What To Do The Day After Binge Eating
By Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RDN, CD
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For many people, binge eating is a very stressful experience. It means eating well beyond fullness, often to the point of discomfort. It usually happens fast and feels incredibly out of control.
But what’s often even worse than the binge itself is what comes after it. The waves of guilt and shame that come pouring over you and carry over into the next day. The next day after binge eating is laden with feelings of guilt and shame mixed that shows up by way of the mean things that you say to yourself. The day after a binge is also filled with discomfort from eating more than you felt comfortable with as well as promises to yourself that you won’t ever do that again and you’ll start eating better and get “back on track.”
If gone unchecked, this cycle of binge eating, feeling guilty and then seeking to compensate for what you’ve eaten the next day can continue on for days, months and sometimes years. And it’s an exhausting cycle!
Many people report feeling like if only they could stop themselves from binge eating, then the cycle would stop. They feel like the food restriction and the diet program is helping and it’s the binge eating that is the most negative. And this may be the case for you too! But what if there was a way for you to see the binge eating as something that not only makes a lot of sense, but something that your body is doing in a desperate attempt to get you fed and nourished?
How Is Binge Eating Defined and What’s the Difference Between An Actual Binge and A Perceived binge?
Binge eating is clinically defined as the experience of eating a large amount of food, in a short span of time, often to the point of discomfort well beyond any cues for fullness. This is different from eating more food than you had intended or that you perceive as too much.
A perceived binge is the experience thinking that you had a binge based on a eating a quantity of food that you and/or diet culture deems “too much” when in fact it’s just normative eating. The reality of eating is that how you eat, and the quantity that you eat, is not always going to be the same. Sometimes you’ll have 6 cookies and other times you’ll have one. Sometimes you’ll have 2 slices of pizza and other times you’ll have 4. None of this means that you’ve necessarily experienced a binge.
Distinguishing the difference between an actual binge and a perceived binge is helpful because in diet culture there’s a lot of emphasis on eating less, cutting calories, trying to eat as little as possible, and encouraging people to eat fruits and veggies to “fill up.” Because of this many people’s perception of what they “should” be eating and what “enough” food is becomes completely skewed. This then causes people to think and feel like normal eating is a binge, carrying around a tremendous amount of shame for simply feeding their body.
What Causes Binge Eating?
Binge eating for some develops as a coping mechanism to deal with tough things in life during times when there are no other coping skills/tools available. Binge eating may have helped with numbing out or felt like a distraction from the pain and discomfort of past experiences. And while this is important to keep in mind, there is a one cause of binge eating that first needs to be addressed and is the most important to start with which is: not getting enough food/dieting/restricting your food intake.
Too quickly in diet culture, the “antidote” to binge eating is telling people to cut out foods (namely sugary foods and carbs) as a way to decrease binge eating. Overtime this only serves to exacerbate the binge eating which is in part due to the restrict-binge-shame cycle.
The restrict-binge-shame cycle refers to a common cycle that takes place for individuals who binge eat. This is due to the fact that for many, food restriction is one of the most common causes of binge eating. Because of this, attempting to restrict food the day after a binge, through exercising, limiting food intake, planning a diet, or all of the above, will only tend to make worse the feeling of being out of control around food and keep you stuck in cycles of restriction and binge eating.
How Do I Cope With Binge Eating The Day After?
The day after a binge is usually VERY difficult, sometimes even more difficult than the same day of the binge eating episode. Not only do you feel guilt-laded, but you also feel overwhelmingly like there is something fundamentally wrong with you. After all, everyone else can eat “normally” except for you. In addition to this, most people that binge the night before will wake up with what some call a “binge eating hangover.” This is the feeling of discomfort in the body as well as mentally feeling anxious and/or sad. Things in the body can feel swollen due to water retention from the foods eaten, sleep can get disrupted and mentally you’re filled with shame.
This discomfort from the binge eating “hangover” feels terrible and leads many to start cutting out foods and dieting immediately to try to relieve some of the discomfort. This can look like planning the next diet or immediately engaging in disordered eating behaviors such as food restriction or overexercising. The day after binge eating can also contribute to feelings of depression, anxiety or a combination of both. Overall, the discomfort is significant.
Despite the discomfort from binge eating feeling overwhelming, the worse thing that you can do the day after binge is is start to restrict your food intake again. So instead, try experimenting with the suggestions below of things to do INSTEAD of going on a diet, overexercising or restricting your food intake.
10 things you can do the day after a binge eating episode:
Be gentle with yourself. Having compassion for your experience will not hurt you.
Wear comfortable clothes. There’s nothing worse than trying to squeeze into your favorite pants the day after you binge eat. Grab your sweatpants and try to wear things with a loose waistband.
Avoid mirrors and if you need to look in them don’t stay too long to avoid things like body checking that will likely arrive when you’re feeling anxious the day after a binge.
Hold ice in your hand and notice what it feels like to melt. If you’re feeling anxious, will give you something to focus on when you can’t stop having ruminative thoughts about your body, it’s size or fear of fat/gaining weight.
Do not skip meals. I cannot emphasize this enough. I get that this can feel hard. But the most important thing to do the day after binge eating is to feed and nourish your body.
Schedule in person or virtual time with a buddy. Experiencing binge eating can be an overwhelmingly shameful experience and many people feel so alone in their experience. Scheduling time with a buddy can help with feelings of loneliness and break the cycle of shame.
Go for a walk. This is not a punishing walk to “burn off” what you’ve eaten, but rather an opportunity to move your body and get some fresh air. You may even like to find a comfy spot outside and take some deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Do some gentle stretches. Most people will experience some stiffness the day after binge eating due to the anxiety and distress they will feel from the experience. Gentle stretching can feel good and may allow you to release some emotions that you’re holding onto.
Connect to a community support group. Looping back to the experience of shame (IE there is something wrong with me), the best antidote to shame is compassion and connecting to others. This is because shame wants to you to isolate, which usually causes symptoms to get worse. Connecting to others helps to dissipate some of that shame, especially in a community who may be/may have struggled with binge eating.
Rest. This one will be hard but is often very necessary. You many not have slept well or have the energy to do a lot the day after binge eating and that’s ok! Resting is a direct way that you can challenge that voice in your head that says you have to be punishing yourself the day after.
Overall, the experience of binge eating is one that is very distressing. You will experience lots of shame and guilt alongside feelings of disgust and disappointment, especially the day after a binge. The day after binge eating is a critical day because you have the opportunity to stop yourself from getting stuck in another cycle of binge eating. By implementing the above steps, this can help to mitigate getting stuck in another cycle of binge eating.
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About the author: Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RDN, CD is the owner and CEO of Bravespace Nutrition in Seattle, WA. She is a Registered dietitian who specializes in treating eating disorders and disordered eating, and helping people to stop hating their body. In addition to seeing clients, Katherine has a YouTube channel where she provides free content to the public to help them to heal their food and body image.
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