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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And today we're diving into a topic that affects far more people than you might realize. This is binge eating behaviors and why the traditional just eat less approach so often backfires pretty spectacularly. Now, before we go any further, I do want to be crystal clear about something. This episode is not about diagnosing eating disorders.

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If you're struggling with disordered eating, please work with qualified professionals, therapists, psychologists, or practitioners who specialize in eating behavior. What I'm offering today is education around the psychology and physiology of overeating patterns so you can make informed decisions about your own relationship with food and whether now is the right time to pursue fat loss or whether there's some foundational work that needs to happen first. So this conversation is about empowerment through understanding.

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and I want you to sort of come into it with no judgment, no shame, and I want to just offer some science and practical application for you. So first, let's start by getting really clear on some definitions because there's a lot of confusion around what binge eating actually means. So binge eating is not occasionally eating more than you planned at a social event, genuinely enjoying your food and feeling satisfied a little bit more, having a large or indulgent meal,

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because it's delicious and you're celebrating something. It is not going back for seconds at a Sunday roast or finishing the entire sharing platter because you were genuinely hungry. These are all normal eating behaviors that occur in a range of different situations and that's it. Binge eating though is eating a large amount of food with a distinct sense of a loss of control, feeling unable to stop or regulate your intake in the moment even when you want to.

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Often this is followed by significant emotional distress, guilt, shame, or physical discomfort. It's typically done in a relatively short period of time, for some, frequently eating alone or in secret due to embarrassment. And the key differentiator here is that sense of being disconnected from choice. It's not about the quantity alone, it's about the quality of the experience and what happens afterwards emotionally.

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Now, it's important to understand the difference between binge eating behaviors and binge eating disorder, which is a formally recognized diagnosis. According to the DSM-5, that's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, binge eating disorder has specific criteria. A person must experience recurrent episodes of binge eating characterized by both eating in a discrete period of time within any two hour period,

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an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most people would eat in a similar period under similar circumstances, and a sense of lack of control over eating during the episode. So it's not just about the food and the speed of it, it's that lack of control that needs to also be present. These binge eating episodes must be associated with three or more of the following. Eating much more rapidly than normal, eating until feeling uncomfortably full,

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Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry. Eating alone because of feeling embarrassed by how much you're eating. Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed or very guilty afterwards. So there's a lot of shame involved. And finally, having marked distress regarding the binge eating. The binge eating occurs on average at least once a week for three months. The binge eating is not associated with recurrent use of inappropriate compensatory behaviors like

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purging, which would indicate bulimia nervosa, does not occur exclusively during the course of bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa. Again, I'm sharing this for educational purposes, not for self-diagnosis. If several of these criteria resonate with you, I think that is valuable information that does suggest further investigation for professional support um could be really beneficial. However, to go back to the binge eating sort of patterns,

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that many people actually experience that does not meet the criteria for binge eating disorder. Here's what the research tells us about prevalence. Among people actively seeking help with weight loss, binge eating behaviors are commonly reported in somewhere 20 to 30 % of individuals. It was a 2013 systematic review published in Obesity Reviews that found the prevalence of binge eating amongst individuals seeking weight loss.

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range from 5 to 30%, with the variation depending on the population and assessment methods used. And that is a pretty significant proportion. When we look at full clinical criteria for Bingen-Ning disorder specifically in the general population, lifetime prevalence is estimated around 2 to 3%, according to large epidemiological studies. But among weight loss treatment seekers, that number is considerably higher, typically in the 10 to 15 % range or more.

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So again, if any of this is resonating with you right now, I want you to know you are far from alone. And this isn't about lacking willpower. It's not a character flaw or being weak or undisciplined. It's a complex interaction between biology, psychology, learned behaviors, and often well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful dietary approaches. So let's talk about what actually happens.

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in your brain and body when binge eating occurs because understanding the mechanism is the first step towards changing that pattern. So firstly, the reward system in dopamine. Food, particularly energy dense, highly palatable food, activates your brain's reward circuitry. We're talking about the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, that same pathway involved in motivation, pleasure, and reinforcement learning.

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And this isn't a design flaw, it's evolutionary intelligence. Our ancestors need to be motivated to seek out calorie dense foods because scarcity was the norm. However, when you restrict food, especially specific foods you really enjoy, you're not just creating physical hunger, you're amplifying the reward signal. Brain imaging studies using functional MRI have shown that when people are dieting or food restricted, their neural response to food cues become hyperactive. Areas like the nucleus,

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acumbens and orbitofrontocortex, which are key parts of the reward system. These show increased activation in response to food images. The same biscuit that might have been mildly appealing becomes neurologically irresistible. And this is compounded by something called incentive salience. Basically, the more you tell yourself you can't have something, the more your brain flags it as valuable and worthy of pursuit. It's not conscious. You're not choosing to obsess over the foods you've forbidden.

