You are listening to the Stop Binge Eating podcast with Kirsten Sarty episode number 371.

Hi, when you reflect on and analyze why you binge eat, do you ever wonder if it's a form of self

punishment? Many people I've worked with have wondered that. Because when you look at what's happening

and you see yourself doing something that you ultimately don't want to be doing and it's something

that makes you feel so physically bad and you're doing it to yourself, it makes sense to think

that you're doing it to punish yourself. But most of the time, that's not actually what's happening.

You're not doing it on purpose to punish yourself.

It's not intentional punishment.

It's really just you giving in to an urge that was created by either you being too restrictive with your eating or you

not being willing to feel your emotions. However, some people do intentionally punish themselves

for eating what they think is a bad food or for overeating or for binging. But it's not usually

just them thinking, I deserve to be punished. So I'm going to

eat all this food as a punishment. When we break it down, it usually looks more like this.

They did something. They made a mistake. Then they are hard of themselves, beating themselves up

mentally, being really mean to themselves.

So then they feel bad, maybe ashamed, angry, disappointed, guilty, some feeling like that.

And then to avoid those feelings, they eat.

So the eating isn't necessarily the punishment.

It's really a response to the emotions they're feeling. The eating is a way to

avoid feeling the feelings that they created for themselves by being too hard on themselves.

What's really happening is that they're punishing themselves with their words, making themselves

feel worse about what they did. Now, there might also be times when

...