How To Deal When You Binge

I have a confession to make. Even though I promote healthy living and making healthy choices, I don’t always follow my own advice. I’m human and I’m allowed to make mistakes. Plus, I’m a young woman; I’m pretty much owed a binge day every so often. This past weekend was my binge day.

But, just like fair food, road trip food doesn’t really count, right?

Sadly, fair food, road trip food, and vacation food all count. Last weekend my family took a trip up to Cedar Point for their opening weekend of the 2014 Halloweekends. The trip took us almost two hours by car, and, being taught several years ago by our Aunt Iris that road trip food is absolutely essential to any road trip, my brother and I both purchased junk food at a gas station. So on the way up, I am guilty of eating about 1.5 servings of candy corn and several handfuls of pretzels.

What do you think these guys ate on their road trip? I'm thinking I'm gonna skip on whatever it was!

But wait, that’s not all!

When we got to Cedar Point, we headed over to Johnny Rockets for lunch. (I absolutely LOVED Johnny Rockets at Daytona Beach, so I obviously had to try the one at Cedar Point.) There, I ate a hamburger and onion rings. I was going to order a side salad like I had at Daytona Beach, but the Cedar Point’s Johnny Rockets didn’t offer side salads. So I opted to split a side of onion rings with Mom and Kyle.

Johnny Rockets: Home of the original hamburger!

Then I ate the rest of my candy corn, which means I ate approximately 2.5 servings of candy corn in one day. We also got cookies and caramel apples before we left. And since I apparently wasn’t feeling sick enough, I ate 1.5 pieces of Little Caesar’s deep dish pepperoni pizza when we got home around 8:30.

I feel awful after bingeing. Seriously awful, and that’s enough to keep me from bingeing all day every day. But I am human and I am not always able to resist the temptation.

Instead of punishing myself in unhealthy ways such as vomiting after a binge, I punish myself in healthy ways. The term “punishment” is used very loosely here, because it just means I eat a salad for lunch and dinner the next day. And I like salads, so “punish” isn’t really the correct term.

In addition to upping my daily serving of salad, I also detox over the next 2-4 days with this delicious detox water recipe. It’s seriously simple and a great way to get your daily dosage of water if you are bored with plain water.

All it is is a pitcher of water with 1/3 to ½ a cucumber, 1-2 lemons, and approximately 8 mint leafs. Slice up the cucumber and lemon, put them in the water with the mint leafs and let it sit in the fridge overnight. It’s healthy, refreshing, and makes me feel a whole lot better!

Thankfully my metabolism is pretty good right now so I can afford to binge now and again. Unfortunately, bingeing really is unhealthy and even my “punishments” don’t make up for it. That’s why I only do it every so often, and I do NOT suggest bingeing! However, I just wanted to let you know that I, too, give into temptation. The correct response to bingeing is not to punish yourself, but to “punish” yourself in healthy ways, such as eating extra salads (healthy salads, don’t smother it in creamy dressings) and making sure you get your water in.

We’re all human. We all make mistakes. If you fall down, just pick yourself back up and keep going. You have it within you to get where you want to go, but you’ll never get there if you don’t keep going!

Cheers!

Molly