Extreme hunger, going ‘all-in’ and am I just binge eating?
I write about the psychology of eating disorders. I have personally recovered from bulimia and have worked as a therapist for 20 years. I hope to inspire, educate and improve understanding about eating disorders through my writing. Names used are fictional and stories shared are a combined insight of many client experiences. I believe that full recovery is possible for everyone.
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In eating disorder recovery, going through extreme hunger is often a terrifying but essential part of the healing process.
You can experience extreme hunger with any eating disorder or disordered eating behaviour. The ferocity and intensity of the hunger will usually be correlated with your previous level and duration of restriction.
Extreme hunger often occurs in recovery, once you begin to eat more, following a period of starving.
It’s a phenomenon that every eating disorder sufferer would rather avoid like the plague, and it’s the complete antithesis of control and safety that the ed promises.
Extreme hunger can feel catastrophic and overwhelming, but it’s a healthy, indicative sign that your body is on the mend. Your body is waking up and healing.
If you are restricting food and not experiencing extreme hunger, then you’re probably not eating enough to have kickstarted this process. You can read more about the effects of undereating on the body here.
Extreme hunger impacts people of all body shapes and sizes, not just those who are emaciated.
Not everyone in recovery experiences the intense hunger, although most do.
It varies from weeks to significantly longer in length, and it may depend on the extent of your previous restriction, in understanding its intensity.
There are no hard and fast rules, which makes the unpredictability of the process even more frightening.
I can’t stop eating
In extreme hunger, you will desire to eat humongous amounts of food.
You will be eating significantly more than those around you.
You will feel like a monster with an uncontrollable appetite and will think that your metabolism is broken.
You will fear that you will eat and eat and never stop.
You will fear that your weight will elevate to catastrophic proportions.
You will be terrified that everyone will judge you and you will be alienated from your friends and family.
These are all very typical thoughts. You are not alone.
Extreme hunger includes physical and mental hunger.
Physical hunger might include: - a gnawing stomach rumbling, a preoccupation with food, low energy and an irritable hangry urge to eat.
And mental hunger, where you are thinking about food and desiring a particular taste or pleasure. You might even be feeling physically full to the brim, but you’re still preoccupied and wanting food.
Mental hunger is equally valid. If you’ve been restricting your food intake for a long period of time, the body’s deficit of calories is astronomically huge.
The body will be requesting more food to establish balance and homeostasis. The body is built for survival and will be wanting to establish its setpoint and happy place.
It’s completely natural to desire all the foods that you haven’t been allowing yourself.
It’s completely natural to desire vast quantities of food too.
Some frequently asked questions about extreme hunger:-
Should I just go all-in and respond to every hunger request?
There is not a right or wrong way to do recovery.
Some people dive ‘all in’ and will literally go with their physical and mental hunger with 100% commitment.
This complete surrender is both terrifying and exhilarating.
To get to this point, you may have become so exhausted by the eating disorder, that letting go feels like the one appealing option.
Holding on so tightly to the ed feels miserable and soul destroying, and you wholeheartedly surrender.
Others find themselves going ‘all-in’ without planning to do so. I personally experienced this, as once I started eating, I just couldn’t go back to the rigid restriction. The flood gates were open.
As once you start eating more, it’s challenging to fight the hunger drive and conceding is sometimes the only way.
In contrast, others cling tightly to a meal plan in recovery with allotted food amounts. This is often painfully difficult to adhere to, when body hunger signals are demanding more food.
Still, the safety of a meal plan offers some sense of security and steadiness in the process. This can be mentally stabilising and immensely valuable.
Personally, I am wholeheartedly behind honouring hunger 100%, as this is the path to full recovery and freedom.
However, I also believe in creating safety in the process. You can read here about introducing forbidden foods and managing this.
How to create a sense of safety?
It includes having a strong baseline of regular eating and stabilising blood sugar in the background, with three meals and three snacks per day. This is a scaffolding of self-care.
It includes incrementally introducing a variety of foods with care and planning.
It includes managing thoughts and developing techniques for self-support.
It includes self-talk and visualisation.
It includes planning meals, mindful eating and distraction too.
In my own recovery, I didn’t have these necessary tools, and I ate chocolate, donuts and sugary edibles for two months solid, whilst feeling wildly out of control. There is nothing wrong with these foods per se, but it made the whole process immensely psychologically stressful.
