The Binge-Restrict Cycle
This common behavior pattern is messing with your energy, metabolism, mood, and is hurting your health.
Picture this:
You've had a wildly fun weekend with your friends. Maybe you went away to another city for a celebration. You indulged in delicious meals, cocktails, and the local delicacies. You enjoyed yourself immensely. Now, it's Monday morning and you're feeling you went a little overboard….
You skip breakfast Monday. You have a salad for lunch and a light dinner. You tell yourself you're going to "be good" and eat very little for a few days.
By Wednesday night you're starving. You're weak, tired, and irritable. You don't have the energy to make dinner, so you order takeout. The next day is Thursday you're feeling guilty again. You skip breakfast, eat salad for lunch, and eat a light dinner again. Now it’s Friday ~ YOLO! You tell yourself you've "been good" most of the week, and it's time to indulge again.
THAT is the binge-restrict cycle.
In response to the feeling of over-indulgence (binge) an individual restricts their eating to get "back to being good". They believe that they'll move further from the body ideal by not paying the penance of restriction.
The More|Better substack is a weekly dose of fitness, wellness, and wellbeing content here to help you make sense of all the nonsense. Written by personal trainer, wellness coach, and positive psychology practitioner Darlene Marshall.
The Problem
The problem? When on the binge-restrict cycle the days you’re under-eating you’re also under-fueling your metabolism resulting in hormonal instability, metabolic dysfunction, an unstable mood, damaged health, and disordered eating patterns.
To be clear: this is not time-restricted eating (the technical name for fasting) where you don’t eat for a certain number of hour and then eat the baseline of your body’s caloric needs. This is under-eating, typically in an unstructured way that’s a punishment for “being bad” with food.
Here’s what’s going on with your body when you eat this way:
After a period of indulgence you experience guilt and shame, the stress of which affects your sense of self, mood, and thinking
During the period of under-eating mitochondria and gut microbiome are both deprived of quality nutrition - messing with metabolism, hunger and satiety cues, energy, and mood
During the period of indulgence you over-consume - now those messed up mitochondria and microbes are flooded, often with low quality calories that promote inflammation, dysfunction, (and yes, weight gain)
Rinse & repeat
For most people, the end result of feeling out of control, sicker, and gaining body fat isn’t what they’re after when they restrict like this.
What can you do?
The first step is always admitting there’s a pattern that you want to change. Is this something you’re doing? Here’s a few ways you might know:
You intentionally under-eat early in the week; but somehow end up ravenously hungry and ordering takeout by Wednesday or Thursday
Every weekend you act like you’re on vacation - binge drinking and eating like it’s going out of style
Sunday night or Monday morning you shame yourself for “being bad” and swear up and down that this week you’ll “be good”
Next, take the first steps to break the cycle - I strongly recommend checking out these posts for support:
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