Binge eating disorder (BED) is one of the most misunderstood diagnoses in the eating disorder spectrum. It’s often framed as an issue of emotional regulation, willpower, or addiction. The behaviors don’t match the stereotype: there’s no sharp weight loss, no obvious physical decline. In someone who isn’t visibly underweight, chronic dieting and food anxiety are often misread as normal. Many people, including professionals, fail to see it for what it truly is: a restrictive eating disorder.
That misunderstanding is not just frustrating. It’s dangerous. Because if you don’t see the restriction, you’ll never treat the binge. It’s important to name this clearly at the outset; binge eating disorder is a mental health diagnosis that deserves comprehensive, multidisciplinary treatment. But the role of nourishment is just as foundational. And too often, that’s the part that gets missed.
What Is Binge Eating Disorder?
Binge eating disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of eating large amounts of food, often quickly, and to the point of discomfort, paired with a sense of loss of control. It is not the same as simply eating past fullness or occasionally using food for comfort. It is also not defined by a body type. People with BED exist across the weight spectrum. And yet, too often, those in larger bodies are presumed to have it simply because of their size, while those in smaller bodies are overlooked. If you want to understand the full clinical picture, you can start with our foundational guide: Binge Eating Disorder: Symptoms & Treatment.
But what we want to explore here is something different. Something overlooked. Because beneath the surface of binge eating, there is almost always another pattern at play: the body trying to protect itself from starvation.
Understanding the Roots—and Triggers—of BED
Binge eating disorder doesn’t emerge from a single cause. Emotional pain, cultural pressures, family dynamics, trauma histories, and genetic predispositions can all play a role in its development. For many, it is a long and layered experience, shaped by internal vulnerabilities and external messages about food, weight, and worth.
A 2022 study found that 94% of individuals with BED reported lifetime mental health symptoms, with 70% experiencing mood disorders, 68% living with substance use disorders, and 59% struggling with anxiety. These co-occurring conditions highlight the reality that binge eating is rarely an isolated experience.
Still, it’s important to distinguish the diagnosis from the behavior. Understanding what leads someone to engage in a binge, either physically, emotionally, or situationally, is essential to meaningful treatment.
H3: Hunger: The Most Overlooked Trigger
Hunger leaves a person physically and mentally vulnerable to engaging in binge eating. Dieting. Skipping meals. Intermittent fasting. Food rules. Shame-based restriction. Lifelong pressure to eat less, weigh less, take up less space. These things are not neutral, they place both physiological and psychological stress on the body. When nourishment is insufficient, the body responds with urgency, and binging becomes a survival response.
H3: Other common triggers include:
- Use of alcohol or drugs, which disrupts self-regulation and may prompt impulsive eating
- Emotional triggers, such as loneliness, grief, or depressive episodes
- Situational triggers, like periods of boredom or unstructured time, or during times of transition
- Pleasure-seeking triggers, including the drive for stimulation or novelty, often seen co-occurring with presentations like ADHD.
Some recovery frameworks focus on “trigger foods”, and suggest avoidance or complete elimination of them, but most eating disorder professionals no longer support that approach. Treating food as inherently toxic or forbidden only reinforces restriction. Instead, gentle exposure, normalizing a full range of foods, and trusting hunger and fullness—as in intuitive eating—are the techniques that research and clinical experience identify as effective and compassionate interventions.
The Harm of Getting it Wrong
A lack of understanding and education about binge eating disorder doesn’t just lead to ineffective care, it can deepen the shame and secrecy that sustain the disorder itself. When the focus is placed on weight or behavior without examining the function behind it, treatment often reinforces the very beliefs that need healing.
For people with BED, that can mean years of being told to control their eating without anyone asking what their eating is trying to communicate. It can mean trying support groups that frame certain foods or emotional eating itself as dangerous, only to leave feeling more broken than before.
What gets lost in these approaches is the truth that emotional eating is not the problem in and of itself. Food is comfort. Food is care. It’s ok to eat to soothe, or to celebrate. But when emotional eating is the only coping tool available, or when it’s wrapped in shame and secrecy, it can feel like evidence of personal failure, rather than a signal that something deeper needs tending.
This is where trauma-informed, weight-inclusive care becomes essential. Not just to stop the binge, but to understand it. To work with the whole person, not just the behavior. To offer other tools, not as a replacement for care and comfort, but as an expansion of what it means to feel safe and resourced.
What Real Support for Binge Eating Looks Like
Treatment for binge eating disorder must center nourishment, self-compassion, identity, and safety, not restriction, fear, appearance, or shame.
Binge eating disorder is, like all eating disorders, both about food and not about food. It’s a mental health condition that requires more than just nutritional support. Working with a registered dietitian to increase nourishment and unpack food beliefs is essential, but therapy plays a critical role too, especially in addressing shame, emotion regulation, and long-held coping patterns.
Stopping binge eating isn’t about control, it’s about self-compassion, and learning to listen to your body instead of fighting it. It’s about untangling the stories you’ve been told about what you deserve, how you should look, and how much space you’re allowed to take up. It’s not about less, it’s about more. More meals. More nourishment. More permission. More tools. More support. More curiosity about what the binge is trying to communicate.
And when you’re ready, it starts with care that sees you as a whole person, not just a set of behaviors to manage.
If you or someone you care about is struggling with an eating disorder, know that help is available, and recovery is possible. Reach out to get started today.
