how they plan it days in advance, weighing and measuring every piece of food they put in their mouths - how can they prevent this obsessive relationship with food when their lifestyle is centered around obsessing over it? ?

How do you NOT obsess when this is a part of your day?

Then there's the whole cycle of fat loss and muscle gain that most serious lifters and competitors do yo-yo style. The average athlete, for example, goes through an off-season muscle-building cycle, followed by a "cutting" phase in which she follows a very low-calorie, highly restrictive diet for 12 or 16 weeks.

Once this cutting cycle ends, she will allow herself the freedom to eat more calories - along with some of her favorite foods every now and then as she enters another "off season."

So what's the problem, you ask?

Quite simply, the simple fact that you deprived yourself for a good 3-4 months and followed (mostly) a starvation diet consisting of less than 1,200 calories daily (like you did hours of cardio every day) absolutely crashed your metabolism!

And there's more...

Once you allow yourself to eat more; The second you tell yourself it's "okay" to treat yourself every now and then once you've achieved your goal - the minute you relax - your subconscious will start sending intense "feed this starving body" signals that you, most likely, will find incredibly difficult to resist!

For this reason, no matter how well you recognize the fact that you don't actually *need* that whole box of cereal; It also won't go away as soon as you put the spoon down, and you can always have more later - you'll have an overwhelming desire to finish it all, as your body tries to "saturate" itself with food while it's "still available."

Because who knows when you will experience another period of hunger. Your body's main goal is to survive. When you're standing at the fridge late at night eating peanut butter straight from the jar, spoonful after spoonful, your body is only focused on maintaining itself.

Similar looking?

Survive.

That's what it's all about. And that, to me, explains the prevalence of binge eating and emotional eating in the fitness community.

To be honest, I have a hard time with this idea. I like to think that we are all very health conscious... and yet if we are the root cause of our own suffering, then how conscious and conscious are we really?

Do you think I'm wrong?

If you think I'm wrong, I would absolutely love to hear why. I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong. If you think I'm missing an important factor here, I really, really need to hear your opinion.

And if you agree or understand what I'm trying to say, I'd like to hear from you too...it will help me solidify my theory.

Inspired by Olesya Novik