4 Types of Restriction That Drive Binge Eating (It’s Not Just Dieting)

Restriction is one of the most common frameworks we use to explain overeating and binge eating, but it tends to get reduced to one narrow meaning: “eating less.”

If you’re newer to intuitive eating or non-diet work, this can feel like a mismatch, because plenty of people who overeat don’t experience themselves as restrictive at all. They feel like they’re doing the opposite.

What’s usually underneath isn’t gluttony or wanting too much.

It’s scarcity—either real or perceived—and the body and mind responding to it in predictable ways.

The part that often gets missed is that restriction has multiple forms.

Some show up in behavior.

Some live mostly in thoughts.

Some have more to do with emotion and capacity than food rules.

And one, in my experience, lives in the nervous system itself.

 

1) Physical restriction

 

Physical restriction is the most commonly understood form: it’s the actual reduction in the amount of food you take in, eating less than your body needs to feel stable and nourished.

This can look like skipping meals, saving calories, trying to stay under a number, living in portion control, or cutting out categories of foods.

For many people, the body rebels against physical restriction.

Hunger drives increase, cravings intensify, food becomes louder, and bingeing can be one way the body tries to correct a deficit.

What I find most important here is that physical restriction doesn’t always look stereotypical, and we don't always know we're doing it.

I live in a midsize body, usually around a size 12, and for a long time I believed I was “supposed” to be smaller.

I did restrict actively for a period, but eventually my appetite pushed back and I couldn’t keep eating tiny amounts, so I shifted into what I thought was “enough.”

I ate meals, I ate the food groups, I ate in ways that would have looked responsible by cultural standards.

So I would have said, “I can’t be physically restricting.”

What I didn’t realize is that my body wanted to be a size that required more food than the recommended template allowed.

I wasn’t feeding my actual physiology; I was feeding an imaginary average.

The gap was consistent, and consistency is enough for the body to register scarcity.

This is also why portion control can keep people stuck. You can technically allow the food while still limiting the amount based on external standards instead of what your body needs.

It’s also why comparisons don’t help.

Maybe someone else skips meals and doesn’t binge, or restricts carbs and seems fine. Even if you knew what happened behind closed doors, it still wouldn’t tell you what your body needs.

Hunger at the end of the day is biology, context, and history, not a character issue.

 

2) Mental restriction

 

Mental restriction is, in my view, the most common and the most invisible.

Physical restriction is concrete. Mental restriction lives in your thoughts.

You can binge regularly and still be intensely restrictive if the internal climate around food is judgment, shame, negotiation, and future plans to “get serious again.”

My freshman year of college, I was bingeing daily—sometimes from morning to night. If you had told me I was restrictive, I would have been furious because I was doing the opposite of not eating.

But internally I was condemning myself constantly.

Every choice came with remorse and panic.

That’s mental restriction: the constant “I shouldn’t,” the belief that you need to be different than you are, the sense that eating is always a moral problem.

Mental restriction also includes the prediction of future restriction. The brain remembers the old rules and reacts as if scarcity is imminent. It makes sense that a protective part of us might start collecting food now, preemptively, because psychologically we don’t like being limited. This is where the food rebel is often operating, not as sabotage, but as protection against getting trapped again.

 

3) Emotional restriction

 

Emotional restriction is less discussed and less understood because it isn’t about restricting food; it’s about restricting emotion. It’s using food to restrict emotions.

A person can allow themselves to feel anger, resentment, grief, jealousy, or overwhelm to a point, and then become uncomfortable with the intensity of it.

If they didn’t learn how to hold those states, or if those emotions were frowned upon in their family system, food can become the mechanism that gets them out of the feeling when they don’t know what else to do with it.

Emotional eating isn’t inherently pathological, though.

It only becomes a problem when food becomes the only tool once emotions cross a threshold, or when it’s used repeatedly to suppress the same feelings.

Sometimes bingeing even shifts a person from diffuse overwhelm into anger at themselves, because self-anger can feel more familiar and containable than the original emotion.

 

4) Nervous system restriction

 

This is the one I’m naming publicly for the first time, because I don’t hear it described in a way that matches what I see in bodies.

