Why Can’t I Stop Binge Eating?

Are You Struggling With Binge Eating or “Emotional Eating”?

Maybe you begin each day determined to “be good” and stick to your “healthy eating” only to find that towards the end of the day, you are “ruining it.” You may be eating foods you didn’t intend to eat and feel out of control. Perhaps you consider yourself a “compulsive overeater” or “emotional eater.” You may believe that it’s a problem of “willpower.”

The solution might be very different than you would expect.

The solution is often counterintuitive: don’t try to “restart” or “be good” (aka continue to restrict). Instead, the recommendation is to eat more.

Yep, if you are binge eating, you are likely not eating enough! That’s right, even if you are bigger-bodied and have been told by others to lose weight, this is still likely the case.

Dieting Is The Problem, Not The Solution

While many diet companies would have us believe otherwise, dieting (restricting) is not something our bodies are designed to do. Like the other 4 basic needs—water, sleep, air, and warmth—food is a primary need without which humans cannot survive.

Our bodies evolved in an environment in which food was relatively scarce. To survive in such an environment, our bodies had to prioritize the consumption of food above other activities. When our food supply was less secure, stocking up when food was available was a behavior that ensured our species’ survival. Bingeing was not a matter of poor willpower, but a perfectly normal and healthy body response to starvation. Most people who didn’t “binge” when a rare animal wandered into their territory died and those genes didn’t get passed down.

When any of our 5 basic needs is unmet, several things happen. The first is usually that we become irritable and narrow our focus on trying to get that need met to the exclusion of other activities. We may also have poor concentration for other activities. This is the distracting “food noise” that is being vilified in the age of GLP-1 medications.

Binge Eating Is Driven By Restriction

A now famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment put several healthy young men on restriction diets for 6 months. During the restriction phase, the men exhibited behaviors that indicated a preoccupation with food, including collecting cookbooks, recipes, and cooking utensils. Both during the dieting phase and during the refeeding phase there were reports of binge eating among the participants. This demonstrates that binge eating is a powerfully driven biological response to restriction.

Binge eating—the rapid ingestion of a large amount of food, usually with a loss of control during the eating—commonly leads in turn to feelings of shame, disgust, guilt, self-criticism, and distress. You may then resolve to diet again and do an even better job at restricting. You may even use other behaviors to try to undo the effects of the binge. Either way, more dieting ensues and the cycle repeats.

You Need to Eat More to Stop Binge Eating

People often don’t believe me when I tell them they need to eat more, not less, to stop binge eating. You may, like so many of my clients, believe you are eating enough. Maybe you feel that your eating is emotional, and not necessary. You may believe that your problem is with willpower.

But, if you have not tried it yet, I strongly encourage you to try doing the opposite of what you have tried: instead of focusing on cutting out the binge eating, focus on eating more. In particular, plan to eat three meals each day plus two to three snacks. This regular eating is usually the way to break a cycle of disordered eating and begin recovery from an eating disorder.

Even if you don’t believe me or are terrified of weight gain, run it like an experiment for a week and see what happens. You may be surprised to see that it really helps.

Get Help for Binge Eating in California

We know that this is hard and you don’t have to do it alone. Our amazing eating disorder specialists can help you break the binge cycle. Contact us to learn more and get connected to an eating disorder therapist.