If I’d understood about self-caring eating, I could have reduced my distress significantly.
I then fell into bulimia after having anorexia, as I started to compensate for the extremely hungry eating episodes, which perpetuated a toxic cycle of restriction, bingeing and purging.
This was avoidable, if I had known what I know now.
For some, all-in is liberation and the path to freedom.
For others, you will need some safety and structure in the process.
It will still be catastrophically messy and imperfect, despite the structure. You will still eat more than you think that your body needs, but it will need the food.
If you have issues with emotional regulation, self-worth and critical thinking, all-in can feel like a volcanic explosion blasting you uncontrollably in all directions.
You may be at risk of recoiling the food freedom with ferocious rigidity and relapsing back to the old safe cage of control.
If you’re standing on the edge of the recovery cliff and contemplating options, you may wish to reflect on which path suits you better.
All-in or incremental steps.
Doing the stepped route still takes you to the same end goal but at a slower pace.
The goal of both approaches is food freedom and peace.
Why do I need to eat more than others around me?
In recovery, you will need to eat significantly more than others around you. This is normal but also an extremely uncomfortable part of the process.
You will have to constantly remember that others are not recovering from an eating disorder.
This is why they will be eating less.
You will need to boldly put the blinkers on to comparisons and stay in your own lane.
You have permission to honour your hunger and to eat.
Encourage others in your life not to comment but to support you on your journey.
Am I at risk of developing binge eating disorder or bulimia?
Extreme hunger can be overwhelmingly scary. It can feel like binge eating, rather it is appropriate feasting after the famine.
Because it feels like binge eating, you might be tempted to restrict or compensate after hungry episodes.
Compensation meaning starving, over-exercising or purging.
I was stuck in this place for several years. I didn’t understand my extreme hunger. I thought it was binge eating, so I would always try to ‘rectify’ the situation and developed full on bulimia.
The restriction perpetuated the hunger, which perpetuated the purging and back to restriction again. It was a relentless cycle.
I only moved out of this, when I genuinely stopped the restriction and allowed myself to eat the foods that I deeply desired and in reasonable quantities.
I only moved out of this when I allowed my weight to stabilise at its setpoint. For several years, I was underweight, but socially acceptably so, and this kept me stuck in restriction and extreme hunger.
I mistakeably thought that I was recovered, but in fact it was quasi-recovery. I was still undereating.
Many people get stuck here because their BMI is supposedly within the ‘healthy range’. BMI is a limiting measure and not every single body is going to be at their happy weight at BMI 20 (or even 18.5, as the NHS chart deems as healthy).
How many adults do you know genuinely have a BMI of 18.5 without undereating?
Not many, I would imagine! BMI ranges are not massively helpful.
Forget BMI and listen to your own body. Your body knows where its setpoint is and when you stabilise here, I promise you that you will no longer be deeply obsessed with food 24/7.
What about emotional triggers for overeating and other stuff?
Eating disorder recovery encompasses more than weight gain and adequate nutrition.
Yes, these are vital parts of the process, but focusing on these alone may leave you stuck with rock-bottom self-worth, emotional dysregulation and a raging inner critic.
Focusing only on the food and weight side, it may lead you to a quasi-recovered place, where you look ‘normal’ and healthy but in fact, you are struggling mentally more than ever before.
In my opinion, this is one of the worst places to be.
You feel lonely and misunderstood, whilst food noise rages.
As your weight approaches its setpoint range, the extreme hunger will decrease in intensity, although this will be prolonged if you continue to restrict.
Work towards abolishment of restriction and/or compensatory behaviours. Get support if you need it.
Then, you can begin to work on the deeper issues.
You can explore why you developed an eating disorder, weaving together the childhood influences, trigger points and core beliefs. You can begin to construct your own psychological formulation and to bring the different parts of the jigsaw together.
You might well need to seek support from a therapist or coach to cross this recovery bridge, but it’s a worthwhile investment in traversing from quasi-recovery to full food freedom.
Doing the deeper work will also protect you from shifting from one eating disorder to another or simply transferring your coping strategy to something else. Eg: drugs or alcohol.
It can be hugely challenging to navigate the extreme hunger symptom, but it is an essential component of eating disorder healing for most. The way out is through, and you will find freedom on the other side. Be brave and keep going!
What’s your experience of extreme hunger? Do share in the comments. Thank you.
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