Nervous system restriction is when the stress cycle doesn’t get to finish.

The body gets activated and the loop never completes. A trigger opens a stress response and instead of mobilizing and coming back down, the system stays stuck in fight, flight, or freeze.

Food can show up here as regulation rather than comfort.

The rhythmic chewing, the sensory steadiness, the weight in the stomach can help pull activation down and help a loop close.

If food has been coded as safety through restriction, trauma, or simply repeated experience, the nervous system may reach for it as a safety cue even when the body isn’t short on calories.

But judgment can keep the loop open.

If the body is trying to land safety and the mind is shouting that it’s wrong, the safety can’t register, and eating can continue, not because a person is out of control but because the regulating mechanism got blocked.

 

Bringing it together

 

Most people don’t live in only one of these rooms. On any given week, restriction can move from the plate to the mind to the body and back again, and it can be hard to tell which door you’re standing in when the eating starts.

That confusion is part of why so many people stay stuck, believing the problem is appetite when the problem was the kind of scarcity they were never taught to see.

What changes things isn’t perfect diagnosis but a little more curiosity about which need is trying to get met.

Sometimes the need is literal fuel.

Sometimes it’s permission to stop should-ing yourself.

Sometimes it’s a feeling that never got addressed.

Sometimes it’s a nervous system looking for a concrete way to discharge.

 

If you are interested in addressing all four types of restriction in a self-paced, self-study course, take a look through the BE2IE program information to see if it's your next right step.

 

FULL BUT NOT FINISHED PODCAST EPISODE 15: TRANSCRIPT

 

Moments before recording this podcast, I put a contact in my eye and didn’t realize that I had already had one in there. And boy does it hurt to put two contacts in your eyes. 

 

Okay. So today I want to take it back to basics a little bit by talking about restriction, which is one of the most common ways that we talk about causes for overeating and binge eating. But I’m also aware that for some people who might be new to this podcast, or new to the idea of intuitive eating or non-diet approaches, understanding restriction in the context of why we mass consume food—or just overly consume food, even by a little bit—can be new.

 

So I wanted to lay the groundwork for understanding that when we’re eating more than we quote-unquote “need,” most of the time that’s not about gluttony and it’s not about wanting too much. It’s usually actually coming from a feeling of scarcity that lives underneath it, either real or perceived.

 

And this can exist in four different ways.

 One of the ways that we’re going to talk about is the most commonly understood version of restriction, and it’ll be a review for some of you—although I do have some caveats I’d like to make note of. The second form that we’re going to talk about is something that usually requires more explanation and nuance because it’s the least understood and the most insidious.  The third form of restriction is much lesser known.  And the fourth type of restriction I’m going to talk about today has never been talked about anywhere else because it is my own personal theory that I am, for the very first time, putting out into my content. 

 

I have not talked about this before in this specific way, but I’m adding it to the way that I conceptualize and see people struggling with restrictions.

 

So the first level of restriction is physical restriction.

 

 So what is physical restriction? It is definitely the most commonly understood restriction and probably the one that everybody thinks about the most when they think about this term, or when they hear this term.

 

So this one is the actual reduction in the amount of food that you’re taking in—so eating less than your body needs.

 

It’s more stereotypical: not eating very much throughout a day, skipping meals, eating a small amount of calories— that quintessential “not eating a lot” kind of thing.

 

And what we know is that for some people, the body rebels against this. And when we’re not getting enough nourishment to sustain our basic functions, the body will rebel by increasing the desire for food, and that is part of what can result in binging.

 

The thing about physical restriction that I find the most interesting, working with people who do physically restrict, is that most people who physically restrict don’t necessarily present in this stereotypical way.

 

Some people do, and some people will own and understand that: “Yes, I actively restrict. I know that I restrict. I eat less than I probably need, and that’s the way that I stay safe. And that’s the way that I have been negotiating food for a long time.” But many times, people are physically restricting and don’t realize it.

 

I was actually one of these people. And I want to explain this one to you because it’s really important and lesser understood.

 

So I live in a mid-size body. That means that I am at the upper end of straight size. So I sit around a size 12. I can fluctuate a bit. And of course, depending on who says what even a size 12 is, because it’s different in every store. But I’m generally around a size 12.

