If you regularly eat a lot more than you meant to, maybe at night, alone, quickly, past the point of comfortable, and then feel the anxiety welling up about whether that was a binge or “just” overeating, you are not alone. As a dietitian who specializes in binge eating recovery, I hear this uncertainty and discomfort a lot. It’s not always asked in a direct question, but the curiosity is there. And I know it’s a hard thing to even bring up, so I commend you.
The truth is, the line between binge eating and overeating is based in your subjective and emotional experience of eating. Overeating happens when you eat more than you’re physically comfortable with, but then you stop relatively easily and move on without fixating on it. Binge eating, on the other hand involves feeling disconnected, or even numb to your experience. But they could both be filling an emotional need.
In this post, I hope to walk through how I tell binge eating and overeating apart, where the amount of food fits in, how restriction and hunger drive so much of what gets called bingeing, and what you can do to feel better about the way and amount of food you eat.
Does any of this sound familiar?
- You eat a normal dinner, and twenty minutes later you’re back in the kitchen scrambling for more
- You were “so good” all day: eggs for breakfast, salad at lunch, then the evening came and you couldn’t stop eating
- When it happens, you eat very fast, faster than you do during the day
- You wait until your partner goes to bed, or you finish something in the car before you walk in the door.
- You don’t feel hungry much of the day (maybe because you feel awful from the binge last night) so you have a hard time eating until nighttime
- The next morning you skip breakfast, partly because you feel sick and partly because it seems like the responsible thing to do.
If several of those landed, I hope this post feels supportive. None of them mean you’re broken or just can’t keep it together. It might mean there’s something in your eating pattern worth understanding better, something about how much you believe you deserve to be eating.
What’s the difference between binge eating and overeating?
Everyone overeats. I overeat. Your doctor overeats. Eating past fullness at Thanksgiving, ordering dessert even if you’re full, going back for seconds of a friend’s lasagna because it’s genuinely that good, or spacing out a little and eating on autopilot. All of this is a normal, unremarkable part of eating. Overeating happens sometimes and that’s just fine.
Overeating is usually situational. You’re aware of it while it’s happening, you might feel uncomfortably full or a little sheepish afterward, and then you move on. It’s possible you might be like – damn I ate too much. But once you digest a little, you don’t think about it again, ideally.
Binge eating is a different experience. It feels different and happens for different reasons. A binge episode means eating an objectively large amount of food in a discrete window of time, more than “most” people would eat in the same situation and feeling a loss of control while it’s happening.
That loss of control is the part we’re often exploring in nutrition counseling. It’s the sense that you can’t stop and you don’t care or don’t want to. You might be watching yourself do it in a way, floating above your body. You feel like a switch flipped and you won’t check back in until it’s over.
Binge episodes are also often eating much faster than normal, eating until uncomfortably full, eating large amounts when you’re not physically hungry, eating alone because you’re embarrassed by how much you’re eating, and feeling disgusted, low, or guilty afterward.
When episodes like this happen at least once a week for three months and cause significant distress, that’s the threshold for binge eating disorder, which, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, is the most common eating disorder in the United States, more common than anorexia and bulimia combined.
Notice how many of those criteria are about the experience of the eating, not just the food. Research on binge eating disorder has found that the loss of control is what’s most closely tied to the psychological distress people carry. The inability to stop can feel very confusing and disorienting and distressing. And in our culture, where control and thinness are seen as moral virtues, binge eating can feel deeply shameful.
Does the amount of food matter?
The amount of food matters to an extent, it’s one of several parts of the answer. In counseling, we often describe “objective” binge episodes, where the amount is genuinely large and control is lost, and “subjective” binge episodes, where the person feels completely out of control over an amount that isn’t objectively large. The amount matters in some regards, and it can matter for treatment and your ability to get treatment, but a subjective binge is also something that you can understand better and heal from.
Research on subjective binge episodes shows that people who feel out of control with smaller amounts of food report just as much disordered eating, anxiety, and depression, and sometimes even more. So if you’ve been telling yourself “it wasn’t even that much food, so I have no right to be struggling,” I suggest you reconsider. The amount you ate is just one part of the answer. The loss of control, the secrecy, the distress, and how you and your eating respond to the experience all matter just as much.
