Five Minutes
Friday, March 6th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
One of my clients taught me a great little tool that I’d like to share.
When you feel a binge coming on….that compulsive and URGENT need to go directly to food, look at the clock. Give yourself 5 minutes before going to food. Just 5 minutes. Distract yourself, calm yourself, talk to yourself….whatever you have to do to stay away from the food. Keep checking in with the clock. When five minutes have passed, check in with yourself. How are you doing? Are you hanging in there? Are you OK without the food? Do you think you can last another 5 minutes without going to food? If so, go for it. Use this time to write in a journal, talk to yourself, listen to music, relax and BREATHE…..again, whatever you need to do to calm yourself down and bring yourself back to balance without the food. Continue this cycle over and over again until the urgency passes (and it will eventually pass).
If after one or two 5 minute intervals you absolutley must go to food and can’t hold out any longer, then you can congratulate yourself for interrupting the cycle. It may take many 5 minute exercises over a long period of time to build up the ability to completely stop the cycle of binge eating. If you can interrupt the cycle even for 5 minutes, then you have exercised your ability to change. Just like exercising a muscle, strength will come in time.