Can physical activity help you with your binge eating? Physical activity gives you a reduced sense of hunger, which is often a trigger for binge eating. It might seem to simple to be true, but it can be a terrific way to start taking control of your binge eating. When you feel less hunger you will most likely experience fewer impulses to binge eat, which in turn leads to lowering your intake of calories. In this way, your physical activity becomes a long-term life strategy to improve and increase your combustion and metabolism, which leads to a sustainable lifestyle with stable weight.
For many people with binge eating problems, it is all or nothing. Either it can feel almost impossible to start exercising, while others start and push themselves by working out at least two hours a day, almost over doing it. Expectations to see fast results are often enormous, unreasonable as are the disappointment that follow if you do not live up to them. Many may also feel depressed and want to reduce that feeling by eating.
Particularly in regards to binge eating it has been found that it is often a big help to engage in physical activity.
There are several benefits, of course the health benefits are many, but in this context it is most important that physical activity provides a reduced sense of hunger, it help lowering stress, a feeling of increased well-being, improved mood state and increased self-confidence. It also helps you by thinking of other things besides food.
Often the focus with the physical activity becomes a “dieting method” where the goal should go hand in hand with your weight loss. However, the risk is that the goal of weight loss is unrealistic as well as the quantity of physical activity.
The best thing is to try to shift the focus from dieting, to finding a sustainable lifestyle, which provides added comfort and increased well-being.
Try to replace your thoughts around binge eating into a physical activity instead. Keep it simple, it does not mean that every time you feel like eating some cake, or getting a chocolate bar, you must go and pack your bags and go to the gym. That will never work, it is to-much trouble. But start building the habit of, for example doing 10 push-ups every time you feel like going for a snack, that you really don’t need. It will make you feel more satisfied and at peace with yourself. Binge eating is a short-lived satisfaction, while physical activity gives a longer-lasting satisfaction.
Try to get a more balanced life where you start with simple measures, such as, for example, always walk to and from work. Run a few times a week at your gym. Plan and prioritize for your health in good ways. You have everything to gain.