Binge Eating is Not Protecting You (Recovery is the Path to Safety)
(This blog post is based on the transcript of Episode 195: The Protection Myth: Bingeing is Not Keeping You Safe)
The idea that binge eating is some form of protection comes up a lot in the world of eating disorder recovery. Maybe you’ve heard that binge eating is protecting you from difficult emotions or from something that’s happened to you that feels too painful to face, or that bingeing is like a shield from trauma or distress. You may have heard theories that it’s protecting you from hard conversations, from work challenges, from stress, from putting yourself out there in dating, from intimacy, from socializing, from failure, and the list could go on.
The “binge as protection” theory
This theory of bingeing as protection is pretty widespread, and it often sounds something like “your binge eating is a subconscious way your body or your mind is trying to keep you safe.” I’m going to discuss many aspects of this and help you determine if this idea is helping you or not. My purpose is not to take away any ideas that are serving you and that are leading to recovery, but in the work that I do, I’ve seen the idea of bingeing as protection cause people to cling to bingeing even more. So, I’m here to offer another way to look at this if you feel stuck.
Maybe you’ve tried believing that bingeing is protective, and maybe that has felt comforting for a while because it seemed to give you a reason for the bingeing that made sense. I know how awful it is to feel so out of control around food. So, when something seems to explain why you’re doing that, it can actually feel stabilizing in some ways. But if this theory is not helping you actually move towards stopping the behavior, then the theory stops feeling comforting, and it starts feeling disempowering. There’s definitely a lot to unpack here.
We all need protection and safety
I want to start by saying we all need protection and comfort, and I’m not trying to take that away from you. I can absolutely remember being immersed in the idea that bingeing was helping me in some way or somehow keeping me safe. I have this vivid memory of eating a massive bag of Christmas cookies and thinking how it was “protecting me” from having to feel self-hatred or from feeling the pain of being alone during the holidays. I can remember having those thoughts as I put cookie after cookie in my mouth, and it all seemed to make sense in that moment. So, I get it, the bingeing as protection theory can make you actually feel like you’re doing the right thing for yourself on a deep emotional level when you binge.
However, I also know all too well the pain of waking up from that trance, of realizing that the behavior that was theoretically protecting me was actually causing me extreme pain, shame, weight gain, physical sickness, and even more self-hatred and loneliness, and so many other difficult emotions. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post, and know that my intention is to help you remove the pain of bingeing, which is the opposite of protection and comfort. I’m definitely not telling you that you don’t deserve protection or comfort.
Binge eating is not neutral
As we talk about this theory and how it may apply to you, it’s important to face the reality that bingeing is not neutral. If you feel like it does provide benefits for you, it is certainly not a noble protector that provides those benefits without consequences, and the consequences can be extreme and dangerous. That massive bag of cookies that I mentioned were not a helpful friend showing up to protect me in my time of need. They hurt me physically and emotionally in the excessive amounts that I ate (I’m certainly not saying all cookies are bad).
Bingeing and bingeing and purging puts extreme stress on your body. It drains your energy, it drains your time, it drains your money. These are things that anyone who has ever been caught up in the binge eating habit realizes all too well. I want you to think about this: If someone came to you tomorrow and said they needed protection from difficult feelings or circumstances, would you ever recommend binge eating or bingeing and purging as a solution? When you step out of your own situation, you can easily see that binge eating would do nothing for someone who needed protection.
The best analogy I can think of to this idea that bingeing is protective is comparing it to an abusive relationship where the abusive person is telling you to come to them for protection, that they’ll take care of you, that they will make you feel good, when in reality they are the one hurting you. It makes me sad even thinking about that, and I hope that analogy helps you see that even if the binge eating can feel comforting in moments (like an abusive person could possibly make you feel comforted at certain times), it’s still hurting you deeply. And if something is hurting you that much, how could it be protecting you? There is not one emotional, mental, or physical issue for which binge eating is a proven form of protection—not depression, not anxiety, not trauma, not grief, not self-worth issues, not boredom, not loneliness.
A note on trauma and safety
All mental health experts would agree that binge eating is not a true solution. However, there is a lot of talk in the mental health space about not removing what is thought to be a protective coping mechanism—like binge eating, alcohol, or drugs, for example—before the person is ready or has other ways to cope, even if that behavior is dangerous. This is a difficult issue and not something I can necessarily speak to on a case-by-case basis. Are there rare cases of extreme trauma where abruptly removing the bingeing, which has become a distraction from the trauma, would be destabilizing and put the person in even more danger than the bingeing itself? That’s a possibility, and if you truly feel that is the case for you, I absolutely recommend for you to get professional help from a trauma-informed therapist. You deserve to feel safe as you let go of the harmful bingeing behavior.
But I believe that very few people fit into this category where quitting binge eating would be more dangerous for them than continuing to binge. However, with the widespread nature of the binge eating as protection theory, so many people, including myself when I was a binge eater, end up thinking that we are actually in that category. It’s not necessarily that we think it is truly dangerous for us to not binge. We just start to think that we must need this habit for a deep subconscious reason to shield us from life, and we start to believe that we cannot handle difficult feelings without the protection of bingeing. That belief that you need binge eating to stay safe is so powerfully suggestive, and I think it’s extremely binge-promoting. I know that firsthand. Once I was introduced to that theory in therapy, it really fed into my already addicted brain’s attachment to bingeing.
