Will extreme hunger lead to binge eating disorder?

Does any of this resonate?

👉 If I honor mental hunger, it will lead to emotional eating

👉 I should eat mindfully, even though it causes me anxiety

👉 Giving in to extreme hunger is too risky – what if I develop binge eating disorder?

These thoughts used to consume me.

There tends to be a lot of shame around speaking up about the fear of "losing control," which makes sense...

Because WHY are you afraid of losing control around food?

Losing control around food means weight gain and weight gain = bad.

With all the fatphobia and diet culture already present in our society, the last thing you want to do is contribute to that toxicity.

However, just like bottling up any emotion, keeping your thoughts about emotional eating, mindful eating, and binge eating hidden in the shadows doesn't make them go away.

If anything, it causes you to live the life of your shadow self rather than embracing the true, colorful, and abundant person that you are.

👏 SO LET'S TALK ABOUT IT! 👏

Emotional eating. One of diet culture's most infiltrative messages is that eating can be an "unhealthy coping strategy." You are led to believe that eating when you are feeling anything negative is simply an attempt to "soothe yourself through food" – which should be avoided at all costs, DUH!

Where diet culture (massively) misses the mark is that eating is supposed to be a soothing experience. I mean, if humans didn't receive any pleasure from food, we would go extinct.

Plus, if food wasn't supposed to hold any emotional value, why do restaurants exist? Why do cookbooks exist? Why do we celebrate holidays with tables upon tables of delicious food galore? 🎂

For me, the line between mental hunger and emotional eating was so thin, that I believed I couldn't "risk" going down that path.

So how did I honor all forms of hunger (yes, including mental hunger) and make peace with food without becoming an "emotional eater"?

My book How to Beat Extreme Hunger tells the entire story!

But don't worry, we're not done here yet...

Mindful eating. Another pervasive message in the land of all things diet culture (including anti-diet culture) is that you should eat mindfully.

Mindful eating is the concept of being fully attentive to your food, which, according to diet culture, is "helpful" because it allows you to eat more slowly and reduce "emotional eating."

While mindful eating may be useful for certain individuals, I've found that mindful eating is one of the worst approaches for autistic people and those with eating disorders.

Not only can eating without distractions increase anxiety in those who are already prone to feeling anxious around food, but part of the ED recovery journey is making food less of a focal point.

After all the time you've spent being way too mindful of every bite that enters your mouth, the last thing you need to focus on is being more mindful of your food choices!

But again, everything has its time and place. These nuances can be tricky for black-and-white thinkers, which my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger helps you understand.

Binge Eating. When I was experiencing extreme hunger, one of my biggest fears was that I was "swinging to the other side" and developing binge-eating disorder. And while many "ED recovery accounts" say you're not swinging to the other side, you are – temporarily.

But how do you know this swinging to the other side is only temporary?

Say, you got on a swing as a little kid. You grow up swinging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until...

You decide to restrict. Perhaps, you add an extra dash of exercise as well. Suddenly, you're no longer swinging back and forth.

Due to the lack of calories to support your daily activities, you are only swinging backwards. You're in a state of negative energy.

But then!

You start eating more. You permit yourself to rest. You gain some weight.

And BOOM 💥

You're suddenly so hungry that all you can do is eat eat eat until you feel so full and nauseous – and yet you may still want to eat more food.

In order for your swing to come back to center, you must temporarily spend some extra time swinging to the other side of energy deficit. You must spend some extra time on the side of abundance.

To ensure you stay in this state of abundance for as long as you need, your eating behaviors will naturally resemble those of binge-eating disorder.

Obviously, there's a LOT more I can say about this – which I have written all about in my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger. Available as a paperback, eBook, and audiobook!

👉 Buy the extreme hunger book 👈

I know how scary it is to feel like you're "letting yourself go" in ED recovery. But, to quote my book, setting yourself free is an act of far greater power than holding on.

You deserve to be free. I can't wait to help you achieve it ❤️