1. The Girl Who Couldn't "Just Stop" Binge Eating

The Path Beyond Binge Eating is a podcast for women who are exhausted from fighting with food — and are ready to identify, interrupt, and replace the binge cycle. Hosted by Molly Dyer, Licensed Therapist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, each episode offers clinical depth, personal honesty, and practical tools to help you move from shame and secrecy toward a quiet, sustainable relationship with food and your body. No diets. No restriction. No performing for anyone else. Let's keep it real, together.  In today's episode, Molly shares part of her own journey with Binge Eating and the small shifts that began her healing journey.  

To learn more and wow you can work with Molly,

 visit MollyDyer.com

Transcript

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Welcome to The Path Beyond Binge Eating, the show for women who want realistic and practical ways to stop being pulled back into binge eating patterns. I'm your host, Molly Dyer, and I am so glad you're here. This first episode is a little different from what most episodes will be like. Today I want to introduce myself, not just my clinical experience and credentials, but a snapshot of my own personal journey with the Restrict Binge Pattern. I will share what this podcast is, what it isn't, and what I hope it becomes for you. Today, my hope is that you walk away from this first episode feeling that you are not alone. So let's begin. I'm a licensed therapist, a certified eating disorder specialist, and a binge eating recovery coach. I have 12 years of clinical experience, and my clinical practice is informed by a polyvagal lens, which means I understand that binge eating lives in the body and nervous system, reinforced by our brain, which loves to repeat patterns. But before any of that, before the license, before the certifications, before the years of clinical work, I was a girl who just couldn't stop. So let's go back to the 1990s. My experience with disordered eating and ultimately an eating disorder started when I was very young and accompanied me through the early 1990s when I attended my hometown high school in Maine. This is where I will begin. Reflecting on a typical day during high school, there was a pattern that I followed. I would wake up and promise myself I would not eat that day. I'd allow Diet Coke, maybe water, nothing else. I was trying to be good and make up for the night before. Most of my days were spent inside my own head, thinking about food, what I wasn't allowing myself to eat, how I perceived other people could eat a normal lunch without it meaning something awful to them. Why eating breakfast felt so impossible for me when it seemed so effortless and normal for everyone else. But the constant food and body image noise never led me to question the pattern. It led me to question myself. I told myself that I was the problem, that if I just had more willpower, more discipline, I could lose weight and finally eat like a normal person. By late afternoon, I was ravenous. So once I got home from school and sports practice, I started eating. And once I started eating, I couldn't stop. A snack, then another, and another. I hid the trash. I ate dinner. And then came the shame. Immediate crushing shame. And a reactive drive to compensate, followed by a promise. Tomorrow I'll be good. Tomorrow I won't eat. Tomorrow I'll start the new diet in Shape magazine. Tomorrow I'll make up for what I did today. And the next day the pattern would begin again. What I didn't understand then, what I couldn't possibly have known at 14, 16, or 18 years of age, was that restricting wasn't the solution to binging, because restricting and binging are one pattern. The restriction or diet set the stage for me to binge. The binge led to immediate shame, compensation, and a promise to eat less tomorrow. And my nervous system was caught in a loop that had nothing to do with what my body looked like and everything to do with survival. But I didn't know that yet. I just knew I couldn't stop. I preferred to eat alone, mostly in secret. I had pulled away from most of my friends, not necessarily because I wanted to, but the cycle left little time for anything else, not to mention the heavy cloak of shame I was wearing and believed everyone else could see. I remember that I had very little energy. I was so tired, and the eating disorder had evolved to include compulsive exercise as compensation, making things much worse. What I didn't know then was that years of my restrict, binge, diet, and exercise pattern had been quietly taking a toll on my body, leading to significant medical issues. I just knew I wasn't feeling well and I had to stop playing for the high school soccer team, which broke my heart. My body just couldn't keep up. I told myself it was okay because I was losing weight, and that was what truly mattered. My family knew I had problems with food, but since I didn't appear thin enough to really have an eating disorder, they didn't know how dangerous it was. The doctors I saw didn't have much to offer. And the thing I heard most often from doctors and other people who genuinely meant well was some version of just stop. Or why can't you just stop? The truth is, I would have stopped if I could. I felt like I both wanted to stop and wanted to keep losing weight. And at that point, when I tried to stop, I couldn't. I was not choosing to binge eat or restrict, diet, or exercise compulsively. By that point, my eating disorder was in complete control. You see, an eating disorder grows into a