The restrict binge cycle is a common side effect of dieting and diet culture. You feel shame about your body, you decide to lose weight, to lose weight you restrict food and/or calories, which leads to extreme hunger and obsessive thoughts about food, and ultimately to binging or eating until overly full. And then cycle starts over.
This kind of cycle is perpetuated by diet culture. We’re told to just wait a little longer to eat, to skip breakfast, eat a little less, and that if we have the willpower to keep it up we can achieve a certain body size and gain increase societal value. Even though diet culture is aware that restriction (ie: all diets, lifestyle changes) inevitably leads to binging.
Binge eating can be a scary and overwhelming feeling, and the idea of having control through restriction can be comforting. But the more we try to control our food, the more our body revolts. Binge eating doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, it means your body is working hard to protect you from starvation. Understanding this link and understanding when our body needs to start eating (rather than just when we think we should start eating) and learning to feed our bodies enough food actually teaches our nervous system to relax and not go into survival mode.
Some ways to break this cycle include meeting with an eating disorder trained dietitian to process the barriers around feeding your body faithfully, eating regularly throughout the day, even after a binge; consuming a wide range of foods, including carbohydrates, fats, and proteins; and giving yourself permission to eat foods you have restricted.