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your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do when it perceives restriction. And I have in the past talked about how when you're dieting and you lose weight, your brain tries to seek out even more calories than it otherwise would. This is all in part due to the hunger signal when dieting. Now, take that reward system in dopamine and layer on stress. When you're stressed, whether from work, relationships, financial pressure, or the stress of dieting itself,

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your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, HPA axis, activates releasing cortisol. Cortisol does a lot of really great things, but one of its jobs is to drive appetite, particularly for energy-dense foods high in sugar and fat. This is adaptive in the short term. If you're facing genuine threat, having readily available energy is protective. And in fact, one of cortisol's job is to release glucose from glycogen stores. So that is to give you that energy.

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But chronic stress creates this chronic elevation in cortisol, which can impact on our cravings for exactly the kind of foods most people are trying to restrict when dieting. And when you have these elevated cortisol levels leading to these elevated blood sugar levels, this begins this roller coaster where those high blood sugar levels drop below normal and increase the cravings that we're trying to avoid. And here's the kicker. Many people use food as a coping mechanism for emotional regulation and

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This is actually quite effective in the moment. Eating provides immediate comfort, distraction from difficult emotions, and a brief neurochemical reprieve through dopamine and endogenous opioid release. The problem isn't that the food provides comfort. The problem is when it becomes the primary or only tool in your emotional regulation toolbox, and when it starts to create additional distress through that guilt, shame, restrict cycle.

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And there's a well-established body of research called restraint theory that helps explain why chronic dieters often struggle with binge eating. The theory was developed by researchers Pellevi and Herman in the 70s and 80s and essentially says that rigid cognitive control over eating, i.e. restraint, is fragile and unsustainable. When that control breaks through stress, alcohol, perceived rule violation, or just mental fatigue, eating becomes disinhibited. And this is that classic

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What the hell effect, which Pellevian Herman termed counter-regulatory eating. You have one biscuit which breaks your rule, and your brain says, well, I've already ruined it, so I might as well eat the whole packet. The research shows this pattern repeatedly in laboratory studies. It's not about the biscuit. It's about the rigid rule system and the all or nothing thinking that comes with it. And we can't talk about binge eating without addressing the physiological reality of energy restriction.

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When you create a calorie deficit, especially an aggressive one, your body doesn't just accept it passively. Grelin, your primary hunger hormone produced in the stomach, it increases. Leptin, which signals satiety and energy sufficiency from your fat cells decreases. Pepide YY, another satiety signal produced in the gut, drops. Your body literally turns up the volume on hunger signals

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and turns down the volume on fullness signals. And on top of that, metabolic adaptation occurs. Your body becomes more efficient. You burn fewer calories at rest and during activity. And as you go along, you require less calories anyway. So you're hungrier, you're less satisfied, and you're burning less energy. This is not sustainable long-term. And at some point, the biological pressure can become overwhelming. When people break and binge, what they view as some sort of

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personal failure is actually that their body has finally overridden this inadequate conscious control in a desperate attempt to restore energy balance. And the binge isn't actually the problem. It's a symptom of that unsustainable restriction. That's the problem. So I think I've painted that picture for you to just think about that and think about the fact that when you are under some considerable restriction,

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and your mental bandwidth for maintaining rigid control is depleting because you're using it all day, every day. And then something happens at work, at home, social event, an emotional upset, and that control breaks. You eat that just one forbidden food, which then violates your rule that you're not allowed to eat that food. And that does trigger that what the hell effect. And suddenly you're eating everything in sight with that horrible sense of being unable to stop. And that's when the distress kicks in.

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the guilt and the shame and that physical discomfort. Then you promise yourself that tomorrow you'll be back on track and it'll be better and you'll restrict harder to make it up for it. And that's the cycle, restriction, deprivation, binge, guilt, restriction and so forth. And this is a predictable outcome of finding basic human physiology and psychology. And the issue really is that many traditional dieting approaches are built on the assumption that if you just restrict hard enough,

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consistently enough, you'll succeed. But the research and the lived experiences of millions of people does tell us otherwise. The body is not designed to sustain aggressive, rigid restriction, both mental rigid restriction and actually restriction. It's designed to seek that energy balance. And so when you fight too hard for too long, it does fight back. However, of course, there are diets that do work. There are eating approaches that really do restrict calories, but provide the additional

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caloric support to help remove some of that rigidity around food and that all or nothing effect. And there are approaches that provide the volume and the protein that you need to help avoid you feeling that overall hunger. And I'll just give a shout out to my program, Monday's Matter, right now, because that is actually coming up. Equally, it is so effective for this type of situation. So let's talk about what can really help. We need to build that foundation.