Hungry all day, out of control at night: how restriction drives binge eating
Here’s a pattern I see all the time:
A woman eats what she considers a “good” dinner: a salad, maybe with some grilled chicken on top. An hour later she’s back in the kitchen eating crackers and cheese, then cereal, then the kids’ leftover mac and cheese. She feels frantic and out of control. She arrives at our first session convinced something is deeply wrong with her. She’s been trying so hard to lose weight and just can’t do it.
Then after some exploring what she’s actually eating and how she’s making food decisions, we see a pattern. Coffee for breakfast. A small lunch, eaten fast at her desk or in the car, or no lunch at all.. A dinner built around the belief that she should mostly eat vegetables. By 8pm, her body has been running on fumes for twelve hours. So much binge eating happens exactly this way: someone who is starving, who has barely eaten all day, finally starts eating. Of course hunger takes over. It makes perfect sense that eating feels chaotic and intense. But don’t you see, your body is just doing its most important job? Keeping you alive by getting fed.
I always think it’s useful to look at research a little bit.
In a study that tracked women’s eating, it was seen that they were more likely to binge eat on the days they restricted their food, and on the following day.
And when I say restriction, I don’t just mean a formal diet or not eating anything at all. It can be physical (simply not eating enough) or mental, or what we sometimes call perceived restriction. This looks like eating the food while telling yourself the whole time that you shouldn’t be. I’ve written more about that second kind in my post on mental hunger, and it’s also the whole engine behind most nighttime binge eating.
This is why “was that a binge, or was I just hungry?” might matter less than it feels like it does. The types of food and whether you “needed” it or not might not change the one truth you can’t change. If you’re eating less than your body needs during the day, the out-of-control eating at night isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a nourishment problem. If you’re not eating enough during the day, no amount of willpower can stop your body from wanting more.
What I think is the most important part: the morning after
For a lot of the people who binge eat, the morning after a binge can feel worse that the night before. That could be because you eat until you pass out, or because you’re distracting and numbing with food. But for whatever reason, the morning is full of self-blame. .
You wake up feeling physically ill, heavy, bloated, upset. You feel ashamed and mad at yourself. A lot of people who binge eat end up eating very little throughout the day, or as I mentioned above, art technically eating but are telling themselves they shouldn’t be.
This might look intentional or unintentional. You skip breakfast, eat “light,” tell yourself you shouldn’t eat. Maybe you turn down lunch with coworkers, because eating in front of people feels impossible when last night is still sitting in your body. Maybe you can’t quite look at food at all.
But the under-eating that feels like taking responsibility is quietly setting up the next episode. By dinnertime you’re depleted again, the deprivation has built again, and the cycle restarts. This is not because you lack discipline.
One thing worth knowing here: when this becomes the pattern: a binge at night, then fasting or barely eating the whole next day to make up for it, then another binge, that can actually meet the criteria for bulimia nervosa. Most people think bulimia has to involve vomiting. It doesn’t. Compensating with fasting counts, and it’s just as deserving of eating disorder treatment.
I’ve written more about why the guilt after eating shows up and how to soften it, but the short version is this: be mindful of how you treat yourself the next day. Try to eat breakfast, even if you’re not hungry, even if it feels extremely counter-intuitive. Try not to punish yourself, but take care of yourself. A normal breakfast the morning after is one of the most protective things you can do. I promise.
But what if it really is binge eating disorder?
It can be scary to consider a new diagnosis. 100%. But it can also be freeing and can help you understand what you need to heal. .
Unfortunately, diet culture is so strong that you might not have an accurate picture of what this diagnosis actually means. Binge eating disorder is common. The NIMH data puts lifetime prevalence around 2.8% of American adults. BED responds well to treatment that addresses both the eating pattern and what the bingeing has been doing for you. It’s often soothing, an escape, the comfort at the end of an overloaded day. It’s very treatable.
