Let’s take a quick test to find out if you struggle with binge episodes:

Do you:

– Eat when you’re not hungry?

– Eat very fast during a binge?

– Eat alone or secretly?

– Feel depressed, guilty, ashamed or disgusted with yourself after binge eating?

Then you may be struggling with binge episodes but these cannot be solved with any diet or with willpower as most people suggest.

Let me tell you why:

Because… Binge eating is not the main problem – it is the symptom of a greater problem

That problem is: Deprivation. Let me explain…

You may have heard that the secret to how to stop binge eating is “willpower.” 

You could never binge again if you simply tried more, worked smarter, and genuinely adhered to your guns more. 

You could resist the impulse to binge for a long time, and if you did so long enough, you wouldn’t binge again.

But that isn’t how it works in reality. Because binge eating is a survival response. 

Your survival urges can override your willpower no matter how hard you fight against it.

Think about the pre-historic eras. Cavemen essentially “binged”. They didn’t have fridges or freezers to store food. 

So they’d wake up with no food, may have a few seeds and berries for lunch, then fight a massive mammoth to over eat on it, only to start again tomorrow.

This is why you often feel a rush of adrenaline after a binge eating episode to finish the food as fast as possible…

– almost mindlessly because it was a survival response, not a meal to relaxingly eat

The 3 Main Triggers of Binge Eating

1. Physical Restriction

If we do not eat, we get hungry, and to a certain point if we get very very hungry then our body ramps up those hunger cues (ghrelin, the hunger hormone) and we start to have a binge eating episode. 

Quite straightforward, being hungry = binge

But even though you might have felt you’ve eaten 5,000 calories during your last binge, you will still feel hungry the next day. 

Your body runs on at least 2000 calories a day, if you under ate on 1000 calories the past 3 days, your body will find a way to compensate for it (actually over-compensate which is why you may gain weight despite under eating)  

Just how anyone at any bodyweight can feel hunger (underweight or obese categories), anyone can experience deprivation no matter how much you ate the day before

When we ignore our hunger cues (internal cues) and focus on how much or when we should eat based on a calorie limit (external cues) can reduce our ‘interoceptive awareness’

Interoceptive awareness is our ability to listen to our body and be more mindful of our internal cues.

Someone with a high level of interoceptive awareness can hear their stomach rumbling, a feeling of being tired when they haven’t eaten, or feeling thirst. 

Which is why when we binge eat, we eat food mindlessly and feel like autopilot because we cannot sense fullness properly. 

Problems Physical Restriction Can Lead to

• Extreme hunger later in the day out of nowhere
• Dysregulated hunger cues (cannot sense what “normal” hunger and fullness feels like)
• Reduction in our sense of ‘interoceptive awareness’ (ability to sense fullness and enjoyment)

Solution:

• Introduce ‘Mechanical Eating’ which is eating 3 main meals a day and 2-3 snacks in between. So this would look like breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack, and dinner, (with a possible evening snack). 

• Mechanical eating re-trains your hunger cues that these times are when we should feel hungry (in small amounts) rather than surprising you with hunger from 0 straight to 100 in the evening.

• Include protein, fats, carbs, and fibre into each meal. Coffee is not a breakfast, granola with Greek yogurt and seeds is a balanced breakfast. Incorporating protein, fats, and carbs will signal satiety to your brain and fibre will keep your blood sugars stable to reduce cravings

• Aim to find that 7 out of 10 in the hunger scale. 0 being nauseously full, and 10 being sickly ‘Christmas dinner’ full. Be 7 out of 10. So in breakfast, you may be 3 out of 10, after breakfast you’ll be 7 out of 10…and so on. Keeping this scale close to 7 out of 10 will re-restore your hunger cues to understand what comfortable fullness is

Remember that binge eating is not the main problem, it is a symptom of your body’s survival response to deprivation. 

After a binge, you deprive your body keeping it in a survival response. Simply having breakfast again alone can cut that survival response. 

Remember the key is to eat regular meals CONSISTENTLY.

 

2. Mental Restriction

Being full is one thing but being satisfied is a completely different thing. 

We can eat regular meals but we can still have binge episodes if we don’t feel satisfied. 

If you’re eating a plain, bland salad with boiled chicken, you can be full but you won’t be satisfied so you’ll head straight to the box of cookies.

Cutting out foods you love is causing psychological hunger/lack of satisfaction. There’s a difference between being FULL & SATISFIED

You feel that you can’t control yourself when in reality, you’re just physically hungry AND not satisfied which is why you start a binge episode.

Problem Mental Restriction Can Lead to:

• Binge eating despite eating regular meals consistently
• Emergence of your favourite foods turning into “Forbidden Foods”

Solution:

• Re-introduce the “Forbidden foods” into your diet. Remember that if you’re keeping yourself a 7 out of 10 full, you won’t overeat these foods. If you feel this may be scary, then add that cookie as a dessert after your main meal to start to build trust and feel safe around that food that you won’t over-eat.

• If you introduce “Forbidden foods” back into your diet, they lose their meaning and definition. Forbidden foods will transform into neutral foods. We only fear them because we feel they will trigger binges but it was our deprivation triggering binges

• Remember that foods contain nostalgic memories and can help improve our mental health

3. All-or-nothing Mindset

Do you call foods good or bad?

Calling foods good or bad, angelic or sinful, clean or junk…can make our self-esteem very fragile.

When we eat a ‘bad’ food, we feel that we are worthless and lazy leading to a ‘what’s the point mindset’ then you start binge eating.

Problems All-or-nothing Mindset Can Lead to:

• Poor self-esteem
• Poor mental health
• Increased urges to binge

Solution:

• Remember that food is not good nor bad. Food is neutral. Avoid adding morality to food because there’s so much nuance to them. 

• Broccoli, a ‘good’ food could be something someone struggling with IBS should limit or avoid because it can exacerbate bloating symptoms, but pizza, a ‘bad’ food can on the other hand can be beneficial to maintain someone with cancer’s weight who is struggling with a metallic taste, nausea, and no appetite.

• Your worth is found in your values not on what you eat. You are NOT what you eat.