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Regular predictable meals. One of the most powerful interventions in simply eating at consistent times throughout the day. This does several things. First, it stabilizes your blood sugar. This regulates mood and reduces cravings. Second, it prevents this extreme biological hunger, which is one of the strongest triggers for loss of controlled eating. Third, it builds trust with your body that food is reliably available, which reduces that scarcity mindset that can drive binging. So I typically recommend

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Three meals a day plus if you're exercising an additional snack spaced relatively evenly throughout. This isn't about eating these small amounts constantly every 90 minutes or however else some of these ridiculous plans look. It's about eating full meals so you aren't distracted by those thoughts of food and prevents that roller coaster of restriction followed by desperate hunger. You want adequate protein and energy early in the day.

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There is some great evidence that front loaning your eating, having substantial protein filled meals earlier in the day helps with appetite regulation and reduces evening overeating, which is a real common problem in a lot of people. It's not binging at 10 o'clock in the morning. It's at 8 p.m. after the dinners standing in front of the fridge. Protein, as you know, is particularly important because it is the most satiating macronutrient and it does help stabilize blood sugar. Starting your day with, as you know, I like to think,

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40 grams of protein at breakfast can significantly reduce cravings and improve satiety throughout the day. And if you're aiming for 40 and you hit 35, that's great because you weren't aiming for 20 and hitting 15. There is a big difference. This also prevents the pattern that I do see a lot, which is eating almost nothing during the day to save calories, then arriving home ravenous and eating everything in sight exactly when you don't really need to be having that food. And we often underestimate what this ends up looking like.

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So the third one is for some people it's removing forbidden food rules. For others, it's knowing when you have to abstain. This is often the hardest shift for people to make, but it's also one of the most important. When you label foods as good or bad, allowed or forbidden, you do create some psychological restriction, even if you're eating adequate calories. For some people, food rules increase preoccupation with food, amplify cravings, and set up the deprivation binge cycle. For others,

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What food rules do is it creates a sense of freedom because they've got these guardrails that they know that if they stay within, they can be confident in their approach. You just have to figure out what your personality type is. What can work better is for many people is unconditional permission to eat all foods, paired with mindful awareness of how different foods make you feel. When you truly believe you can have chocolate whenever you want it, the urgency around chocolate diminishes. It's just food. It isn't forbidden fruit. And of course,

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That doesn't mean eating chocolate for every meal. It means removing these artificial scarcity that drives over consumption. However, I do like thinking about that moderator or abstainer uh framework, which I know I've discussed before in a mini-micropedia. This comes from the author Gretchen Rubin. Some people are moderators. They do better with flexibility in allowing themselves small amounts of foods they enjoy. The permission actually reduces the power these foods have over them. But some people, they're abstainers.

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They find it genuinely easier to completely avoid certain trigger foods rather than having to moderate them. For abstainers, having one biscuit is harder than having none because that one biscuit activates cravings and makes stopping difficult. Neither approach is better or worse. They're just different and you need to be honest with yourself about which category you fall into. If you're an abstainer, you might be better off not keeping certain foods in your house, not because they're bad, but because you've learned through experience that your relationship with those specific foods

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tends towards loss of control. That's being really self-aware. The key is that this decision comes from a place of empowerment and self-knowledge, not from external rules or shame. It's a difference between, can't have crisps because I'm on a diet and they're bad, versus, I've noticed when I buy crisps, I eat the entire bag in one sitting and feel terrible afterward. So I choose not to keep them at home most of the time. One is restriction based on external rules. The other is autonomy based on self-knowledge.

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And that distinction enormously matters for your psychological relationship with food. And what I'll also add is if anyone tries to tell you that you should be able to control yourself around a biscuit and it's wrong not to have it, then I'd have serious issues about other things that that person was saying, if I'm completely honest. So the fourth thing that I want to highlight, fourth factor is flexibility over rigidity. And I have talked about this a lot. Instead of strict rules,

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Flexible guidelines work far better. Instead of, I can never eat carbs after 6pm. Try, I generally feel better when I have most of my carbs earlier in the day, but if I want pasta for dinner, it's fine. Instead of, I must eat exactly 1500 calories every day. You could try, I'm aiming for adequate protein and vegetables at each meal and I'll just portions based on my hunger. This flexibility reduces that all or nothing thinking that fuels binge behaviors. There's no falling off a wagon because there is no wagon.

