Hi. You don’t know me, but… let’s talk about binge eating.

Binge eating feels like an unexplainable, unsolvable, humiliating problem.

But actually, it’s easily explainable, totally solvable, and 100% not your fault.

I have been in your shoes, and I felt like no one could give me a straight answer about why I couldn’t stop eating. Then something magical happened: I found intuitive eating, and it all fell into place. I started this blog to share how I recovered from a decade of yo-yo dieting, binge eating, and bulimia in just six months.

So here’s the deal:

Diets cause binge eating. When you diet, you purposefully restrict your food intake. This might seem perfectly reasonable because, hey, everyone does it, but that doesn’t make it normal. When bodies are hungry, they expect to get fed. When they are hungry and DON’T get fed, bodies get mad. They jump to a conclusion that you are stranded in the desert with no food, which sends your hunger impulses into ultra mega turbo overdrive. This is a nifty survival instinct in the appropriate settings, but right now, it’s just making you eat your roommate’s leftovers out of the trash can.

Binge eating is not a choice. Your body just thinks that you are starving, and it’s trying to help you. Eating is a primal impulse — a biological necessity. We don’t feel guilt when we need to blink, or breathe, or sneeze, or sleep, right? How come we feel such shame when we’re hungry? Hunger is not all in your head, and neither is binge eating. You may be able to resist a primal urge now and again, but it’s only a matter of time until your next binge.

But…why? Everyone is born with a set of hunger hormones designed to balance food intake. One hormone cues hunger, then a second hormone cues fullness. They take turns telling you when it’s time to eat, time to stop eating, time to eat, time to stop eating, and on and on. But because your body thinks you’re stranded in the desert, your hormones never tell you to stop eating — ever! Your body insists that if you see food, you should definitely eat it, ALL OF IT, RIGHT NOW, because who knows when you’ll see food again. You’re stranded in a desert, after all!

You are not broken. Diets disrupt the natural rhythms of your hunger and fullness hormones, but I have amazing news: you can reset them back to normal. It will take about six months, and you’ll be on your way back to sweet, sweet sanity.

Eating is the cure for binge eating. Wait, come back — I KNOW HOW CRAZY THAT SOUNDS. I know it seems like eating is the problem, but eating is really the solution. I speak from experience: free and unrestricted eating (the anti-diet!) is the cure for binge eating.

Eating with 100000% guilt-free freedom does two things: 1) It proves to your body that you are not starving in the desert. Whenever your body craves food, your body gets food. Slowly but surely, your hunger hormones learn to trust your environment and rediscover their natural balance. 2) It reprograms your brain from a mindset of scarcity. Know how the second you tell yourself you can’t eat bread, you want bread more than anyone has ever wanted anything in the world? That’s the scarcity mentality at work.

Giving yourself the gift of sanity requires a recognition and rejection of our society’s diet-obsessed culture…and I know that’s asking a lot. You might be ready now, or you might be ready in six months or six years. Either way, you know where to find me. Thanks for stopping by. I’m so glad you’re here.