cyclic pattern with its own self-perpetuating reinforcement, a cycle that is deep-seated in our thoughts and behavior that lives in our brain and nervous system. And you cannot willpower your way out of something that is running below the level of conscious awareness. The shift began one morning when I woke up and immediately had the thought that I was going to die from the eating disorder. I knew I needed help. What I needed was treatment, and eventually I found it. I had recently heard about another senior girl who had just come back from eating disorder treatment. I didn't know her well. I didn't know exactly what she'd been through, but I knew my body was struggling. Something was really wrong, and I was scared enough to reach out to her. We talked for about an hour, and at the end of that call, I asked her for the name of the treatment center that had helped her. She gave it to me, and I called that night. That call, made by my 17-year-old self who was out of options and just scared enough to try something different, saved my life. It was the stepping stone that set my path toward healing in motion. Two days after I graduated from high school, I flew across the country and spent the summer in a residential eating disorder treatment program. When I was ready, I returned home with my brain and body nourished, a predictable, reliable eating plan, and a better understanding of what to do when things were hard. Home is where my real work started. I had to navigate life without the eating disorder that had been part of it for a very long time. In the early 1990s, there were very few resources for eating disorder recovery support near my hometown. There were no therapists that specialized in treating eating disorders. However, there was an eating disorder support group at a nearby hospital, so I joined that. It was very beneficial in my healing. At times I really struggled, and then I would get back on my path of healing. Over time, I struggled less and practiced what I knew helped me heal more until I no longer engaged in any eating disorder behavior. I learned within my own healing that the path is not linear. It sometimes zigs and zags and includes returning to continue moving forward. It's my perspective that recovery is a direction, not a destination, where once you get there, you've completed the journey, you're done. Like one day you cross a finish line and food is just easy. That has not been my experience, and is not what I hear my clients describe either. As we make progress, we move forward and return to what we haven't healed yet, or to places that need more time, space, or practice. Each time we return, we heal a little more. Returning is not being stuck or failing, it's progress. We heal by returning, learning, and choosing to repeat what works for us. My experience has been that healing is lifelong, not in a heavy, exhausting way, but in a way that growth is. You don't arrive, you keep becoming. I have not practiced eating disorder behaviors in decades, which has allowed me to help other people who want to be free from their own eating disorder. Food is an important part of my day, but doesn't run my day. It's practicing what worked for me repeatedly, small shifts over time that freed me. That is what a sustainable relationship with food and body looks like. We don't always get it right. We have challenging times because we're humans, women, not robots. We do our best, it's the small, consistent shifts over time that create change. As we get started, it's important to know what this podcast is and is not. The path beyond binge eating is not therapy. Yes, I am a therapist, and my clinical lens informs some of what I bring to this show. But this podcast is educational and informational, offering insights and practical skills that may help you on your own healing path. The path beyond binge eating is not a replacement for therapy or any other level of care for clinical treatment for an active eating disorder. It is based on my clinical and lived experience from my perspective as a woman who's been there. Each week, we will discuss one topic at a time. We'll talk about the restrict binge cycle, emotional eating and food noise, body image, the brain and nervous system, and the ways diet culture, family dynamics, and social pressure reinforce restriction and binge eating, even when you've tried everything to stop. My hope is that you find this show useful, supportive, and experience a felt sense that you are truly not alone. I invite you to join me weekly as part of your own healing path. It's one intentional shift toward a consistent, sustainable relationship with food, your body, and yourself. I hope you and every woman who finds this podcast walks away from each episode with a deeper understanding of your own path, that you hear something you can use in your own healing, and that somewhere in our conversation we connect, because there's a knowing and understanding between two women who get it. I am a woman who has lived it, who has had the honor of walking with women on their own healing path for over a decade, and who genuinely believes the healing is possible. It's possible because I'm here with you today. It's possible because I've helped so many women heal beyond the confines of binge eating, and I believe you can too. Thanks for listening. Be sure to follow the Path Beyond Binge Eating on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss any future episodes. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. I'm Molly Dyer, and I'll see you next week on the Path Beyond Binge Eating.