Reshanda had a very stressful job that ultimately led her to develop a binge eating habit and gain a significant amount of weight. The weight gain naturally led her to try to correct it with dieting, which instead led instead to more bingeing.

In her work to find the solution to her bingeing and weight gain, Reshanda stumbled upon Summer Tomato and started addressing her habits and psychology. As an active part of the community here and on Facebook, I’ve watched her develop new habits over the years from learning to cook in Foodist Kitchen to mindful eating in the Mindful Meal Challenge.

Today Reshanda shares her story of how she overcame bingeing, lost 28 lbs, and more importantly learned how to develop the self-compassion, mindfulness and habits she needs to live a fulfilling life that isn’t dictated by stress and avoidance.

Her story is incredibly powerful and full of wisdom and insights into how to develop the psychological tools to build a sustainable and life-affirming healthstyle. It’s an incredible story that shows the power of self-reflection to solve even the deepest and most intractable problems.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Foodist Kitchen

Mindful Meal Challenge

The 4-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss

Triggers, by Marshall Goldsmith

The “I Don’t Feel Like It” Fallacy

I Thought It Was Just Me and critical awareness by Brené Brown

Calm app

Listen:

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Listen on Soundcloud

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

Photo by joeb

All I remember is staring at the open box in shock. Did I really just eat 3/4 of a large cheese pizza by myself?

One. Two. Yep, only two slices left.

I was a sophomore in high school and my parents were out of town for one of my brother’s sporting tournaments. I was old enough to be left home alone to work and study.

Normally this meant a free pass for me to subsist on coffee and Frosted Flakes for a few days (remember when dieters were scared of fat instead of sugar?). But this evening something got to me.

Looking back on everything I had going on at the time it was probably stress and anxiety from juggling my daily ballet lessons, teaching at the studio to pay the bills, and getting up before dawn to start my rigorous course work at school.

Or maybe I was just hungry.

I didn’t know what to do for dinner so I called the pizza delivery place that my family loved. I knew this wasn’t good behavior for a ballerina and chronic dieter who still desperately wanted to lose weight, but something compelled me.

It took several minutes after I stopped eating before the sick, bloated, oily feeling took over. The lingering smell of cheese in the house made me feel nauseous, so I took the remaining pizza and box to the trash outside and pushed it as far into the bin as I could manage.

What had I done? I was so ashamed. I told no one.

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