Veronica of Purple Rain Nutrition breaks down why we binge eat: unmet nutritional needs, low calorie intake, end-of-day fatigue, and emotional escape. Dopamine reinforces the behavior, making it addictive. Addressing the emotional component matters because skipping it often leads to substituting other addictions.
Hi, this is Veronica from Purple Rain Nutrition, where we use mindfulness and spirituality to overcome eating disorders. So today we're going to talk about why do we binge. There are actually several reasons for binge eating, and these are just some of them. So for example, we have hunger. If we aren't meeting our nutritional requirements throughout the day, or perhaps our caloric intake is too low, perhaps our meals aren't spaced out well enough, then it's a lot likelier that we are going to binge. There's actually an evolutionary component here of survival. If our body and our mind feel that there's a lack of nutrients or a lack of food, then it definitely wants to make sure that the next time we eat, we have a lot of it, especially if it's high in sugar and fat content. Another reason is tired. If it's the end of the day and you're sort of fighting to stay awake, then it's a lot easier to mindlessly start eating, start munching. It's a habit, it's a pattern that we form. So you want to pay attention to that as well. Another reason, and this is actually a really big reason, and when it comes to binge eating disorder or emotional components, emotional eating, is to change emotions. Binge eating is a response to a certain condition, to a certain emotion. So if we have uncomfortable emotions such as sadness, anxiety, stress, and we are used to running away, suppressing, rejecting those states, we learn that there's a certain behavior or certain change that we can create by binge eating. There's actually a huge rush of neurochemicals that come into play during binge eating, during a binge. There's actually— it doesn't matter if there is shame or guilt afterwards. During the binge, there's a huge high of addictive components that allow this behavior to be repeated over and over again. It's a learned conditioned behavior that is also rewarded by dopamine and a bunch of neurotransmitters that play a lot of roles here. So you want to pay attention. How do you react and how do you behave when there is an emotion that you feel uncomfortable with, that you don't like? Do you stay with it and let it pass? Do you feed it and stay in that state? Or perhaps you reject it and you want to change it right away. So you go into binge eating and actually if you don't take care of this emotional component and you were to stop binge eating, you could start something else and that's where a lot of other addictive behaviors come in. Alcohol, smoking, drugs. It's to change a state that we are in because that's something that we've learned to do and it takes time to develop this habit as well. So It makes sense that it can take time to take it away, but this is definitely something that you can overcome and you can change. If you have any questions, you want more tips, or you want to find out more about what we do, visit us at proborinutrition.com. We want to hear from you. You can look us up on Facebook as well or Instagram. We're definitely there for you.
