The Reasons We Binge -- and How to Break Free
Binge-worthy. What does that mean to you? What is most likely to entice you to take in more and more and more, until you are stuffed, exhausted, or depleted?
For my 97-year-old mother-in-law, it's Gunsmoke. Her favored cable channel plays a lot of old TV shows, and back-to-back Gunsmoke is their offering from 5:00 until 9:00 every evening. No matter what, Mom never misses a minute of James Arness and the gang in several of their 635 episodes (Gunsmoke was on the air for 20 years). If we're visiting, we have to be quiet and watch it with her. When that evening's binge is over, she goes to bed.
Maybe you binge on a TV show, like Mom. Or maybe social media grabs your attention and won't let go. Maybe it's shopping – even if you don't buy much, it's easy to spend hours looking, comparing, reading reviews, researching prices, and more.
Or maybe your binge is food. My sister-in-law can't get enough of salty things. She struggles to limit movie popcorn, potato chips, or French fries. Some people just can't resist overeating pizza or brownies. I never bake cookies, because I'll eat them all. And there's a certain brand of coffee chocolate chip gelato that I only buy rarely, because I'll eat the whole pint.
Why we binge
Most of us don't feel good after we binge. We feel shame at our loss of control. If we binged on food or alcohol, we may feel physically ill. If we sat for hours in front of a screen, we may have an aching head or a stiff neck. If we binged at the mall, we may feel anxious about how much we spent, or want to hide our purchases so no one knows what we did.
In fact, binge behavior may involve a lot of hiding, even lying. I certainly don't binge on oatmeal raisin cookies in front of anyone! If I'm eating with other people, it's much easier to stick to a healthy diet and smaller portions.
No, binge eating is done in private, where there's no one to answer to but yourself. You may not even be hungry, but the enticing food is there and you eat it. This ability to hide what you're doing may also explain the explosion in online shopping, gambling, and pornography.
Binge behaviors may be triggered by stress, loneliness, or even boredom. The feeling that you deserve or need a reward might trigger a binge. Social pressure, such as friends who are shopping, eating, or drinking, could be your trigger. Or you might binge simply out of habit. Patterns developed in childhood or during a time of illness or trauma might still be affecting you.
Some food binges may even be triggered by dieting. When we demonize certain foods and label them "off limits," we may inadvertently create a dietary imbalance. For example, an extremely low-fat diet might leave you lacking in vital nutrients. Our bodies do need a certain amount of fat for efficient metabolism, and some vitamins are fat-soluble, so without dietary fat we don't absorb them. So at some point, you're going to crave glucose to supply the energy you're lacking. And the quickest way to get glucose is to eat a simple carbohydrate – candy, juice, soda, white bread, pasta, etc.
Another theory is that foods that are high in salt, fat, or sugar are rarely found in nature, so when our hunter-gatherer ancestors discovered these calorie-dense goodies they gorged on them. That instinct survives. In fact, when we eat sugary, salty, or fatty foods – and especially if two or three of those traits are combined in one food – the dopamine neurons in our brains become very active, producing feelings of pleasure that encourage us to eat as much as we can. These are the same neurons activated by cocaine or meth. (Yikes!) So that pan of brownies is legitimately addictive.
The biggest trigger foods combine salt, sugar, and/or fat, like pizza (salt/fat), donuts (sugar/fat) and chocolate peanut butter pretzels (sugar/salt/fat). Foods like these lead to the most intense cravings, as the ingredients seem to enhance each other's addictive properties.
When we consume low-nutrition snacks, we may ingest a lot of calories and fill our bellies, yet still be lacking valuable elements our bodies need. It's a no-win cycle.
How to break free
One key may be to eat something that provides the essence of what you're craving but is much less addictive – that is, without high levels of fat, sugar, salt, or two or more in combination – and without resorting to artificial ingredients, which may cause long-term harm. That might include:
- plain roasted nuts, instead of salted roasted nuts or honey roasted nuts
- apples baked with cinnamon, instead of apple pie
- a square of 70% dark chocolate, instead of chocolate cake or brownies
- whole grain toast with mashed avocado and spices, instead of potato chips and creamy dip
- a cup of coffee with steamed milk and cinnamon, instead of a sweetened latte or Frappuccino
It's also important to choose other activities that create the dopamine response we crave. Instead of relying on shopping, eating, scrolling, or watching four episodes of The Last of Us to get our hits of the feel-good chemical, we could:
- get some sunshine
- do some yoga
- take a walk
- listen to or (even better) make music
- dance
- cuddle with a loved one or a pet
- craft something
- take a nap
- do something kind or generous
- laugh
A word of hope
Fortunately, our brains are plastic – that is, very adaptable. According to Dr. Gary Wenk, author of Your Brain on Food, our brains can learn to crave the molecules they're exposed to on a daily basis. The more often you choose healthier foods, the more often you'll crave them, and the less you'll fall victim to druglike trigger foods.
So maybe we don't have to be slaves to our binge-worthy temptations. Slowly, surely, with daily choices, we can change.
Related article: End Binge and Purge: 4 Ways to Break Free of a Shopping Addiction
The Minimalist Diet is a journey toward a better version of yourself, built with grace, patience, and respect.
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