Why You’re Still Binge Eating if You’re Not Restricting Food

If you’re still struggling with binge eating even though you’ve stopped dieting or restricting food, you’re not broken. You’ve taken an incredible and necessary step to heal from binge eating, but there are more pieces to the puzzle!

addressing underlying emotions

Eating as a reaction to emotions instead of engaging in emotional eating intentionally or actively processing the emotions in the first place can facilitate binge eating. When you learn how to respond and cope with your big emotions, you’ll feel so much more in control. This could look like taking a moment to pause when the big feelings come up, naming the feeling, accepting that feelings aren’t facts, and then approach eating from a more emotionally regulated place. It could also mean recognizing that food isn’t what you’re needing right now, and engaging in something that would actually serve you.

ditching the all-or-nothing mindset

Or as I like to call it, the “fuck it” mindset! If you find yourself engaging in all-or-nothing thinking, and not leaving room for “imperfect” eating, it’s likely going to perpetuate the binge cycle. Some examples of all-or-nothing mindset are:

• “Welp, I ‘messed up’ so I might as well ____”

• Flipping to an opposite extreme when something does not go 100% as we expect or think it “should”

• Viewing eating as a “pass” or “fail”

There’s no such thing as being a “perfect” eater!

make sure your eating is truly unconditional

If you’re only allowing yourself unconditional permission to eat when you’ve “earned it,” or when you’re sitting down to relax at the end of the day, that’s not unconditional permission. Your body is still reading those moments when you’re not allowing yourself to eat all foods as restriction.

Unconditional permission to eat is so important, but it’s also important to recognize what’s going on mentally and emotionally!