Bingeing In Eating Disorder Recovery: Why It Happens (And How To Cope)

And then it hits you. The Hunger Monster. Hungry, but not hungry. Full, but not full. Whatever "willpower" you thought you had is thrown in the bin, amongst with ten different wrappers of food you just consumed without even tasting them. It feels like you are on autopilot, possessed by some ballistic hunger demon. You want to stop, but you simply can't. So you eat. And eat. And then, when you are so full you could almost burst... you have one last cookie.

Just when things could not feel worse, the extreme hunger gets replaced with extreme guilt, shame and self-loathing.

"I am losing control over food! I can't stop binge eating! That's IT, intuitive eating and recovery clearly isn't for me."

So you decide to retrieve back to Anorexia, Bulimia or whichever eating disorder you may suffer with, and compensate with restriction, purging and/or excessive exercise, whilst hoping nobody brings home leftover cake ever again. The binge-restrict slash binge-purge cycle is on.

Does this seem familiar? If so, I got good and bad news for you.

The good news is that you are NOT broken, fundamentally flawed or doomed to a lifetime of "controlling your food". Recovery is, in many ways, fairly straightforward and simple. The bad news is that although recovery is simple, it is absolutely not easy.

Now, let's start with a little overview of why binging in recovery happens in the first place - and the one question to have to ask yourself to beat the binges for good.

Bingeing? The One Question To Ask Yourself

"But WHY do I binge then?!", you may ask. If you feel like you can not control yourself around food, there is one very important question you need to ask yourself;

Did the binges start during, or after, a period of restriction?

If the answer is yes, then there you just got what is presumably the root cause of your bingeing. That does not mean other factors cannot trigger binges at all. For example, a bulimic will often tell me they tend to binge and throw up if they have a bad day. What it does mean is that if the person had never started restricting in the first place, they probably would not have started bingeing uncontrollably when going through some shit. They would might have self-soothed with a pint of ice cream now and then (like most of us do), but occasional comfort eating is not the same as ravenous, out of control overeating to the point of sickness.

Be aware that restriction does not just mean living off of apples and air. Restriction includes any behavior that results in you taking in less calories than you need to function optimally. This could be your new "lifestyle change" where you cut out entire food groups, or you drastically increasing your activity level without refueling properly. Heck, for some, mental restriction can trigger bingeing, too - you may eat sufficiently, but ban yourself from certain foods, thus making these foods insanely tempting and hard to control yourself around. Forbidden fruits taste the sweetest, and the foods we ban ourselves from are often the ones we binge on.

It is pretty simple. We take in too little energy, and our bodies and brain turns us into food obsessed lunatics who can not control ourselves around foods, especially not foods high in calories, carbohydrates and/or fats, because our bodies and brains register that we should not control ourselves around these foods - they are quickly available resources of energy we so desperately need! Our bodies and brains think there is a famine going on, and extreme hunger is literally a survival response to this food scarcity. It has nothing to do with willpower, and everything to do with biology.

Eat It To Beat It

"Okay, I get it, my low carb diet may be why I binge on bread and pasta like there is no tomorrow. So, how do I stop bingeing then?"

And here comes the "simple, but not easy" part...

In order to regain control, we sometimes need to let go of it completely.

In other words, you'll need to accept that you will be going through a period of increased hunger as a direct reaction to restriction, and stop any compensatory behaviors immediately. This means no more "I will not eat all day so I can save up calories for the night" (no, calling it intermittent fasting does not solve it, and if it did, you would not have been reading this article), "I'll be good tomorrow" or "I'll go run it all off". You cannot recover from binge eating fueled by restrictive or compensatory behaviors, by turning to more restrictive or compensatory behaviors. If so, you would have been recovered already. No amount of mindfulness, intuitive eating or yoga can solve bingeing if the root cause is restriction.

This can be challenging to accept, because a side effect of eating disorders is blaming everything on A: food, B: some imaginary, perceived personality flaw, or C: both.

"It is not my 1500 calories a day diet that is making me binge uncontrollably on chocolate... It is the SUGAR in the chocolate combined with my GREEDY nature because I am a FAILURE!"

I hear this all the time from people with or in recovery from eating disorders, yet that still does not make it true. You can not loathe yourself into recovery, nor can you restrict yourself into it, either.

You need to let go of the control, and allow yourself to eat. You need to accept that in the beginning, this might feel messy and out of control. You need to accept that you will feel like shit, and like you will never stop gaining weight. (You will stop gaining weight, though, and most of the overnight weight gain from a binge is simply water retention and food in your stomach system. It's physically impossible to gain ten pounds of body fat over night. You'll gain 200-300 gram body fat, at most).

When you binge, you need to sit with whatever uncomfortable feelings you have as opposed to going for a run, popping a laxative (which is, by the way, a pretty ineffective way of ridding yourself of calories) or planning your next fast. The bingeing is not the problem, the restriction and/or purging is. The next day, proceed as normal. Eat your meals, even if you are not hungry. Stick to your routine (if you have one). Keep your body fueled. Be gentle with yourself.

As time goes by, and you allow yourself to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and for your body to settle in a weight range that is healthy for your body, you will start to notice some changes. Suddenly, you don't feel so constantly hungry anymore. Food is still good, but its not the only thing on your mind anymore. Instead, you start to care about... other things. You may notice your first genuine craving for a fruit or vegetable in weeks, or even months. You don't feel like snacking all day, instead you are pretty happy to eat a meal and be done with it. You may occasionally eat beyond the point of fullness, but you notice more and more that you simply stop when you feel like it. It seems like your mental and physical hunger have finally synched up again. You may have gained weight, and although you have bad body image days, weight gain wasn't really as scary as you made it out to be. In fact, you feel better and healthier than ever.

And that's when you realize The Hunger Monster was one worth facing.

(Disclaimer: if you have severely restricted your intake over time, please be mindful of the risk of refeeding syndrome, a rare but potentially dangerous syndrome that can happen if someone severely undernourished increases their intake in early recovery. If you are in the risk group of refeeding syndrome, please seek medical attention and increase your intake gradually until you are out of risk. Please also note that this article does not replace medical support for people in recovery.)