How Skipping Meals is Feeding Your Binge

Skipping meals in a day can look something like this:

You wake up at the last minute possible. There is no time for breakfast so you grab a cup of coffee on your way to work. The caffeine makes you totally forget you did not have breakfast as you ride that high into lunch. You realize you have not eaten anything yet and are starting to feel cranky. To try to pick up your mood, you grab the first available food without assessing how that food is going to make you feel. You drink another cup of coffee in the afternoon to get through the rest of your workday. You drive home exhausted. At home, you finally make a meal but still feel starving after you eat. You start to judge yourself for feeling hungry. You turn on the television, grab a bunch of snack food and numb out the emotions, stuff down the stress, and try to relax and unwind. You feel incredibly full and stay up late to digest and the cycle starts all over again.

Skipping meals can throw our blood sugar levels off, making us more moody and irritable, increasing the likelihood that we will choose foods that are highly processed to self soothe only leaving us feeling even more uncomfortable afterward. And if you're wondering, "what about the Intermittent Fasting craze?" Yes, it can be healing and supportive to many and Alisa Vitti reveals in her book, In The Flo, that Intermittent Fasting for women during their reproductive years can actually shrink their ovaries. So if you're a woman and trying to make yourself feel good about skipping breakfast because you're Intermittent Fasting, this is potentially backfiring, creating more imbalance in your body, and setting you up for a wonderful evening binge.

Skipping meals can lead to:

• Poor concentration

• Increased stress

• Lower sense of well being

• Can make it more difficult to navigate emotions making them feel more intense

If your brain tells you that you don't have time to eat because you have too much to do, you also don't have time to feel ungrounded, unstable, and mentally foggy. If your brain is telling you that if you eat more you will gain weight, skipping meals is actually slowing your metabolism down, putting your body in a survival mode and actually making you gain weight.

Rhythmic, consistent eating can stabilize your blood sugar levels, support your stress response, help with navigating emotions easier, and provide a general sense of calm and stability. Eating at similar times in a day can support your body with relaxing and trusting that it is going to be nourished moving you out of a fight or flight response and into rest and digest mode where you will more easily assimilate your food, decreasing the likelihood of a binge later in the evening. Eating within an hour of waking up will stoke your metabolic fire actually supporting you in losing and maintaining your weight. Here is what a rhythmic eating day can look like:

You wake up after a full 7 to 8 hours of sleep. You have enough time in the morning to make your favorite cup of coffee or tea and slowly make your breakfast in a relaxed way. You eat at a kitchen table, enjoying the nourishment coming in. You leave for work satiated and satisfied. Around 4 hours later, you make sure you can take a break to eat lunch. Before eating, you engage in some deep belly breathing to take time to transition from work mode to relaxation mode to set your body up for optimal digestion. You pause on all work thoughts, worries, and concerns and bring your entire attention to your food. You go back to work feeling nourished, calm, and mentally clear. You have a snack with you just in case you need something before dinner and can eat in the afternoon or in the car on your drive home so you don't come home starving. You enter into the kitchen again ready and excited to feed your body to facilitate feeling vibrant. You stop eating around 2 hours before bed giving your body plenty of time to digest and get ready for sleep.

You might be thinking, "Yah right Stephanie. You're living in a dream world for that day to exist."

This kind of rhythmic eating day is possible for you! You just get to break it down into baby steps. Start with one small step that feels manageable. Maybe that is going to sleep earlier so that you can wake up earlier to make breakfast. Maybe that is buying some whole food snacks to keep in your car. Perhaps that is rearranging your work schedule to commit to taking a lunch break. Just take one small step and commit to taking just that one step for 3-4 weeks and then move on to taking another small step. The way you desire to feel in your body is possible and moving toward a rhythmic eating day is one way to begin to facilitate creating the emotions and sensations you deserve to feel in your system.