If you’re here because you’re searching for how to stop binge eating, I want you to know something first: there is nothing wrong with you.
If you’re familiar with my story, you know I struggled with binge eating for years. At the peak of my Binge Eating Disorder, I was bingeing every single day. It was one of the darkest times of my life, and I felt so helpless, out of control, and like there was something seriously wrong with me.
There isn’t. And once I understood what was actually driving it, everything started to change.
What Actually Causes Binge Eating?
TL;DR: for most people, binge eating is driven by restriction (physical or mental), difficult emotions, or both… not a lack of willpower.
There can be a lot of different things that contribute to binge eating, but for a lot of people (myself included), it ultimately comes back to restriction in some form.
Maybe that’s an extreme diet. Maybe it’s just telling yourself to eat less sugar, stick to a slight calorie deficit, or lose some weight. If you aren’t fully allowing yourself to eat what you want, when you want it, that’s restriction, and your body reads that as a famine. So it puts your appetite into overdrive, just trying to keep you alive.
Research backs this up too. A recent scoping review in Nutrition Reviews looked at 76 studies and found that most of them (about 70%) linked restrictive dieting to increased binge eating, especially when it’s combined with stress or difficult emotions. The evidence isn’t perfectly one-sided, but it lines up with what I see with clients (and lived myself) again and again: the more restricted you feel, the louder the urge to binge gets.
Restriction Isn’t the Only Piece.. Emotional Eating Plays a Role Too
Binge eating can also be spurred on by emotions, through emotional eating. When you’re dealing with something hard, and you turn to food for comfort, numbing, or a way to cope, that’s emotional eating.
I want to be really clear here: there is nothing inherently wrong with emotional eating! Having a piece of cake at a birthday party is a great way to celebrate. A bowl of ice cream after a rough day, once in a while, is a great way to unwind.
But if you’re regularly eating large quantities of food to the point of feeling sick, that’s bingeing, and it’s usually a sign that your self-care is lacking somewhere.
Get Clear on What’s Actually Driving It
Before you can stop binge eating, it helps to get honest about what’s fueling it for you. Is it restriction? A need for more self-care? Maybe a bit of both?
Once you know that, here’s where I’d start.
How to Stop Binge Eating: 4 Things That Actually Help
1. Eat earlier in the day.
Do you eat breakfast within an hour or two of waking? One of the most common patterns I see in people who struggle with binge eating is skipping breakfast entirely, maybe because they don’t feel hungry, or because a big coffee loaded with cream feels like enough. If you’re working on how to stop binge eating, this is the first place to look! Eat within an hour or two of waking, and include protein, fat, and carbohydrates so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar and actually sets you up for the day.
2. Eat every 2-5 hours, and make sure it’s enough.
Keep including a mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrates at each meal and snack. Those macronutrients work together to help you absorb your micronutrients, keep your energy steady, and actually feel satisfied. Not eating enough throughout the day is one of the biggest drivers of binge eating, full stop.
3. Avoid restriction, including mental restriction.
Mental restriction is when you physically let yourself eat something, but you spend the whole time beating yourself up about it, or feeling guilty during or after. Satisfaction matters so much here. If you’re not fully letting yourself enjoy your food, it won’t feel as satisfying, and you’ll end up wanting more of it than if you’d just allowed yourself to enjoy it in the first place.
4. Prioritize self-care.
If you’re doing all of the above and still struggling, ask yourself: what do you actually do for self-care on a regular basis? This doesn’t need to be elaborate; a massage or a bubble bath isn’t required! Even just unwinding each night with a favourite show, a book, or some good music counts. Meditation, journaling, yoga, or light stretching all help too. When the urge to binge shows up, instead of heading to the pantry on autopilot, pause and ask yourself what you actually need in that moment. You might be surprised what comes up. Maybe it’s connection, and a call to a friend is what you really need. Maybe it’s just permission to rest. Don’t force yourself not to binge either; some nights that might genuinely be what you need. But when you build in daily self-care, you’ll notice that pull to binge starts to loosen on its own.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Emotional eating is sometimes turning to food for comfort, which is completely normal and not a problem on its own. It becomes binge eating when it happens regularly and involves eating past the point of comfort, to the point of feeling sick, and a feeling of loss of control over eating. While emotional eating and binge eating are not the same, emotional eating can lead to binge eating.
This is usually a sign of restriction (your body compensating for not getting enough food or “allowed” foods earlier) or emotional eating (using food to cope with a hard feeling), rather than true physical hunger.
Yes, and for most people, this is actually the more effective path. Since restriction is one of the biggest drivers of binge eating, adding another diet on top of it usually makes bingeing worse, not better.
It’s different for everyone. The habits in this post (eating enough and often, dropping mental restriction, building in daily self-care) are the foundation, but for many people it also takes time and, ideally, support from a coach or therapist who specializes in this.
About Lara: Lara is a Certified Intuitive Eating Pro Lay Facilitator and Certified Transformational Nutrition Coach who helps women break free from the cycle of dieting, bingeing, guilt, and starting over, drawing on her lived experience with Binge Eating Disorder and years of coaching clients through the same struggle.
Sources Cited
Scoping review on restrictive diets and binge eating disorder, Nutrition Reviews (Oxford Academic): https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article-abstract/84/1/189/8240324