And if you don’t meet the full criteria, you are still allowed to get help. If you feel like eating is taking up too much space in your life and your brain, that’s reason enough to reach out for support. There’s no need to wait until things get worse to work on them. I know binge eating can feel full of shame and secrecy, but eating disorder professionals are trained to understand that this isn’t a flaw in you. It’s your sensitive being trying to get its needs met in the best way it can right now.
If you’re reading this and seeing yourself in it, this is exactly what we can work on together. Binge eating is a great reason to join Love Food Again, my six-month group program for healing your relationship with food.
And if you want more personalized support, I suggest my Heal & Nourish program, a 6-12 month 1-1 nutrition therapy program. You don’t need a diagnosis to join, just the sense that eating is taking up more of your time and mind than you want it to.
What to try this week to reduce binge eating
Eat enough, on purpose, starting with breakfast.
Three meals and a snack or two, each with some carbohydrate, protein, and fat. Most of the people I work with who feel out of control at night are under-eating during the day, whether or not they’d call it that. Feeding yourself consistently is the single most useful thing on this list, and it’s the one people resist most, because it feels like it should make things worse. It can take a couple of weeks to feel the difference, so try to give it some time before you judge it.
Look for the restriction that doesn’t look like dieting.
Do you skip meals on busy days? Eat super light for a week before a big event? Order salad when you really want pasta? Mental restriction can cause the same rebound, so remember that if you go to dinner believing that you SHOULD order the salad and you try so hard to order it, but in the end say f it and get pasta and an appetizer and dessert and then go home and eat cookies, you could be dealing with perceived restriction and resultant binge eating.
The morning after, eat anyway.
I know this is way easier said than done, but I want you to try really hard to eat breakfast. A real breakfast too, not just a piece of fruit. Have toast and a couple eggs. A bowl of full fat yogurt, granola, and a piece of fruit. A breakfast taco or two (hello, Austin) Try not to compensate or “make up for it.” by skipping lunch. This is one of the most effective places to interrupt the cycle so do give it a solid try.
Get curious about what the eating gives you.
For some people it’s comfort. For some it’s company. For some it’s a response to food being deprived or taken away from you when you were younger, a response to food trauma. Whatever it is, it’s worth digging below the surface to understand why you’re using food as a way to get your needs met. You can be sure it’s serving a purpose and you want to figure out what that is.
Tell one person.
It’s natural to want to keep this a secret, but if you can find someone to talk to about it, your burden will certainly lighten.
Signs it’s time for more support than a blog post
- It’s happening weekly or more, and has been for months.
- You plan around it: buying certain foods “for later,” arranging evenings so you’ll be alone.
- Food is taking up a lot of your day — planning, replanning, organizing, conspiring, trying to contort yourself to fit the mold, then replaying it all over and over
- The morning-after restriction has become automatic, and it’s really hard to eat during the day
- You’ve tried to fix it with a stricter plan more than once, and each attempt had made it worse
If a few of those fit, there are lots of kind people who specialize in binge eating who would love to help you. Working with one of them is not an admission that you’ve failed. I know it’s hard to ask for help, but you definitely deserve it. You deserve to feel free and normal around food, no matter your body size.
Final thoughts
Whether your eating turns out to be binge eating or overeating, it’s the amount of your mental space this takes up that really determines if this is worth taking seriously. I hope these suggestions and this article help you understand your eating better. That’s my goal.
To less punishment, more nourishment, and the freedom to be who you are. Start with breakfast tomorrow.
If food is taking up more of your mental space than you want it to, Love Food Again is my six-month group coaching program for people who are done with dieting as a way of life and want to feel normal around food again. Come see if it’s right for you.
About Emily
Emily Van Eck, MS, RDN specializes in Intuitive Eating, eating disorders, body image, women’s reproductive health, and healing from years of weight-bias and disordered eating. She helps people find balance, consistency, and peace with their eating habits so they can feel confident to get outta their heads and into their bodies. Emily is a registered dietitian and certified Intuitive Eating counselor with a master’s degree in nutrition science. Read more about her practice, values, and experience here.
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