WARNING: This article is entirely devoid of magic-pill type fixes, such as a brand new fad diet, juice fast, or detox. But I do have some mental tools for change that you can start using right now if you feel you can’t stop eating.

If you experience times when you are out of control around food, I have a strategy for you to feel better about it immediately, and not in some wishy-washy, paper-over-the-cracks ‘just love yourself’ way either.

Here it is: rename it. The language we use to describe our world shapes our world.

Let me prove it to you.

Look at the sentences below.

1a Samantha is really paranoid – she wonders if her boyfriend is cheating.

1b Samantha is really anxious – she wonders if her boyfriend is cheating.

2a Bob got the promotion – he’s really happy.

2b Bob got the promotion – he’s ecstatic.

3a Anna has a problem with binge eating.

3b Anna eats chaotically sometimes.

Do you see how the intensity of Samantha and Bob’s feelings change with the words used to describe their emotions – even though they can be used to describe the same thing: the possibility of infidelity or a job promotion.

Now let’s look at Anna. By changing the very name ‘binge eating’ to ‘chaotic eating’, we deflate some of its power. Binge eating feels like a massive obstacle, that elephant you just cannot eat (pardon the pun). Because ‘chaotic eating’ is a term I created, you are likely reading it for the first time. It has none of the associations that the other term carries. You can use it as you see fit.

The best thing about this new term is that you can only use it as I did in the sentence above ‘Anna eats chaotically’. Nobody would ever say ‘Anna had a chaotic eat’. It cannot be this overpowering event that a binge feels like.

Now, if you can’t have a ‘chaotic eat’, but only ‘eat chaotically’, we open the door to talk about degrees of severity. Anna can eat really chaotically or just a little. Nobody ever says “I had a little bit of a binge” with this phrase we turn it into a major event, and back ourselves into a corner where change seems harder. The seeds of change are sown in the very language you use to describe the problem.

Even if you feel like your eating spins out of control to the same extreme level every time you eat chaotically, that fact that you are reading this article tells me you WANT to experience a change.

Renaming binge eating as chaotic eating is just one way you can start to dismantle your self-sabotage, because achieving ANY significant change is much more about dealing with your inner resistance to that change. If you can do this, you can dismantle your food issues. Understand Sabotage You, and you not only neutralise her or him, but unlock the mystery of your chaotic eating.

Harriet Morris

Curious. Intuitive. Playful.

You can find out more about how to neutralise your self-sabotage around food by going to http://www.theshiftinside.com/binge-eating-coaching/. Harriet Morris successfully neutralised her own food issues and dropped 3 dress sizes before becoming an eating psychology coach. She is a speaker and author of 4 books on Amazon. 20,000 people have watched her videos on YouTube.