Restriction and “protection”
My binge eating originally started as a survival mechanism due to extreme food restriction, and I’ll get into that soon as far as any protective value that bingeing has in cases of restriction. But then the binging developed into a habit that made me feel out of control. I knew it was not right or what I truly wanted, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. So when my therapist and a book that I read at the time came in and said I was subconsciously protecting myself from what I couldn’t face in my life, it was like fuel for the fire. When those urges came, I would try to fight them for a while, but when that got tiresome, it felt all too easy to give in, thinking I must need to binge to protect me. And then my brain started to produce lots of thoughts to support that theory, just like in the Christmas cookie example that I described.
I do want to circle back to the restriction piece because at first, eating massive amounts of food in an out-of-control way was my body’s reaction to not eating enough for way too long. Was that, in fact, protective? I still believe it’s a no, but there is a caveat in that the extra calories were protective. I just did not need them in the form of bingeing. Real protection would have been to eat more consistently in normal amounts throughout my day. If you’re currently restricting and your brain sends thoughts like “you need to binge because you have not eaten enough,” that is still part of the harmful lower-brain-driven cycle. What you really need is more calories in a more spread-out and self-caring way. Overloading your body with a harmful amount of food all at once is not protection.
The false binary choice of dealing with life or bingeing
In my journey, I eventually learned to eat enough food on a regular basis, but I thought that binge eating was still protecting me from so many other things—from making hard decisions, from facing my mistakes, from growing up. In some ways, from being accountable, I thought it was protecting me from social events I didn’t want to go to or from the pain of loss or rejection. It felt easier in the moment to binge than to deal with all of that, but that’s because I made the connection that bingeing was, in fact, related to all of that—that it was protecting me from all of that. But it was not. I thought that it was like flipping a coin in that one side of the coin was facing life head-on and dealing with all of my problems, and on the other side of the coin was bingeing.
When I set up that false binary choice for myself, of course bingeing was going to feel appealing. Of course, it was going to feel like if I chose bingeing, I was avoiding all of my other problems. When I thought about it that way, then of course bingeing was going to feel protective. In the moment of the Christmas cookies, it felt like I had flipped a coin and I landed on binge, so therefore my problems were temporarily gone. But that simply was not the case. It was not the reality of things. It was an illusion. Bingeing was a distraction at best, but it compounded every problem I ever had. It did not protect me from any of them. The binary choice I set up for myself made me think that if I did not choose to binge, then I would have to deal with life, and that would be too hard.
In the case of the Christmas cookie example, I would tell myself that if I did not binge, then I would have to sit there and think about my self-hatred… but I actually did not have to do that. I don’t think it’s ever a choice between feeling all of your hard feelings or bingeing. I could have distracted myself in many other ways if what I truly needed was distraction from feelings of self-hatred. It was the same with all of the other things that I thought bingeing was protecting me from. The choice wasn’t to binge or to make hard decisions. I could actually avoid making hard decisions if I wanted to and still not binge. It was not binge or face my mistakes. I could avoid facing my mistakes and still not binge. It wasn’t binge or go to a social event I didn’t want to go to. I could avoid a social event and still not binge. I feel like I could go on and on here, but this was such a big realization for me. I didn’t need to deal with life perfectly in those moments. I could still avoid my problems if that’s what I wanted. I could still protect myself from hard things. I just didn’t need to hurt myself with bingeing to do that.
The lower brain wants a binge, not protection
Even back then, when I was immersed in this habit and also this protection theory, in some ways I could see that what I was doing was not completely rational… because there were times that I did know there was another way I could get the same protection from my feelings. But in the moments of urges to binge, I did not want any other form of protection. For example, at the time, I knew that driving in my car and blasting my favorite music was a great way to distract myself from self-hatred, and it was much better than bingeing. But in the moments that I felt so driven toward food, I brushed that thought away. Any other way to distract myself was simply not appealing.
Even though I knew I could call and cancel a social event that I didn’t want to go to, in order to get the same protection that I thought a binge provided, I didn’t want to do that during an urge either. I wanted to binge. Then, I would binge and tell myself it was for “protection,” even though I knew there were so many other ways I could have provided myself that protection. And truly, I also knew that there was nothing wrong with turning to some food in moments when I may have needed distraction or comfort. In the Christmas cookie example, I could have had a few cookies, enjoying the distraction and the pleasure that it provided, maybe had some coffee with it for a brief reprieve from life, and that would’ve been fine. Food has a place in helping you have pleasure in your life and even reprieve from your feelings for a little while (when you’re eating normal amounts), but binge eating never provides that. It always hurts you.
