Once you make a mistake with food – like emotional eating, eating too many calories, or eating a “bad” food – it can feel like all is lost. You may lose your balance and move into a “what the hell” space. This hopeless space can result in a binge, purge or fast.

When you make a mistake and overeat, there's a way to soothe the panic, alarm and anxiety so you don't go to the emotional "all is lost" space. You do this by moving out of perfectionistic, all or nothing thinking and into both/and thinking, also known as integrative functioning. (I learned about integrative functioning from my mentor in developmental science, Dr. Gordon Neufeld.)

Here's what both/and thinking looks like with food mistakes. If you overeat, binge, or eat too much sugar, you need to feel both the regret of succumbing to your impulses while also remembering that all is not lost. You need to feel both the disappointment - I wish I could've done differently - and the hope - I can learn from this. You need to feel the sadness of temporary defeat and the faith and trust that mistakes are simply part of the journey, and often, how we grow.

We primarily learn and grow through mistakes - it's how the brain works. Befriending mistakes is both powerful and freeing as we recognize they're not the end of the world that we can imagine them to be. Besides soothing feelings of hopelessness and despair, feeling both feelings - the disappointment and the hope - is what enables us to learn, grow and respond differently next time.

Wanting more hands on help?

If you’d like help soothing perfectionism with food, you may enjoy my newest course, When Food is Your Mother, where you’ll learn tools to create both/and thinking with food vs. all or nothing thinking.

I’m teaching a live version of When Food is Your Mother from June 9th to July 31st. Registration for the full class is now closed, but you can still join the audit version of the class, with our first live class on June 19th. Learn more and watch a free preview of the class here. 
Read a transcript

"What I hear a lot is people worry that I've done all this work about food and sugar, what if it doesn't last? How am I going to survive going forward? But, if you remember from other classes, this idea of "walking the maze," and remember that understanding that this is not about perfection, that everything is an opportunity to learn and grow, then there's not all this pressure of, "I have to pass or fail." And there's not all this pressure of, "Well, if I go back to sugar it means I've failed." I gently invite you to really explore that belief, because it's one of the most common. I don't look at healing in that way.

I look at those times when you're going back to sugar, it simply means that in that moment, your resources to cope without the sugar or food are inadequate for whatever internal experience or external experience you are having in that moment. It's just a momentary space. It doesn't define you, or it doesn't have to define your relationship with sugar.

Ann Dunnewold, a therapist and the author of a parenting book, Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box, has a great metaphor for this. She describes how we tend to have a very black and white view towards "success or progress," where every time that we're doing something really good, we look at it as a victory, like filling up a jar with marbles. So, you start filling up the jar with marbles of, "Oh, wow, I was feeling an impulse to binge on sugar and I didn't." Okay, you put a marble in the jar. Or maybe you think, "Oh, I had a tough day at work with my boss, and I was really tempted to go to the break room and buy candy bars, but I didn't." Put a marble in the jar.

Well, what happens is we build and build those marbles in the jar of our successes, but when we have one mistake, let's say you have a tough day with your boss today, and you do go to the break room and you eat candy bars.