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There's just life and you're making decisions that support your goals while remaining adaptable. The fifth factor is building an alternative coping strategies. This is important. You can't just take something away without having another strategy in place to override what you would otherwise do. Otherwise there's nothing and then you're just stuck. So if food has been your primary tool for managing stress, boredom, loneliness or difficult emotions, oh

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you need to actively build other skills. And this isn't about replacing food necessarily with healthier coping mechanisms because food is bad. It's about expanding your toolbox so you have options to lean on other things. This might include movement that you genuinely enjoy, not punishment, journaling or expressive writing, calling a friend or connecting socially, engaging in a hobby that absorbs your attention, walking in nature, grounding your feet to the earth.

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Practicing breath work or meditation, simply sitting with the emotion without immediately trying to fix it. The goal is never to use food for comfort, is to have a genuine choice in the moment rather than food being that automatic, uncontrollable response. And look, I do want to be direct about something. For many people dealing with binge eating behaviors, working alongside a therapist or practitioner, diagnosis or not, like about the DSM, it might not actually be a luxury. It might be a smart

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proactive choice. So this is particularly true if you have a history of eating disorders, your binge eating is causing significant distress or impairment in daily life, you've tried multiple times to change the pattern on your own without success, you're also dealing with other mental health challenges like depression or anxiety, or you're using food to cope with trauma or deeply rooted emotional pain. There are therapy approaches out there which have strong evidence basis for treating binge eating behaviors. So I would definitely uh

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look at these, look at a professional and get a real sense of what might work for you. And these are, again, these are all about giving you tools and frameworks for understanding your behavior and building new patterns. And there is also emerging evidence for approaches like intuitive eating and mindfulness-based interventions, which help rebuild trust in your body's signals and reduce the power of external food rules. And these aren't weight loss interventions. These are helping you come to grips with any kind of overeating behavior.

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So what's some honest self-reflection? And these aren't meant to shame or diagnose, they're just meant to help you assess whether now is the right time to pursue fat loss, whether some foundation work needs to happen first. So ask yourself, do I frequently eat in ways that feel out of control? Not occasionally, frequently. If the answer is yes, pursuing aggressive fat loss will likely make this worse. Do periods of restriction reliably trigger overeating or binge behaviors? If you have a clear pattern of this happening, the problem isn't your discipline,

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It is the restriction itself. Do I feel significant distress about my eating behavior? Distress is different from just wishing you ate differently. Distress means guilt, shame, anxiety, or depression that interferes with your life. Ask yourself if you're using food as a primary way to cope with difficult emotions. That is yes, you need to build other coping skills before you sustainably change your eating patterns. And ask if you've been cycling through restriction and binge eating for months or years.

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This is a long standing pattern. It is time to try something different. That often means stepping back from fat loss goals temporarily. So if you do answer yes to several of these questions, this doesn't mean you can't achieve your body composition goals. And it doesn't mean that you can never go on a diet. What it means is that traditional fat loss approach might not be the right tool for you right now. It might need to be paired with therapeutic support. Or it might just need to wait while you build a healthier relationship with food and yourself.

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first. So it's more of a just not yet for fat loss. And I do think that's incredibly empowering because it means you get to make an informed choice about what you need rather than repeatedly trying the same approach and blaming yourself when it doesn't work. So binge eating behaviors exist on a spectrum and they're far more common than most people realize, especially amongst those seeking weight loss. The traditional dieting approach of aggressive restriction, rigid rules and willpower

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does often make these patterns worse and not better because it fights against that basic human biology and psychology that will then trigger binge eating in some people. What works better is that foundation's first approach, regular meals, adequate energy and protein through a maintenance diet, thoughtful consideration of whether you're a moderator or abstainer, flexibility over rigidity, and building diverse coping skills.

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For many people, professional support is an essential part of this process. Whenever we're approaching like a calorie deficit or a plan like Monday's Matter, for example, the goal isn't just fat loss. It's a sustainable, peaceful relationship with food that supports your health and wellbeing long-term. Sometimes achieving that means temporarily setting aside the fat loss goal to build the foundations that will actually make it possible later. So, that's what I've got for you. Any feedback, I'm always open to it, you know.

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head over to threads.x and Instagram @mikkiwilliden. That is my handle there. Go to Facebook at mikkiwillidenNutrition or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com. And I'll be discussing this along with many other factors in why fat loss diets fail. In my webinar, Wednesday, February 25th at 1pm and 7pm New Zealand time. And it is being recorded so you can catch the recording later if you can't make it live. I'd love to see you there. It is free.

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and I just love sharing information that I know truly helps so many people. Thanks so much guys for having me in your ears and uh have a great week. See you later.