Ep #5: Why You Want to Binge Eat

Hey! How are you? Welcome back! I hope you’re having an amazing day and you’re ready to learn about why you want to binge eat.

Now, you may be surprised by this topic because initially you might think, “But I don’t want to binge!”

Of course you don’t want to. You wouldn’t be listening to a podcast about stopping binge eating if you didn’t want to stop.

But if you 100%, all of the time, never wanted to binge then you wouldn’t do it.

So in this episode, I’m going to be talking about why there are times when you do want to binge.

And there’s three main reasons that I’m going to talk about.

The first reason is simply because you want to make the urge to binge go away.

If you remember back in episode 2, I talked about how there is a decision made in the higher brain once the lower brain sends out that urge to binge. If the decision you make is to follow through on the binge, then you’re choosing that option because you want to do it.

And you want to do it because you want relief from the urge.

That urge to binge is uncomfortable. It can also be distracting and it can be hard to think about anything but eating when you’re feeling it.

So you want out of it. You don’t want to feel it anymore. You want it to go away.

And the easiest way to do that is to give the urge what it’s urging for, and eat.

But because you’re eating in response to a binge urge, you’re likely not just going to eat a moderate amount of one thing and be done. You’ll binge, because that’s what you’re urging for.

You’re not urging for just a small amount of something, you’re urging for a lot.

So in order to actually get relief from that urge, a small amount won’t do it.

Relief will come when you’ve eaten a lot.

So in that moment when you’re feeling the urge, all you’re wanting is to change how you feel right now, to get rid of the urge.

That’s what’s most important to you in that moment.

So you’re not even thinking about the consequences of bingeing, maybe you’re not even letting yourself think about them, or maybe you actually are thinking about them but, you tell yourself that you don’t care, because all you care about is getting relief from the urge.

You want to give in to the urge, you want to binge, so you can stop feeling so uncomfortable.

And this isn’t just how it is with binge urges, it can also be how it is with uncomfortable emotions, which is the second reason I want to talk about.

We all feel uncomfortable emotions sometimes. And sometimes, we feel a lot of uncomfortable emotions and sometimes we feel intensely uncomfortable emotions.

And if you’re feeling uncomfortable emotions, what do you want?

You want to feel better.

You want comfort, soothing, calmness, relaxation, numbing, pleasure, or joy, something that’s not uncomfortable.

And what’s an easy way to get that?

By eating food.

And in your mind, more food might mean more comfort, soothing, calmness, relaxation, numbing, pleasure, or joy.

That’s why the longer you’re feeling uncomfortable, or the more intense your discomfort is, the more in quantity you’ll want to eat.

You want to feel better as long as possible so you want to eat for as long as possible.

So when you’re feeling an uncomfortable emotion, you might want to binge because it’s how you can escape the discomfort, it’s how you can get relief from it, it’s how you can feel better.

And it’s easy to do.

It’s so much easier than working through how you’re feeling.

So if you want the easy escape, the easy comfort, the easy way to feel better, you might choose to eat food.

Now, what about those of you who binge when you feel happy?

It might be confusing because you’re not trying to escape a good feeling.

But, what you might be doing is trying to extend or intensify the good feeling you feel.

You think eating will make you feel happier.

You think eating will make you feel happier for longer.

You want more happy and again, eating will do that for you.

Now, of course when we’re talking about eating making you feel better or feel good or making you feel any other way that you want to feel, it’s temporary.

When you stop eating, so will the feeling.

But like I talked about with this urge, you might not care about that in the moment.

All you care about is not feeling how you feel and if eating is the way you know to do that, then you’re going to do it.

So you’re going to ignore the consequences so you can just eat.

So with those two reasons I’ve talked about so far, the reason why you want to binge is to change how you’re feeling.

And the third reason I’m going to talk about is kind of similar, but a little different.

You’re wanting to binge so you can feel a certain way but in this case, how you’re wanting to feel is free.

Free to eat what you want and as much as you want.

Free to eat foods that you don’t normally eat.

Free to eat without judgement.

And why might you want all that?

It’s because when you’re not bingeing, you don’t allow it.

Outside of a binge, in your regular eating, you might not allow yourself to eat what you want, or as much as you want.

You put restrictions on both.

Outside of a binge, you might not allow yourself to eat certain foods.

You restrict them. You forbid them.

Outside of a binge, you might judge your food, you judge yourself for wanting what you want, and if you eat certain foods, you might judge yourself for eating them.

But when you binge, you let go of all of it.

It’s your chance to eat how you want to eat.

But here’s the thing.

How you eat when you binge is not how you really want to eat. Not how the true you wants to eat.

It’s how the you that feels so restricted wants to eat.

If you weren’t so restricted, or so judgmental of yourself, then you wouldn’t be urging to freely eat all those foods in large quantities.

You’d just be eating them freely when you want to and you’d freely eat them in amounts that feel good in your body. And you’d do it freely because you wouldn’t be judging yourself for doing it.

There wouldn’t be this build up of desire to eat how you want to eat, because you’d be eating how you want to eat all the time.

You wouldn’t be going back and forth from holding yourself back from eating what you want, to eating excessive amounts of what you want.

You wouldn’t be going from one extreme to the other.

So you might want to binge because you want to feel free, and it’s because you’re not giving yourself enough freedom in general.

So if you want to not want to binge, start with identifying your reason for why you want to binge.

Are you wanting relief?

Are you wanting comfort, numbness, joy, pleasure, or calmness?

Are you wanting to feel free?

You’re wanting to feel something different, what is it that you’re wanting to feel?

Then question whether bingeing will actually give you what you want.

Will it REALLY give you what you want?

The tricky part is that it probably does for a short period of time. You’ll get the relief, the pleasure, the escape, the freedom, but it will come with consequences.

And, if you keep using it as your solution for feeling how you want to feel, then you’ll keep doing it because those feelings you want to feel, are valid.

Why wouldn’t you want to feel free? Or feel comfort? Or calmness? Or relief? Or any of the other feelings I mentioned?

Of course you do. We all do.

But bingeing on food isn’t the only way.

And it’s definitely not the best way.

What would be so much better would be to stop overly restricting yourself with food so you feel free all the time, and so you don’t even create those urges to binge.

And what would be so much better would be to work through your emotions so you’re getting the feeling you want for real, not just temporarily, so you’re resolving your uncomfortable emotions. If you make that your go-to way of handling emotions, you won’t feel urges to binge when you do feel uncomfortable emotions.

I will be, in future episodes, talking more in depth about better ways to handle your emotions but today’s episode is just about understanding your desire to binge.

So, I hope you have gotten some understanding of yourself and why you’re wanting to binge sometimes because understanding why is first step.

You’re taking the first step.

And step by step, you will get to the point where you are no longer feeling urges to binge and are no longer bingeing.

You can do it.

Alright, bye bye.