 

I didn’t want to be a size 12. On top, I actually am smaller, and so I always identified and wanted to be a smaller-bodied person. I wanted to be smaller than this. I was kind of like just always slightly bigger than my peers and my friends growing up and things like that.

 

I was like that kid in the fifth grade health class where they weigh you in front of everybody, where I was one of the ones that was a hundred pounds, whereas everybody else was like 90. And that set a stage for me to be like, “I’m too big.” And I always felt that way after that.

 

And my feeling was that my body wanted to be bigger than it was supposed to be. This was just the way I inherited the story.

 

So I ate because—for a period of time—I did actively physically restrict pretty chronically. But my appetite, within a couple years, rebelled against that. And I couldn’t just eat a very, very small amount of food.

 

And so I was eating in a way that I would’ve told you at the time was enough, because it went along with what I thought were reasonable amounts. I ate all of my meals. I ate all of the food groups, even. And I, at some points in my life, was eating in a way that would’ve been prescribed to me by whoever makes up the rules about what everybody should eat—this whole idea of a 2000-calorie standard diet. It’s so funny that we think about that as applicable to all because there’s a wide range of needs in the world.

 

But I would’ve said, “I’m not eating too little. I’m eating my meals. I can’t be physically restricting.”

 

And what I didn’t realize was that my body wanted to be a certain size that required me to eat more than the recommended daily allowance. And so I wasn’t actually eating enough for my body, even though I might have been eating enough for my friend’s body over here.

 

Right? There were times in my life where I was doing the quote-unquote right thing. I was eating quote-unquote responsibly. I was meeting each meal in a way that felt to me like I was trying really hard to even compromise with diet culture a little bit, to be like, “Look, I’m having the standard portion that is prescribed.” But it wasn’t enough for me.

 

And while I also had competing variables of mental restriction—which we’ll talk about—and other kinds of restriction, which were unduly influencing me alongside the physical restriction, I now look back and I’m able to see: you weren’t necessarily physically restricting according to the stereotypical ways of looking at it, but you were restricting when it comes to how much your body needed.

 

Because I was constantly trying to suppress my weight to be smaller than mid-size. I wouldn’t have been called underweight by any doctor. I wasn’t trying to be a size that seems unreasonable to the naked eye. But it was for me.

 

And so if your body is designed or genetically predisposed to wanting to be bigger than you want it to be—even if where you want it to be sounds like it’s reasonable—if it’s not in your genetic code, it’s still a physical restriction.

 

And so my intake was not matching up to what my body actually needed.

 

And looking back now, I’m like: I really wasn’t so terribly far off, but I was coming in under. And that was my aim every day—to come in under where I actually now understand I need to be.

 

And so my body would’ve experienced that as a physical restriction. It wasn’t getting quite enough calories. It wasn’t getting quite enough macronutrients in the ratios that it needed to be where I am now comfortable.

 

And in that way, sometimes even things like portion control can be a way of physically restricting. It can still be like: “I’m giving myself a portion of something. I’m not not having it. But I’m limiting the amounts,” based on either extreme standards of what diet culture prescribes—and they do.

 

Especially when you’re looking at those old school magazines (aren’t magazines old school now?) but they used to have those two-week meal plans in the back, and the amount of food that they would put—like 1400 calories, even up to like 1800 calories—was too small. Too small for me. And I’m not saying that’s—well, I’m not going to prescribe anything. But that was too little for me.

 

But again, it looked like portion control.

 

So portion control itself—if you’re not eating enough of what you actually need—can be a version of physical restriction.

 

As can things like low carb, clean eating, low fat, no sugar, no flour—anything that excludes something, it excludes a category of foods. And this is going to start to blend into mental restriction, which we’ll talk about. But when you have a rule about the things that you can’t have, there is a physical restriction involved.

 

Invariably I get questions about this, like: “What if I have an allergy?” Or “What if certain foods really don’t sit well with me?” Or “What if I don’t like eating dessert at night because it makes me have rough sleep or reflux when I lay down?” And this is something that is probably worth another episode.

