Episode 47: The Binge and Restrict Cycle | Why It Shows Up With Food, Money, Wine and Situationships

This episode and article contain discussions around emotional eating, binge eating, restriction, spending patterns, and relational cycles. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and reflects personal experience and clinical perspective. It is not intended to replace medical, psychological, or mental health support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or contact an eating disorder support service in your region.

When was the last time you had a blowout?

Not necessarily with food. Maybe it was a bottle of wine when you told yourself you'd have one glass. A Friday night that turned into a whole weekend and a Monday morning credit card statement that made your stomach drop. A midnight online order. Going back to the situationship you said you were done with because after weeks of almost nothing, they said one thing that felt like a win. And it wasn't even that amazing. It's just that when you're starving, breadcrumbs feel like a feast.

The behaviour changes. The cycle stays exactly the same.

Today I want to talk about that cycle. Because I think it applies to far more women than just those who identify with emotional eating.

Being Good Is Not Outside the Cycle

Most women are so focused on the blowout, the thing they swore they wouldn't do again, that they either don't know what's actually creating it, or they think the blowout is the outlier and the rest of the time is who they really are.

But being good is not outside the cycle. It is one half of it.

When you restrict with food, with money, with emotions, with your needs, with your words, you create pressure in your system. Not all at once. It builds slowly over days or weeks or sometimes months. You create pressure when you say yes when you wanted to say no. When you swallow the words you actually wanted to say. When you stay in on a Saturday night missing something you really wanted to do because you're saving money. When you smile through the moment when you just wanted to say no, that actually doesn't work for me. When you're the responsible one, the strong one, the one who holds it all together.

You don't notice the pressure building because you're proud of yourself. The discipline feels like the real you. The capable version of you. The one who has it together.

But that pressure has nowhere to go.

And at some point something tips the scale. Something small, usually. A hard day. A bill that arrives at the wrong moment. A conversation that went badly. Or just a point of exhaustion where you cannot hold it together for one more minute.

So your system reaches for relief. And the relief is real. In the short term the blowout works. It discharges the pressure. You get a moment of exhale where everything feels softer.

And then the shame arrives. I need to be better. I need to get back on track. And you do. And the cycle begins again.

The Money Example

I want to stay with money for a moment because I think it illustrates something that gets missed when we only talk about food.

Imagine you have been really good with money. Months of it. Staying in on weekends, saying no to things, watching your savings grow. And then an unexpected bill arrives. Not a catastrophic one, but one that creates discomfort. And something about it feels out of proportion to the actual bill itself. So instead of looking at a payment plan or finding another way to manage it, you clear out some or all of your savings just to make the feeling stop.

There is a moment of relief. And then resentment. I did everything right and I still ended up back at zero.

That is a binge. It does not look like one. But the structure is identical. Restriction creates pressure. Pressure needs relief. The bill was just the trigger. The cycle was already running.

Why the Pattern Runs So Deep

Most of our patterns form before the age of seven. They do not look the same as they did back then. They show up in different shapes across different areas of life. But the pattern underneath is the same one that formed in a little girl who was learning what she needed to do to feel safe, loved, or acceptable.

Be a good girl. Don't be difficult. Handle it yourself. Don't cry. Don't need too much. Keep the peace. Be responsible. Be easy to be around.

She learned that so well that decades later she can go for months being impeccably good, holding everything, carrying everyone, saying yes and fine and no worries and I'm okay, I don't mind. And then driving home furious, reciting in her head exactly what she should have said. Going to bed with resentment sitting in her chest, playing it over and over for days.

Maybe what feels like the heaviness you carry, the reason it feels so disproportionately heavy, is not just because you're carrying it. It might be your six year old self carrying responsibilities that were never hers to carry. Because she was six. And that was always going to be too much for her.

You're Not Addicted to the Behaviour

These things that you get drawn back into, the food, the spending, the person, you might sometimes feel like you're addicted or that you can't stop yourself. But you are not addicted to the behaviour.

The food is not the addiction. Neither is the spending or the person. It is the cycle. The rhythm of it. The predictability. The way it has become your nervous system's default response to pressure. The system will choose the familiar over the unknown almost every time, even when the familiar is painful.

When you are in the being good phase the discipline feels like the real you. And the blowout feels like the exception. But they belong to each other completely. One creates the other. And you cannot address one without addressing both.

The Alternator Fault

If you have a car with a fault in the alternator, you can put better fuel in, service it regularly, be meticulous about maintenance. It will run well sometimes for long stretches. But the alternator fault is still there. And if there is enough pressure, the car breaks down again.

The blowout is not evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you. It is the alternator fault showing itself. The system telling you as clearly as it knows how that the pressure underneath has nowhere else to go.

You can keep putting in better fuel. You can have a stricter plan, a tighter budget. You can bully yourself into being more disciplined. It will work for a while until it doesn't. Because you have not looked at the alternator. The thing underneath.

What the Real Work Looks Like

This work is not about stopping the behaviour. It is not about finding better strategies to white knuckle yourself through to the next blowout. It is not about building enough discipline to stay good all the time.

It is about going to the exact part of you that is still carrying something that was never meant to be hers. Understanding why she has been doing it. Meeting her not with shame or frustration but with curiosity and compassion that allows her to finally feel safe enough to let go of what she has been holding.

When that happens something internally shifts. Not because you tried harder. Not because you finally found the right plan or got back on track. But because the pressure that was driving the cycle has been addressed at the root.

Then the cycle can unwind. Not all at once. But enough that you stop swinging so far in either direction. Enough that the relief seeking loses its urgency. Enough that being good stops feeling like something you have to maintain through sheer force of will.

The part of you that has been swinging between control and relief for as long as you can remember slowly starts to find somewhere to rest.

If this episode resonated please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you are ready to look at what is going on underneath, you can book a free consultation in the show notes.

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