A Binge Is Never Inevitable
(This blog post is based on the transcript of Episode 193: Rejecting the Binge Inevitability Mindset)
I want to talk about something that comes up often in coaching, which is something I also remember well from my own experience with bingeing, and that’s what I’m calling the binge inevitability mindset. This mindset is when you find yourself thinking, feeling, and believing that a binge is inevitable. When you have this mindset, it usually drives you to binge in that very moment or soon after.
The inevitability mindset can sound something like, “I know I’m going to binge at some point anyway, so I might as well just do it now,” or “Even if I get through this urge, another one is going to show up and I’ll eventually give in, so I might as well just binge and get it over with.”
It can seem “logical” to give in to the urge in those moments—almost like you’re saving yourself from future pain by just going ahead and bingeing now. It can feel like you’re checking a box on your to-do list by taking care of something you know you need to do anyway.
But bingeing is never a to-do item. It’s not something you ever need and it’s never inevitable or destined to happen at some point. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to recognize this binge inevitability mindset and how to shift your response so that it no longer drives you into harmful behavior.
Understanding the lower brain to understand the inevitability thoughts
As a little background for this discussion, it’s important for you to understand that in the Brain over Binge approach, it’s always the urges to binge that are the direct cause of binge eating. An urge to binge is any thought, feeling, or physical sensation that encourages a binge. (If you’re new here, you can learn more about the urges to binge in Episode 2: The Cause of Binge Eating Urges to Binge).
The urges are produced by the more primitive part of the brain, which I call the lower brain (you can learn more about the lower brain in Episode 3: The Lower and Higher Brain at Work in Binge Eating). The lower brain’s job is primarily survival, pleasure, pain avoidance, and maintaining habits and behaviors that it senses to be helpful in achieving those goals. The lower brain’s concern is your immediate survival and/or pleasure, not your long-term goals.
This primitive nature is vital to our continued existence on earth; however, in the case of bad habits and addictions, it can work against us. When you develop a binge eating habit, the lower brain becomes conditioned to react as if you truly need binge eating. This happens in all addictions so that the object of the addiction feels like a complete necessity, and in moments of urges for that substance/behavior, it can feel like your life depends on you getting that substance or performing that behavior.
The inevitability thoughts have no predictive power
With this in mind about the lower brain, it only makes sense that you think binge eating is inevitable. The binge inevitability mindset should really come as no surprise. Your brain saying bingeing is inevitable is like your brain telling you that drinking water is inevitable. The lower brain is not your enemy; it’s only encouraging the behaviors that it has learned along the way because it senses that’s what you need.
But you are wiser now. You can distinguish true needs from bad habits and addictions, and knowing the difference helps you stop giving the binge inevitability thoughts any special significance or meaning. You can start to see those thoughts as simply an expression of the lower brain doing its job, and its job is to get you to binge now.
The lower brain does not have a conception of the future, and it’s not involved in your future plans. It just automatically produces thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations to get you to do the behavior it thinks you need in the moment.
This is where it gets really interesting because the lower brain does not actually know that you’ll binge in the future. The future is not even its concern. It’s not in charge of your executive functions in your higher brain that do control your long-term planning. So, the binge inevitability thoughts have no basis in reality. They’re just there to encourage bingeing in that very moment, and they actually have nothing to do with what you’ll eventually do in the future.
Like all thoughts encouraging binge eating or other addictions, binge inevitability thoughts are based in faulty logic. There’s no true wisdom in these thoughts, and in no way can these thoughts predict your future actions. Nevertheless, if binge inevitability thoughts “work” to get you to binge, they will keep coming up over and over (as long as you keep following them). So, what actually makes binge eating inevitable is not the thoughts themselves, it’s you believing and following those thoughts.
Then the next question becomes, how do you stop following those thoughts so that binge eating is no longer inevitable?
What I’ve already shared is a big first step: Just seeing through these thoughts and understanding that it’s just the lower brain’s automatic programming. But it can also help to go a little deeper and talk about this binge inevitability mindset, not only in terms of thought, but in terms of feeling.
When it feels like a binge is inevitable
I know that sometimes it can truly feel as if a binge is inevitable. It’s not always just a thought in your brain. Sometimes it’s a very deep feeling of powerlessness over that desire to binge and a feeling that you simply can’t resist binge eating day after day, so it seems inevitable that you’ll eventually give in.
I remember during my worst binge eating days, it really felt like I didn’t have a choice. It seemed like I was driven by a force beyond my control, and that made me feel out of control. It did feel inevitable that whatever that force was would eventually take over, even if I was able to avoid it for a few days.
In my early days of bingeing when I was also dieting, this feeling of being taken over was definitely driven by the survival instincts (in response to calorie deprivation). Looking back, it was not inevitable that I binge in response to that restriction, but what I really needed was to add more food throughout my day. Since I didn’t do that, my primitive brain stepped in with that strong desire to eat everything in sight until I was sick.
The food deprivation—without any attempts to correct it on my part—put me in a position where binge eating did truly feel inevitable. If you’re caught up in dieting right now, I don’t want to scare you that it’s inevitable that you’ll binge, but if you do want to avoid bingeing, it is inevitable that you need to add more food in order to get yourself out of the cycle.
