Utilizing Somatic Strategies and Regulating Your Nervous System to Overcome Compensatory Food and Body Behaviors
A compensatory behavior is something you might feel the impulse to do after eating a certain food or amount of food. These behaviors are trying to support you in navigating feelings of shame, anxiety, guilt, and lack of safety. Additionally, if there is fear around your body shape and weight changing, then the compensatory behavior is also trying to help you feel in control of your body.
Compensatory behaviors are incredibly normalized in diet culture. It's things like:
Saving your calories to have a large meal later
Exercising off a big meal
Cleansing to feel "clean" after eating foods you have labeled as "bad"
Feeling like you ate too much the day prior and fasting the next day
Skipping meals after a large meal or binge eating experience
Using diet pills to keep your weight low
Chewing your food and then spitting it out
Just intermittent fasting period
And on the more severe eating disorder side of compensatory behaviors is throwing up your food
Using appetite as a way to not eat, for example, "I'm not hungry so I might as well not eat" when your body still needs food regularly every day no matter what
If we take on a nervous system perspective of compensatory behaviors, you can experience compensatory urges as information from your body that you don't feel safe.
You've eaten a food or an amount of food that has been deemed as wrong and by doing this food behavior your body now feels threatened and the compensatory behaviors are trying to get you back to safety. The compensatory behaviors were only created on what you learned as safe and unsafe behaviors to have with food and also what is a safe and unsafe expression of your body size out in the world. The compensatory behaviors were the answer to the dysregulation already present in your body. Yet, these behaviors often leave you feeling even more disconnected and they don't support your body in feeling any safer to be here.
The external dysregulating factors that can increase the desire to lean on compensatory behaviors can include:
Fear of being abandoned by others if your body changes
A desire for belonging. If your friends engage in compensatory behaviors it increases the likelihood you may too
Pressure to show up in a certain role with your friends and family
Anxiety about how others will treat you
Feeling like you always have to be the yes person and can never say no
The internal dysregulating factors that can increase compensatory behaviors can include:
All emotions feel unsafe to feel
Internalized critical beliefs about yourself and your body
Previous trauma where your body is living as if that trauma is still happening
Feeling stuck in go go go or hard to get up and get moving
There are many different influences affecting compensatory behaviors and you ultimately don't need to know why your food or body coping mechanisms are occurring. Trying to find the answer can push you further away from what your body is trying to tell you. You can view your food and body impulses as your body's language and how it communicates to you that it needs your attention.
Here are some somatic nervous system regulating approaches you can explore when you feel the urge to engage in a compensatory behavior:
You will first want to practice pausing and welcoming in the presence of the coping mechanism. Just because you have an urge to binge or restrict doesn't mean you have to do anything with that impulse. Making contact with it can already be regulating as you slow down and be with what is. Next, you will want to assess whether you're in fight, flight, or freeze. Does your body need support upregulating or downregulating?
If you're in hyper-arousal, fight or flight, and feel like you can't settle, you can...
1. Shake or dance. Shaking sends the message to your body that the danger has passed and that your fight or flight response can turn off. Again, you don't need to know why your body has moved into or fight or flight response. You can get into your body and move, dance, shake to show your body that whatever it has been perceived as a threat is no longer here.
2. Pat your body down. When you're feeling overwhelmed, it's hard to focus on one thing. Patting your body down can bring your attention to your hands and the part of your body that you're touching. Afterward, you can notice and observe the reverberation left in your body giving you something to attend to and ground yourself in the present moment.
3. Push against something. This could be a wall, the floor, or lifting heavy weights. If the compensatory behavior is coming in because of anger or frustration from putting your needs last, feeling disrespected, or having your boundaries broken, that heat and rising energy needs to be processed and moved through you.
If you're in hypo-arousal, freeze or collapse, and feel like you can't get yourself up and moving, you can...
1. Call a safe person. Reach out to someone who supports you in feeling seen, heard, and held. The kind of person who doesn't try to fix what's happening for you and just makes space for you to be how you are. When you feel frozen and stuck, it can be hard to engage in a self regulating act and you may need the support of someone else's nervous system to upregulate.
2. Swaddle yourself. We've seen this in babies, swaddling them in a blanket can support them in feeling calm. The swaddling experience mimics the embrace of the womb and the close contact touch of another human being. You can practice this yourself by wrapping yourself up tightly in a blanket or giving yourself a firm self hug.
3. Get grounded and orient. Your body needs to know that right here and right now it is safe. You can bring your attention down to your feet or literally sit or lie down on the floor. Once there, you can look around the room. Notice what you like in the room you're in. This could be objects, colors, the way the sun dances across the room, or what's outside your window. You will be showing your body that this moment is not only safe but also potentially an enjoyable one.
Compensatory behaviors can be an act of disconnection. These habits push you further away from you. So the practice can be to notice the urge and choose a somatic act of connection to bring you closer to yourself. You will be practicing showing your body that no matter what has occurred with food, you are safe and you've done nothing wrong.