The Physical Reasons That You Binge That Have Nothing To Do With Your Emotions

I explore a lot here on the nervous system dysregulation, trauma impacts, and emotional reasons that binge eating can occur. Yet, sometimes, binge eating has more to do with physical imbalances that have nothing to do with your emotional body. Or, as you cultivate more regulation and safety in your system, the physical realm is just as important to address as the emotional realm.

Today, we're going to explore three physical reasons that contribute to patterns of binge eating.

1. You're skipping meals

This is your sign to let go of intermittent fasting. When you skip meals your blood sugar drops and this can leave you feeling irritable, anxious, dizzy, tired, and mentally foggy. Your metabolism will slow down. Your body will go into starvation mode to conserve your energy to ensure you can function on whatever reserves it has. Research has shown that skipping breakfast increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause death. Lastly, your body will produce more ghrelin, your hunger hormone. This means you will feel hungrier and hungrier by skipping meals as your body is trying to get you to eat.

By the end of the day, a binge can occur as your body has been trying to get you to give it what it needs all day. If you're not giving your body the nutrition it requires, at some point your body will take over. Instead of experiencing this as binge eating, reframe it as protective eating. Your body is on your team trying to support you in staying alive. If you want this eating behavior to change, you will need to eat consistently, every day, no matter what.

This will take some time to shift. When binge eating has been occurring, especially in the late afternoons or evenings, that can often lead to still being full the next morning. The practice will be to eat something small for breakfast anyway. Yes, this may feel incredibly uncomfortable and you can make space for this discomfort, describe it to yourself, come into relationship with it. It is alright to feel uncomfortable and this short term discomfort of eating in the morning will be in service to the long term comfort of perhaps no longer feeling the urge to binge in the evenings as your body begins to be regulated and stabilized by eating about every 3-5 hours in your day.

2. Your meals are not balanced

Your body needs all macronutrients including protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Protein is your body's building blocks and helps repair cells, fat gives your body energy, keeps you warm, protects your organs, facilitates cell growth, and supports your body to absorb nutrients, and carbohydrates support you in having enough energy for your bodily functions and daily physical movements. If you're navigating patterns of binge eating, it's time to stop eating low carb, no carb, low fat, or no fat. For now, your body needs to know that it is going to get all of the nutrients it needs to thrive. What I have often seen is that if binge eating is being activated for a physical reason, one of your macronutrients is being under-consumed and restricted.

As you age, your body needs about 50% more protein than what it required to preserve muscle mass and strength than when you were a young adult. I know getting in more protein at each meal can sometimes feel difficult and not consuming enough protein can also increase sugar and carbohydrate cravings. Adequate protein helps stabilize blood sugar levels. If your blood sugar levels are low or all over the place from inconsistent eating and not consuming balanced meals, your body will tell you to reach for what it knows is the fastest thing to bring your blood sugar levels back up and that is sugar. So you see this has nothing to do with you being weak or having no willpower. Your body is incredibly wise and your sugar cravings are there trying to support you.

If your body is not getting the protein, fat, and carbs it needs, binge eating can occur later in the day as it tries to get the nutrients it desires. Your binge, or rather protective, eating is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. Perhaps we could take a new perspective that it is showing everything that is "right" with you. Your body is doing exactly what it's meant to be doing when it feels deprived. Thank goodness you have this impulse to eat an abundant amount of food so that you stay here on this earth in this body. When you're feeling the impulse to binge at the end of the day, you can explore sitting with that urge and getting curious about what it might be physically trying to tell you.

You can reflect on the meals you had that day and were they balanced. You can play with naming what was the protein, fat, and carbohydrate you've had at each meal. If one was missing, your urge to binge is letting you know it might need more of that macronutrient. You can also start to experience whatever it is that you want to eat during your binge as interpretive instead of literal. So if you're wanting to consume a food predominantly in carbohydrates, you can get curious if you've had enough protein that day.

While I rarely offer nutritional guidance here because you are a unique person and you get to explore what balance of these macronutrients works best for you, you can also play with making something like a smoothie or a protein drink that is just as fast, quick, and easy as the bag or box that your body is telling you to go reach for. Your body wants what it wants nutritionally immediately. So you will need to create other quick go-to options so that you know you have a choice in how to support your body in those moments. You can check out my favorite protein powder HERE for another option you can experiment with and get 15% off when you use the code STEPHANIEMARA at checkout.

3. Not eating enough

Let's say that you're eating consistently throughout the day and each meal is balanced with everything your body needs to thrive and you're still binge eating at the end of the day. This is when you might need to explore if you're eating enough food. Undereating can leave your body feeling fatigued, make it more susceptible to getting sick, leaves you feeling cold as you're not eating enough to maintain your body temperature, and constipated. Additionally, you will constantly be thinking about food because your body can't concentrate on anything else until it gets the nutrition it needs.

Your day may look like small balanced meals occurring regularly throughout the day and then because your body didn't get the amount of food it needed, you binge at night. This can feel so incredibly confusing. You feel like you're doing such a great job eating all of your macronutrients and having breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you wonder why you keep binging at night. Body intelligence is speaking to you. The practice here will be to add more at every meal. If this feels a bit overwhelming at first, take all the baby steps you need. This might be focusing on adding a little bit more of just one of your macronutrients. Explore what feels like the safest, smallest step you can take so that the discomfort that may be present in eating more feels manageable to navigate.

I truly believe that every habit that is created in our life is supporting us with something.

If you've been skipping meals, taking out whole food groups, and undereating, you're doing this for a reason. Perhaps it was what you were taught, perhaps it gave you a sense of control, perhaps it made you feel good in your body initially, perhaps it is supporting you in not having to address some other area that needs your attention. Meet yourself with so much compassion and take all the time you need to explore eating in a way that regulates you.