So far, I’ve talked about other ways that I could have distracted myself to get that same protection that I thought bingeing provided, but I also knew that I could have done truly helpful things—like things that helped me process the feeling and learn from it and care for myself. I knew that if I had feelings of self-hatred, I could call a friend for support or journal about my feelings or try to do some self-affirmations. But again, those forms of helpful protection were not appealing during the time that my body and lower brain were so zoned in on wanting food. In those moments, no other protective distraction or coping strategy would do because I truly did not want protection. I wanted large amounts of food, and my brain spun a story about it, and that story gave me all the more reason to follow through with the harmful behavior.
If you also experience this illusion of protection, think about how you feel after the binge. Is there ever a time after a binge that you feel safer in your life or more protected? For me, and for so many people I’ve worked with over the years, bingeing always feels like adding another layer of pain on top of whatever else you’re dealing with in your life. Like I said, at best, bingeing is a temporary distraction or a numbing out, but it has terrible consequences. You can get the numbing-out effect in other ways if that’s what you truly want, but when your lower brain is conditioned to urge you to binge, you don’t want another way to numb out or another form of protection.
When urges quiet, the binge as protection theory collapses
If you take away that urge, if you take away that desire for massive amounts of food, then everything changes. This became evident to me in a rather drastic and eye-opening way when a medication temporarily took away most of my urges, but everything else in my life and in my emotional world stayed the same. For those of you who have read my book, you know that I took Topiramate off-label for bingeing a long time ago. It had bad side effects for me, it was not a long-term cure, and it’s not something I’m recommending at all (and all medical decisions are definitely up to you and your doctor). However, when this medication shut down my urges for a short time, it taught me that without that incredible urge, it did not matter what feelings were there. Those feelings had never been the direct cause of bingeing because, without the urge, it seemed nonsensical to binge in relation to any of my feelings.
This doesn’t mean I handled my feelings well at all. I just figured it out the best I could in each moment because bingeing simply didn’t feel like an option or like something I wanted to do without that urge. Sometimes I distracted myself in other ways if I didn’t want to face things, or I tried to face things with actual coping strategies, and I either succeeded or failed, but there was no urge to binge. So again, the idea of bingeing to protect myself from life or from emotions just seemed nonsensical, and this is how I operate today as well—but without medication.
The medication’s effects were very short-lived for me, and then I learned to decondition my brain on my own and eliminate the urges. I think what I experienced on that medication is what some people are now experiencing with the GLP-1s, and I want to mention it here because I feel like it’s important, but I don’t want to go too far down this path in this particular post. I do have a podcast episode that addresses the topic GLP-1s in detail here: Episode 183: GLP-1 Medications, Food Noise, and Binge Eating Recovery with Marcus Kain. Here, I just want to say that some people who are taking GLP-1s describe a similar experience that I had on Topiramate. I’ve heard stories of people discovering that after years of thinking they were coping with emotions with food, they suddenly realize they’re not emotionally broken after all and are not in need of “protection” from food.
Whether the effect is due to a GLP-1 medication or another form of medication or some other factor, when someone has a negative feeling and does not have an urge to binge along with that negative feeling, the idea that binge eating would be “protective” in that moment from that negative feeling just does not surface at all. Sure, life is still hard, but the false connection between bingeing and protection is just non-existent. Everyone’s experience on medication is a little different, and this is not a simple topic when we get into the GLP-1 medications because there are significant risks involved, just like there were when I was on Topiramate, and they’re not long-term solutions.
I hope that one good thing that comes out of their widespread use is that we stop telling people that are overeating or bingeing that it’s because of deep emotional reasons and that they need food to protect them from life. With all the hype around these medications, I think there’s been a real lack of conversation about this. For so many years, the mainstream idea has been that people who overeat and binge are “emotionally eating” or “eating to cope” or “eating for protection,” and now it feels like whiplash. It feels like a full 180, and now the mainstream idea is that all people need is a GLP-1 medication. I realize I’m touching on a complex topic here, but the point I want to make here is that, if a medication can take away someone’s theoretical need for the protection of food, maybe food was never protecting them after all.
What about protection from urges to binge?
What I’ve been talking about leads into the question of whether or not people need protection from the urges, and then what risks are involved when we try to protect them from urges with things like medication. I definitely experienced both… the urges going away for the most part from a medication and then the urges going away completely naturally when I reframed how I viewed them and learned how to not act on them over and over (which is basically everything I share in Brain over Binge). I teach that you do not need protection from the urges, and what you need to do is learn how to respond to them differently, and they go away over time as your brain is deconditioned.
Ultimately, I’m grateful that I did the natural route because I’ve learned that I never need protection from an urge. I learned that urges are not harmful and never mean that you have to binge. But I also understand that everyone is on a unique journey, and that these medications have a place for some people. And like I said, the decisions are always up to you and your doctor.
Wherever you are right now, and however you’re choosing to approach recovery, medication or no medication, a good place to start is to try to begin to see just how much safer you are without bingeing. Really try to see that it’s not a protector, and in fact it’s the opposite. Dropping the illusion of protection makes it so much easier to see your urges as just junk from your lower brain—as faulty signals that your brain has learned over time, but that you no longer need for protection or for any other reason.
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