Let’s talk about the restrict-binge cycle.

If there was one nutrition concept that I wish all people understood, it would be…

Restriction leads to binging.

If that doesn’t resonate, try any of these on for size…

• Dieting leads to loss of control eating.
• The more we ignore our hunger, the greater the chances we’ll eat past the point of comfort later on.
• The more rules we place around what, when and how much we are going to eat, the more likely we’ll break those rules.
• When we don’t eat enough, our bodies drives us towards food.

These are all variations of the restrict-binge cycle.

Why does restriction lead to binging?

Our bodies are wired to get their needs met. If we don’t eat enough, our bodies eventually hijack the system and get themselves fed in a way that feels outside of our conscious control. This experience can feel really uncomfortable. Feeling in control feels good psychologically. Nonetheless, we need our bodies to shift to autopilot when our minds (the pilots) are making food decisions that don’t align with our bodies’ needs.

If you are a visual learner, think of hunger and fullness on a pendulum. The higher we pull the pendulum up towards extreme hunger, the further up it will travel on the flip side to eating past the point of comfort.

Alternatively, if we eat when hunger feels gentle or pleasant, it is easier for the pendulum to peak at comfortable fullness.

Let’s break this restrict-binge concept down further…

What constitutes restriction?

Restriction can be both physical and psychological.

Physical Restriction

Physical restriction, when we are not consuming adequate energy (aka calories) to meet our bodies’ needs, is more obvious. When we diet, we call that physical restriction intentional. Diets are anything that dictate what, when or how much we eat. This includes the obvious like counting calories and WW (formally Weight Watchers), and the less obvious like Noom, Intermittent Fasting, Keto, Whole30, etc. The latter are less obvious because they package themselves as “lifestyle” programs versus weight loss programs. Make no mistake, nothing has changed but the marketing. These “lifestyle” programs still dictate what, when and/or how much we eat. Whether stated implicitly or not, their ultimate goal is us eating less. They are all forms of intentional physical restriction.

Physical restriction can also be unintentional. Examples of unintentional physical restriction include things like unconsciously not eating adequately due to busyness, stress and other emotional states, sickness, and the use of medications that interfere with appetite.

Psychological Restriction

Psychological restriction is trickier to identify because it’s less obvious and almost never intentional. It can occur when we say we say we eat what, when and how much we want but unwittingly feel uncomfortable emotions like stress or guilt when we actually do it. It’s walking the walk but inside beating ourselves up about it. This is a couple of layers deep.

We as individuals are the only ones who can know whether we are psychologically restricting. The biggest clue is guilt. If we feel guilty after eating, odds are there is psychological restriction even in the absence of physical restriction. Raise your hand if you’ve been here. (Me! Me!) Many who do the work of becoming more attuned eaters, or intuitive eaters, have work to do around psychological restriction along the way.

Oof! That’s a lot on what constitutes restriction. Let me state the obvious. Given these definitions, the vast majority of us are restricting in one way or another. This makes a lot of sense given the ubiquitous message we receive since childhood that we cannot trust out appetites and need outside help to regulate our bodies. The insecurities this breeds benefits capitalism. There is a lot of money to be made when we internalize the message that we can’t trust ourselves. But we’ll save that for another blogpost.

Now let’s get to what I mean by loss of control eating.

What is binging?

Binging is a loaded word. I laughed out loud when I looked up the definition:

“A period of excessive indulgence in an activity, especially eating, drinking or taking drugs.” (New Oxford Dictionary)

No wonder it’s fraught when the definition carries so much moral judgement! It implies binging is a personal shortcoming, a lack of discipline, instead of a logical result of not meeting one’s needs. Yuck, this is not what binging means within the nutrition community. Let’s normalize it. Outside of the clinical eating disorder context, binging means eating in a way that feels outside of our control. We can use “binging” and “loss of control eating” interchangeably.

Loss of control eating might feel like

• You lack the “willpower” to choose/order what you think you “should” be eating.
• Not being able to resist the breadbasket.
• Being unable to stop eating at the point where you think you’re comfortably full, or you “should” be full.
• Emotional eating, like something outside of your mind is calling the shots (it is, and it’s your body).

The last time you felt out of control when eating, what was your self-talk? I’m going to guess it wasn’t kind. I am going to guess it centered on berating versus understanding. “Ugh, you did it again! What’s wrong with you? You always do this! You have no will power.”

This inclination for self-blame and guilt is understandable. We are told by nearly everyone, everywhere that we cannot trust ourselves to make food decisions without rules and that if break our rules it’s our personal shortcoming / lack of willpower.

But this inclination only leads to a constant cycle of restricting and loss of control eating. You restrict, your body takes over to get its needs met, your blame yourself for lack of willpower and then you recommit to restricting. Rinse and repeat. This is the completion of the restrict-binge cycle.

We blame ourselves when the cycle itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What’s the alternative?

Stop restricting. Trust our hunger and give ourselves full permission to eat the food that we want. Aim to eat at the earlier stages of hunger and allow ourselves to eat until we are actually satisfied, not just until hunger goes away.

When we do fall short of our needs (either intentionally or unintentionally) and find ourselves eating in way that feels outside of our conscious control, flip the script.

Can you imagine for a second if the next time you experienced loss of control eating, your mind went first to self-compassion and curiosity? You could actually say to yourself, “This didn’t feel great but I believe my body was probably just working to protect me. When was the last time I ate? Was it adequate? Have I been eating enough in general?”

Yes, this alternative is hard. It is (sadly and weirdly) counter cultural. Trust our bodies? Eat what sounds good? Eat until satisfied? Blasphemy!

Trusting our bodies again takes both relearning how to listen to them and consciously rejecting the many messages from the outside that make that hard. If this restrict-binge cycle feels too familiar and you are curious about what it might be like to step off the hamster wheel, I want to support you. Reach out for 1:1 counseling or to see if you’d be a good fit for my Intuitive Eating Support Group. If you aren’t quite there yet but something about this resonated, I highly suggest reading Intutive Eating 4th Edition by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the dietitians who created the Intuitive Eating framework.

What do you think? Does the restrict-binge cycle sound familiar? Can you imagine another way? I want to hear from you in the comments.