Draw your own loop on one page: restrict, deprivation, binge, shame, restrict harder. Then find your version of the first link, which is rarely as obvious as skipping meals.
Draw four boxes in a circle: restrict, hunger and deprivation, binge, shame. Then write your own version of the first box, which for most people is not skipping meals. It is rules. Saving up for later, delaying breakfast, no eating after a time, only "clean" food on weekdays, earning food with exercise. That box is where the loop is breakable, and it happens in daylight while you are calm.
Beat states the mechanism in plain words: food rules and restriction "can also lead to them binge eat due to hunger and feelings of deprivation", and the guilt afterwards "reinforce[s] that cycle of negative emotions, restriction and binge eating again".
The loop, and the only link you can hold
**One, restrict.** Fewer meals, smaller meals, or rules about what is permitted. It feels like control and it is often the response to yesterday.
**Two, hunger and deprivation.** Two separate pressures, and people underestimate the second. Physical hunger from too long without food, plus the psychological pull of everything you have told yourself you cannot have.
**Three, the binge.** Fast, large, hard to stop, usually alone and usually late.
**Four, shame.** Which produces the obvious-looking response: restrict harder tomorrow. And you are back at box one with a bigger deficit than last time.
You cannot win at box three. By the time the urge is running you are negotiating with something that already has hold of you. Box one is where the loop gets fed, and unlike the others it happens at eleven in the morning when nothing is wrong.
Your version of box one
Here is why people read the cycle, agree with it, and change nothing: they check whether they skip meals, decide they do not, and conclude the loop is about somebody else.
Restriction is much wider than skipping breakfast. Go through this list honestly and tick what you recognise.
**Saving up.** Eating little all day because of a meal out tonight, or because of what happened last night.
**Delaying.** Not eating until eleven, or until you have done something to deserve it.
**Rules about time.** Nothing after eight. Nothing before the gym.
**Rules about type.** Clean weekdays. No carbs in the evening. Banned ingredients. Whole categories of food classified as not allowed.
**Earning.** Food is permitted after exercise, or after a certain amount of work.
**Eating differently in front of people.** A small, careful, correct portion with others, then the real eating later, alone.
**Mental restriction.** You eat the thing, and you spend the whole time telling yourself you should not be. That counts. Deprivation is a feeling, not just a calorie count, and it feeds box two whether or not the food went in.
Most people tick three or four. Those ticks are your first link.
Why the "good day" is the warning sign
The single most useful thing this page can tell you is that a controlled day is often the cause of an uncontrolled night.
If your log shows a day where you ate very little and felt pleased with yourself, followed by a binge that evening or the next, then that day was not a success. It was box one. Right up until the moment it produced box three, it felt exactly like progress.
That is what makes this cycle so hard to see from the inside. The part that is doing the damage is the part everyone congratulates you for.
Finding this in your own week takes a fortnight of two-column logging, and the method is in [the hours when it happens](/guides/food/the-hours-when-it-happens).
Drawing yours
Take one page and do this properly, in your handwriting, because a generic diagram will not stick and yours will.
Four boxes in a circle, arrows clockwise.
In box one, write your actual rules. Not "restriction". The specific sentences you say to yourself.
In box two, write when the deprivation is loudest. A time of day, and a feeling.
In box three, write where it happens. Room, hour, whether anyone is home.
In box four, write the sentence you say to yourself afterwards. Word for word.
Then draw a line through box one and write what goes there instead.
What goes there instead is regular eating: three meals and two snacks, no more than about three to four hours apart in daylight, with no list of allowed foods attached. NICE tells clinicians to "advise people to eat regular meals and snacks to avoid feeling hungry", and the structure is set out in [eating enough is the intervention](/guides/food/eating-enough-is-the-intervention).
The instruction that most people have never been given
This is the national guideline, verbatim, from NICE NG69 recommendation 1.4.7:
"advise the person not to try to lose weight (for example, by dieting) during treatment, because this is likely to trigger binge eating"
And 1.4.1: psychological treatments for binge eating "have a limited effect on body weight and that weight loss is not a therapy target in itself."
That is what the NHS works to. If an app, a plan or a well-meaning relative tells you to restrict your way out of this, they are recommending the thing the guideline expects to set it off.
When cutting it out is the right advice, and why not here
Worth saying, because it explains why the advice you have read elsewhere does not transfer.
For most compulsions, removing access is the strongest single move. Block the site, close the account, get it out of the house. That works because you can live without the thing.
You cannot live without food, and the equivalent move, having less of it and banning categories of it, is the input to the cycle rather than the fix. This is the one stream where "cut it off" is the wrong instruction, and it is why an emptied cupboard so often becomes a late-night shop.
Common questions
**What is the binge restrict cycle?** The self-feeding loop where restricting food builds hunger and deprivation, that pressure produces a binge, the binge produces shame, and the shame produces more restriction. Each turn starts from a bigger deficit than the last.
**I do not diet. Am I still restricting?** Possibly. Rules about times, food types, earning food, or eating small amounts in front of people are all restriction, and so is eating something while telling yourself you should not. Mental restriction produces deprivation just as reliably.
**Why does it always happen after a really good day?** Because a very controlled day is box one of the loop. It feels like progress until it produces the binge, which is what makes this cycle so hard to spot from the inside.
**If I stop restricting, will I just binge constantly?** The evidence points the other way, which is why the guideline advises regular meals and snacks and advises against dieting during treatment. Most people find the gaps get easier before the episodes reduce, and [the first two weeks of regular eating](/guides/food/the-first-two-weeks-of-regular-eating) covers what that fortnight feels like.
**Does this mean I should never think about my eating again?** No. It means weight loss is not the target of treatment for this condition, and that changing how you eat while unwell is expected to make the bingeing worse. Take the question to a GP, who knows not to prescribe dieting during treatment. [How to stop binge eating](/guides/food/how-to-stop-binge-eating) has the words for that appointment.
Sources
[Beat, Binge eating disorder](https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/get-information-and-support/about-eating-disorders/types/binge-eating-disorder/). Restriction and food rules leading to bingeing through hunger and deprivation, and the guilt reinforcing the cycle.
[NICE guideline NG69, Recommendations](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng69/chapter/Recommendations). The advice against dieting during treatment, regular meals and snacks, and weight loss not being a therapy target.
[NHS, Binge eating disorder overview](https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/binge-eating/overview/). The condition, its symptoms and the main treatments.
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