MY VIEW ON HABITS (“WILL BINGE EATING TURN INTO A HABIT?”)

It came to me in the middle of the night while lying in bed with baby Koa.

- Written By Victoria Kleinsman

I had no plan to to write so here it is: raw, real, and straight from my heart.

I'm talking about habits — what they actually are, why they form, and how to truly shift them in recovery (without fighting yourself).

So many of my clients worry that bingeing, emotional eating, or dessert-after-dinner will become “bad habits.” But here's the truth: when you heal the root cause, habits fall away naturally. They stop being needed.

I am very, very grateful we have air conditioning in our bedroom. We had it installed a few weeks ago, and it’s just me and my daughter, Koa, in our bedroom because my husband sleeps somewhere else in the house, by the way, but he’s not down with waking up three times a night, still, and I'm breastfeeding. So it’s just me and Koa. And the reason I didn’t have the aircon on was because I didn’t want Koa to get a bit cold. After all, she was practically naked, just with her nappy on.

Anyway, that’s the cool story, bro. The reason I'm sharing this is because I didn’t have the covers over me, the duvet over me, because I was too hot. Whereas in the past, in eating disorders, when I was like drenched in shame, especially around how my body looked, I would have to have covers over me no matter what, even if no one was literally in the room apart from me. It would just be such an ingrained habit that was created through safety. I felt like it was safe for me to be covered all the time. And then last night, I didn't have the covers over me and I didn't feel any need to. Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this. I also used to have a habit of having a cushion or a pillow, whatever you want to call it, in front of me every time I sat anywhere. So if I sat on a sofa or a chair.