As a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, I hear a lot about bingeing.  

Let’s lay the groundwork for what bingeing is and isn’t.  Bingeing is defined as eating a quantity of food that most people would agree is far outside the norm, and eating that food in a short period of time.  For example, bingeing might look like eating a half gallon of ice cream, followed by half a loaf of bread, and two burritos in 45 minutes or an hour.  Eating disorder specialists call this an “objective binge.”  Essentially, everyone would agree that this is a lot of food to eat in a short period of time.

However, many people use the word “binge” to describe eating smaller quantities of food that they feel distressed about.  For example, a person comes home after a long day at work and eats half a bag of chips and six Oreo cookies. The person is bothered that they did this, but from a psychologist’s perspective, this quantity is not outside the norm of what a person might eat at a party or at the end of the day when they are overly hungry before dinner is ready. Psychologists would call this episode of eating a “subjective binge.”  The person sees it as a loss of control and is troubled by it, but an eating disorder specialist sees it as falling within the range of “normal eating.” 

But what is “normal eating?” Normal eating means that on occasion, we overdo it…or we skip meals…or we go on a jag where we eat the same thing for five days in a row.  It means sometimes all you want is a salad for dinner, and other times, you go back for seconds and thirds.  Normal eating means following your hunger cues, your mood, and the social context to decide what you want to eat and how much.  With normal eating, one day of overeating doesn’t matter in the big picture, and sometimes eating ice cream for dinner is OK.

Where things start to get tricky is when “occasional” behaviors of overdoing it start to happen frequently and with high intensity.  Under these conditions, a psychologist might diagnosis a person with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) or Bulimia Nervosa.  In BED, the person binges but does not engage in “compensatory” behaviors to try to neutralize the calorie intake, whereas in bulimia the person binges but subsequently makes themselves vomit, uses laxatives, or engages in long periods of strenuous exercise to counteract the calories they have taken in.  

Treatments for BED and bulimia have a lot of overlap with one another, and one key feature is trying to reduce the bingeing by understanding the factors that trigger it. Many people who engage in bingeing are puzzled by why they do it.  Almost always, the person finds the behavior deeply embarrassing and shameful, and it is almost always done in secret.  

In therapy, people learn that their bingeing is tied to thoughts and feelings that are happening in the minutes, hours, or even days before the binge.  These feelings frequently include loneliness, sadness, relational hurt, and/or self-loathing.  Part of treatment is learning to identify and name these feelings, and then developing coping behaviors to handle them, such as practicing self-compassion, journaling, going for a walk, calling a friend, meditating, or working with one’s thoughts to evaluate how accurate they seem about oneself or the situation.

Besides having upsetting thoughts and feelings before a binge, there is usually one other factor that is also present.  That factor is calorie restriction.  People who chronically diet set themselves up for bingeing, and that includes both objective and subjective binges.  Almost all people who binge are calorie restricting before bingeing.

When people are eating too few calories, they feel both physically and psychologically deprived, and they crave high carbohydrates like sweets, bread, pasta, ice cream, and cookies.  The body has many mechanisms that have developed over millions of years to make sure that we are always biologically defending our weight.  Our bodies want to keep us at a healthy weight AND to add more weight when possible to get ready for the next illness or famine.  The body does not like food restriction and will drive us toward overeating and bingeing to correct it.  This is why many dietitians recommend eating every 3-4 hours throughout the day to help maintain a healthy body weight.  Nothing good happens with dietary control after the body hits a point of feeling like it’s starving.

So when we treat BED or bulimia in therapy, we educate people about the connection between calorie restriction and bingeing.  It’s important to make the link that bingeing is largely caused by chronic dieting.  While there are certain antidepressants that can help suppress the urge to binge, the most important factor in stopping the behavior is to eat nutritious and filling foods throughout the day so that you don’t arrive at mid-afternoon or evening overly hungry.  

As you might imagine, telling someone that they need to eat more throughout the day in order to stop bingeing is a hard sell in the beginning.  Telling a person they need to eat more food more often usually results in nothing short of terror and flat refusal the first time this conversation occurs.  People feel certain they will gain weight, and the truth is they might gain a small amount of weight in the beginning as their body adjusts to being fed regularly and predictably.  Therapy work as well as work with an eating disorder-trained nutritionist can help clients work through the scary weeks and sometimes months of making this kind of transition toward appropriately feeding their bodies to break the calorie restriction-binge cycle.  

While chronic dieting usually leads to chronic hunger, there is also a subset of calorie restrictors, so who rarely feel hungry and who usually don’t register typical biological cues to eat.  These people forget to eat or often ignore their bodily sensations entirely.  Though it may sound surprising, some of these people carry a lot of extra weight, sometimes up to several hundred pounds.  These are often folks who have been on diets since childhood, and this has contributed to them losing awareness of typical hunger and satiety cues to help them regulate intake.  Because of this, when they do feel hungry, it can feel as if it’s all at once and now they are ravenous. The treatment for these people is the same as for people who feel chronically hungry because of their calorie restriction.  Food needs to be consumed throughout the day and more predictably to decrease overeating and/or bingeing.

When people move past the fear associated with eating on a regular basis and leaving chronic dieting behind, they usually experience a lot of positive effects that begin to accrue.  First, the drive to binge goes away.  Digestion improves.  Stomach pains go away.  They feel in more control of their lives because the bingeing has stopped.  Shame and embarrassment dissipate.  Importantly, they start to gain awareness of their hunger and satiety cues, and this gives them greater feelings of control and well-being.  Mood typically improves.  If the person engages in athletics or regular exercise, performance will also improve there.  They will see that they don’t begin to gain weight out of control.  Weight may go up or down slightly, but will stabilize.  Life with food will get easier.

While it’s a message that can seem counterintuitive, psychology has lots of data to show us that if you want to stop bingeing, you have to leave chronic dieting behind and care for your body like the miraculous machine it is. This means feeding it what it needs throughout the day, prioritizing never getting too hungry, and treating your body with understanding and compassion.  If this is something you would like to work on together, feel free to send me a text or give me a call at 402-650-0584, and we will discuss your needs.