the most common reason given by traditional therapy and mainstream thought, as discussed in the Introduction, is that you binge to “cope.” Supposedly, before you take the first bite, there is a need for relief from a problem or difficult emotion. This theory is so pervasive that even the well-known health website WebMD, which provides information

After many failed attempts at recovery, I read information in Jack Trimpey’s Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction that finally made sense to me; and following that, I had a significant mental shift, which allowed me to naturally start viewing my binge urges differently and overcome them.

why traditional therapy might not direct the changes you want to see (namely, stronger higher brain pathways that can easily veto binge urges and, eventually, the dissolution of the lower brain pathways that drive binge urges).

Your binge eating isn’t a symbolic way of coping with life’s difficulties or negative feelings, it’s your current way to cope with a very specific problem—the urges to binge. Your urges to binge encompass all of the thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and cravings that make you feel compelled to binge (and all the neurological and

the coping answer is flawed and often leads to increased reliance on binge eating. Everyone in this world has a need to cope, everyone has problems and emotions that they would like relief from; the need to cope does not drive binge eating in the present. There is only one reason why you binge.

Your brain is functioning from the bottom up, meaning you are performing the behaviors called for by your lower brain. The goal in this book is to get you to start operating from the top down, using the higher brain to inhibit the unwanted binge behaviors.

If you can learn to dismiss the urges, you’ll no longer have anything driving you to binge, and nothing—no life event, no stressor, no emotion, no risk factor that might have led to the development of your problem—can sway you otherwise.

that binge eating is not a coping mechanism for difficult emotions or life’s problems, but instead a habit of the brain that can be extinguished without therapy.

Leading neuroplasticity researchers Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., and Rebecca Gladding, M.D., explain this concept well in their book You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life: The mind is involved in helping you constructively focus your attention. Why is this