A woman I greatly admire, Carla Savetsky, of Natural Healing for Women, sent me this beautiful email today. I've been working with her to feel more grounded and balanced, after learning about my husband's illness.

She said,

"Here's what's happening when you binge:
Your being feels like what's happening in your life right now is all too much, is totally out of control, you can't cope with all the feelings of what's happening. Who could??? It's all too much. So, this coping mechanism allows you to lose consciousness for those few moments and obliterate consciousness. And then, you have some place to put the focus other than the horror of what's really going on. That is what you are looking to do - obliterate consciousness. The feelings are all too much. That's what binging is about.

Here is a gentle way to work with it, if you're up for it. There is a moment when you are eating where you recognize that it is going into a binge. In that moment, stop and take a deep breath. Just commit to that. Nothing else. Tell yourself that you will go back to binging in a moment, and that's fine. No judgement. But for this moment, you are just going to allow yourself to breath, and to see if you can tolerate being in that moment with whatever feelings arise. Because in that moment, what you probably really need is to cry deeply or scream or have someone hug you. But if you can allow yourself to tolerate the feelings, there is no need for a binge."

I'm posting this here because I think it's such beautiful advice.

I'm going to try it today, should I have that afternoon/early evening urge, and see what happens.

For more information on Carla Savetsky, see

naturalhealingforwomen.c
om/bio.html