 

But I don’t believe that every single time you don’t eat something, it’s a restriction in the way we think about restriction. I do not believe that every time you don’t eat something, it’s pathological. If that were true, we would be just as boxed in.

 

But when we’re coming from a place of: “I feel like I can’t have something because if I do, I’m not good enough,” or there’s some kind of morality attached to it—that’s a different thing than saying: “I need to take care of myself by not eating so close to bedtime because I know I get a physical reaction from that.”

 

The way that we are restricting absolutely has to do with: is this restriction or not.

 

And again, this is a language issue. Restriction is a word that is used to represent a whole lot of things. And when I’m talking about it as the cause of overeating and binge eating, I’m talking about it in a way that’s got some kind of morality or fear or attachment embedded in it—not just a way of making choices and sometimes saying no to those choices.

 

However, physical restriction can also come with being without intent.

 

I sometimes work with people who find themselves night eating and they come to me and they’re like, “I don’t know what’s going on with me. I’m fine all day. And then at night I’m binging.” And sometimes when we get into it, it really comes down to the fact that while they’re at work all day and their adrenaline’s going and they’re really, really busy, they’re just sort of quote-unquote powering through these meals.

 

Maybe they’re eating a little here and there, but they’re not eating enough. And it doesn’t have to be because they’re trying not to. It still may result in the same thing, right?

 

So if the body is not getting what it needs—and what it needs is not always what you think it needs; it may need more carbohydrates or more calories or whatever—it will eventually go take them back, whether or not you are doing it on purpose.

 

But largely what I see when people are struggling with food are things like trying to skip lunch like a coworker does. Or this idea of: “Well, I can kind of push my hunger off until midday, so I just don’t have any breakfast.”

 

And sometimes we get away with that in the daytime because we can override those signals with busyness. But it still would qualify as restriction if we are in fact eating at night.

 

And I will also say this about physical restriction: it really doesn’t matter what your friend is doing, or what your partner or your sister or your colleague is doing in terms of skipping meals or restricting carbohydrates or whatever it is.

 

And we also don’t know what goes on behind their closed doors. But let’s say they are restricting and they’re not binging and they’re not overeating, and they are maintaining a smaller body.

 

If you are someone who struggles with binge eating and overeating and the cause of that is restriction, it really doesn’t matter what someone else’s body can or can’t do.

 

I’m really passionate about this: we need to keep our eyes on our own plate and understand that if your body is giving you a signal that it’s hungry at the end of a day, and you think that if your friend ate the same amount of food as you, she wouldn’t be hungry at the end of the day, and you think that’s a you problem—it’s not.

 

It’s a biological genetic difference, or it’s situational. There’s something different between that body and your body. And the only body you need to be concerned about is yours, especially if you’re struggling.

 

So binge eating is often a sign there is a restriction taking place—many times within physical restriction. Not always, and we’ll talk about the other ways this can look, but oftentimes, especially if you’re somebody who’s really attached to ideas of healthy eating, clean eating, and this lesser-known disorder called orthorexia (which is restricting food based on food morality and health concerns that are more about our attachment to an identity and fear than they are about actual health outcomes)… again, an episode for another time.

 

One nuance of physical restriction that I think is important to name is that people can become afraid that they’re physically restricting.

 

Because when you do understand the link between restricting your food and binge eating or overeating, you can start to feel like you’re not allowed to ever say “no thank you” to a food, because you’re afraid it might make you binge or overeat.

 

And that is slippery, because it can make you feel like you always have to say yes to food or else you’re restricting—and that’s actually not true.

 

However, if you are in an active state of coming out of restriction, or have been doing that your whole life and you’re trying to deconstruct this, this is where permission to eat and saying yes to food—without trying to be too discriminating about what you’re eating—can be really helpful. Because in the beginning, your body is looking for that permission.

 

But there is also room to learn how to say no thank you to food. This is something that I talk about in my Refining Intuitive course, because I was finding that a lot of people who were moving through recovery were then afraid to say no because they thought everything was a restriction, and it’s not always.

 

However, if this concept is new to you, and you know that you have been restricting for a long time, and you’ve had a problem eating enough or saying yes to certain food groups, and fear dominates, then this is something to look at and consider more closely.