If you do not nourish yourself, you’ll continue to struggle with this, and the bingeing will feel like something you cannot avoid. You can think of it like pulling a rubber band back—there’s only so far you can pull it back before it inevitably slingshots in the other direction. That’s what happens when you restrict and won’t stop restricting, and it inevitably ends in a binge.
Emotional connections to binge inevitability
I also know that not everyone’s binge inevitability mindset comes from restriction, and even in my own case, it did eventually stop stemming from restriction. Once I was in therapy, I did add more food to my day so that I was eating a normal amount of calories (and I was still bingeing on top of that). This was the case because my lower brain still sensed that I needed the binges—both to protect me against future starvation and also because binge eating was a well-ingrained habit at that point. It was as if I trained my primitive brain to “need” massive amounts of food.
I also think that the feelings of inevitability came from the fact that I thought I needed to binge on an emotional level as well. I learned in therapy that binge eating was a coping mechanism for problems and emotions in my life. So, I thought that as long as I was not coping well with those things, then a binge was inevitable. I thought binge eating would be inevitable until I did things like improve my self-esteem, overcome my anxiety, or resolve feelings of loneliness or grief or shame.
If you’re in that place where you feel like you have strong connections between your emotions/life’s problems and your bingeing, I just want you to imagine for a minute what it would be like if nothing made binge eating inevitable. What if, even in the most difficult circumstances, you never felt like a binge was something that was destined to happen, even if you did not cope well.
Nothing makes binge eating inevitable
It’s so freeing to know that no matter what, a binge is not the solution—not to stress, not to pain, not to anxiety or loneliness or loss or embarrassment, or even to happiness or celebration. Knowing this gives you the power to recognize and to dismiss the binge inevitability thoughts—because you know that nothing in your life, nothing in your emotions, nothing in your past, and nothing in your future can make binge eating inevitable.
The only thing that can make you binge is following the urge to binge, and you can learn to not follow that urge regardless of what is going on in your life. If you’re new here and want to make progress in this area, you can learn my five components of dismissing urges to binge in Episodes 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the Brain over Binge Podcast.
Once you know that nothing makes binge eating inevitable—not even food restriction, because the solution to that is eating more food in normal amounts—you’re in the best position possible to dismiss the binge inevitability thoughts and feelings. You can stop giving them any special attention. You can stop thinking those thoughts and feelings have any power of prediction. You can stop giving those thoughts and feelings any value whatsoever.
Stop fighting urges to reduce feelings of inevitability
I have two final points that I hope will help you as you start separating from the binge inevitability mindset and realizing that it does not represent your truth. The first thing is that this mindset may come up more often when you’re trying to fight the urges. If you’re trying to argue with the urges or trying to will them away, it can start to feel so exhausting that you think you’re destined to tire out and give in.
It’s important to know that it’s not going to be comfortable to have the urges, but you can reduce the struggle when you stop trying to fight the experience. You can learn to be with the urges and do whatever you need to do in those moments to care for yourself (or distract yourself if that’s helpful), but you do not have to argue with the urge feelings and the urge thoughts. You can learn to let the urges be there without feeling like you have to make them go away.
If you’re in the habit of fighting urges, you may notice that as soon as the urge appears, you may have a binge inevitability thought like, “You know you can’t resist this for long, so you might as well binge now to avoid the struggle.” In a way, this can seem “logical” because it can feel like by binge eating, you’re protecting yourself from a future struggle with the urges. Just know that with some practice in learning how to detach from the urges, it does not have to feel like such a struggle, and you’ll gladly accept the discomfort of the urge over the harm of a binge.
Even though dismissing urges can be challenging, you know that giving in and binge eating is never the solution. Bingeing creates an even more exhausting struggle that negatively impacts so many parts of your life. Binge eating is never a way to save yourself from a challenging situation; it’s only a way to create more pain.
Trying is always better than giving in to inevitability thoughts
My final point about the binge inevitability mindset is that it can sometimes seem like your way of protecting yourself from trying and then failing. As soon as you get an urge, it may seem “logical” to go ahead and give in now, because if you try to avoid a binge and you still end up bingeing, you may think it will feel even worse and you may think of yourself as a failure.
The thought might be something like, “Well, if I binge now, at least I won’t have to deal with the disappointment of trying and then failing later.” Giving in right away just resigns you to the outcome without you needing to put in the effort to try. It’s completely understandable for you to feel this way, because I know how frustrating it is to try to avoid a binge just to end up giving in. It makes sense that you would want to avoid that feeling of trying and failing.
But the truth is—even if you do end up bingeing later—it’s always, always better to try. Every time you don’t act on an urge right away, you’re strengthening the pathways that you need to break this habit. When you’re making change, you have to allow yourself to step into some discomfort, knowing that the discomfort of the urge is so much more manageable than the pain of a binge. Choosing the pain of a binge right away to avoid potential failure just guarantees feelings of being a failure and it guarantees pain. But choosing to be with the urge for any amount of time builds your ability to have success.
Every minute that you don’t act on the urge, you’re proving to yourself that change is possible. Yes, you’re taking a risk that you may give in later, but tell yourself that giving in later is always better than giving in now. Also remind yourself that if you keep dismissing the binge inevitability thoughts, you can avoid a binge later too, and the next time, and the time after that until the habit fades.
I hope that the next time you have a thought or a feeling that a binge is inevitable, you realize it never is!
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