What is the real reason behind your Binge Eating?
By Tanja, Psychologist for Eating Disorders & Body Image
If you are struggling with binge eating, at some point you have probably tried to work out the reason behind it. You may have asked yourself “Why am I doing this over and over again, when I know it is causing me pain in my life?”
Hi there!
I’m Tanja. I’m a qualified psychologist specialising in eating disorders, negative body image and body hate. I’m also a survivor of anorexia.
My mission is to help you to end your lifelong struggles with food and your body and inspire you to uncover and embrace you true worth. Read more…
Until now, the causes of binge eating are still not fully understood. However, several studies have found that binge eating can be caused by psychological problems (depression, anxiety, substance dependency, panic disorders, PTSD and impulse control disorders), emotional problems (feelings of loneliness, anger, stress, boredom and guilt) and childhood trauma such as abuse and neglect.
These findings suggest that binge eating is a coping mechanism for dealing with difficult emotions and life problems. Put simply, you binge because it helps you to deal better with difficult emotions, which can be the underlying cause of certain problems in your life such as anxiety, childhood trauma or loneliness.
This has let to a common approach of seeking to replace the binge eating coping mechanism with healthy coping mechanisms to make the binge eating urge go away. For instance, if you think that your binge is caused by boredom, you might try to be more active and find new interests, to replace the desire to binge. If this strategy works for you and takes your binges away, that is wonderful.
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Categories
Anorexia
Binge Eating Disorder
Bulimia
Intuitive Eating
Mindfulness
Orthorexia
Strategies for Recovery
If you want to learn more about bulimia or binge eating disorder, read my blog articles What are the warning signs of Bulimia? and How do I know if I have a Binge Eating Disorder?
What if you still have the urge to binge?
However, what if you still have the craving to binge even though you have managed to reduce your boredom, stress or guilt? Well, the real reason is often deeper than suggested by the studies. However, addressing underlying causes of your binge eating, you first need to confront the urges themselves.
Let me explain this in more detail by asking you a question first: If you didn’t have binge urges, would you binge anyway? The answer is a clear no. Why should you? Even if you have underlying emotional or psychological problems that might be contributing factors, they don’t directly cause you to eat a massive amount of food over and over again.
It is the urge that directly determines your binge eating behaviour. This urge includes all your thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and longings that make you feel the need to binge. Therefore it is important to acknowledge and confront the urge itself, not just the underlying contributory factors.
To get a better understanding of your urge, try to observe it and monitor how it gets you to binge over the next few days.
What are the reasons for your urge?
1. Conditioning:
If you have been binge eating many times, it will have caused changes to your body and brain. The reason you experience the urge to binge is that your brain and body have adapted your binge eating and now they expect and demand you to binge.
So your brain uses cravings and urges to get you to continue binge eating as if it were as necessary as breathing.
2. Restriction (Diets)
Binge eating is almost always preceded by a period of dieting. Avoiding certain food groups, calorie restriction and long periods without eating might work for some time.
However, one day your body will rebel because you are fighting against it, which has put your body in survival mode. This survival mode causes these deep urges and cravings to eat massive amounts of food. These urges are a normal reaction of your body and your brain to make sure that you eat because your body is hungry and needs food to function and survive.
Conclusion - Urges manipulate you to binge
You now know that the reason you binge is not primarily to cope with your problems or emotions; it is to cope with the discomfort of the urges. If you binge, the discomfort of the urge goes away for a short time and you might even experience some pleasure. But does it solve any problems? Your answer is probably no. And if you think about it, the binges make it even more difficult to deal with your problems or emotions.
Your urges might promise you stress relief, deflection from negative thoughts or space from anxiety, but instead of this, you experience pain, shame, guilt and more difficult emotions. The intense desire to experience the pleasure of a binge is only present while the urge is ongoing. Once you have binged, you realise that the pleasure promised by the urge was not worth it.
Once you have recognised that the urges themselves are the real cause of your binge eating and don’t deliver any benefits, you will be able to start moving away from binge eating to cope with your difficult emotions or life problems.
You don’t need to struggle alone on your recovery journey. Simply get in touch to discuss how I can help you.
It is entirely possible to overcome an eating disorder or body hate – I have done it, others have done it and so can you!
Join the Body Acceptance & Food Freedom Collective
Receive a weekly dose of inspirations to help you make peace with your body and food.
Don’t worry, we hate spam too. You can unsubscribe any time.
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Hi there!
I’m Tanja. I’m a qualified psychologist specialising in eating disorders, negative body image and body hate. I’m also a survivor of anorexia.
My mission is to help you to end your lifelong struggles with food and your body and inspire you to uncover and embrace you true worth. Read more…