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FIX YOUR 'BINGE & RESTRICT' CYCLE · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  ~@paulthenutritionist: Welcome to no forking nonsense. The podcast that slices through the nonsense and serves you straight talking nutrition advice that actually works. I'm Paul, a registered nutritionist and your host. And every episode, I'll be debunking diet myths, breaking down confusing food advice and giving you practical science backed tips to help you eat better, feel better and get your edge back. There'll be no fads, no shite, just real talk that makes sense.
• 0:28
  Let's get stuck in. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Forking Nonsense and this week we are talking about the binge hand restrict cycle and it's probably quite poignant at this time of year because even if you aren't aware of the binge and cycle, it's likely part of it impacts you as we go through the festive period. Now what is the binge and mastic cycle? So I have many people reach out to me with questions on Instagram PaulTheNutritionist, please so you can continue sending me questions. Clients that I work with who initially will come to me and they will say the same thing.
• 1:06
  They will often say that for years now they've been on a calorie deficit and they just can't seem to lose weight. And then when we break it down what typically happens is that they do have sustained periods of not eating as much food and being in probably a calorie deficit and then come the weekend what typically happens is that they're probably likely to overeat or eventually further down the line they'll overeat. This is kind of a mini example of the binge and restrict cycle and often people just don't realise that it's happening. So what I m going do is I m going to break it down clearly for you, we re going to understand how it impacts us from a biological level and a physiological level and then what we can do to omit it. So you re not going to be in this never ending bingeing food, restricting food, bingeing food, restricting food because that is what literally kills you in terms of your fat loss and it makes you absolutely knackered as well.
• 1:59
  So what is the binge and restrict cycle? First of all we have the restriction phase. So the restriction phase is where we undereat, we perhaps cut carbohydrates, we skip meals and this is usually when people say they're trying to be good, which we're going to see a lot of come January. Most time, if I'm honest, if you work and you work a kind of typical working pattern, most time people will eat well in the week and then they reward themselves come kind of Friday nights into Saturday, Sunday. Now the restriction phase is often driven by guilt and the fear of weight gain or pressure to get in shape and usually it comes down to people just not really knowing what to do.
• 2:37
  The amount of people who will say to me that they are eating 1,200 calories a day but they can't seem to lose weight is absolutely frightening because less is not always more. Our bodies quite literally need food to function and if you're not giving your body the nutrients that it needs, you're probably not going to make much progress. Then we get the binge phase. So the binge phase is where your body reacts to the restriction with strong hunger signals. Now this can happen in my example at the weekend after five days of solid restriction or sometimes it can happen two, three, maybe even months further down the line because your body will remember.
• 3:13
  Now sometimes if we restrict ourselves too much we can have some other kind of physiological implications. So I've worked with a client before who, he just had a mindset of quite literally an athlete and he restrict himself for long periods of times, I'm talking like water fasts, I'm talking 500 calories a day and he would do that for weeks, sometimes months on end and he would lose weight but then inevitably when he ends it, he just blew up and he would just concede he would be in the most aggressive binge and restrict cycle I think I've ever seen. What happens when people end up in the binge phase is they lose that control and I use that term kind of loosely but you know they've been quite disciplined in restricting their food and essentially starving themselves but when they come to the binge phase and the body catches up with them and you know these hunger signals are spiked, they end up with these kind of big cravings and they kind of feel like they're a little bit out of control around certain foods, usually what we call hyper palatable foods. These are higher calorie foods, higher sugar, higher salt foods.
• 4:16
  And often, as I say this will happen in the evening or at weekends or perhaps you go on holiday or the Christmas period comes and you end up just kind of over eating. Now the psychology of this is relatively complex but the moment you label foods as bad, you increase the desire and reduce control. So what I mean by that is called cat string theory. Now if you imagine you've got a cat and you dangle a bit of string in front of it, it will fight, if it's just out of reach, will fight to grab those bits of string, but the moment you actually give the cat the string, not interested. And that is what's happening here, because you're labelling these foods as bad, and it's like with children, if you say they can't have biscuits and sweets, I remember I've got a friend who did this, as a child his mum would never let him have sweets and whatever and he'd go to a party and he'd eat so much food that he was sick and it is that because the label of the food is bad, you just kind of increase that desire, we want what we can't have.
• 5:09
  And this perceived scarcity makes the brain want to eat as much as possible because they're so hyper palatable, they're so in energy and it's a perfect storm because you've restricted your body from having access to those foods and suddenly it's accessible to you. Now the physiology is that there's this kind of low energy intake which will increase your ghrelin which is your hunger hormone. Because we're not consuming enough food, your body is so low in energy and we need a certain amount of calories as I say to kind of function. And also it kind of sinks your blood sugars. Low blood sugar will trigger your primal drive to seek these high calorie foods and as a result of this, you're going to end up at some point binging and your body is going to literally gobble it all up.
• 5:49
  But equally as well, we've got to take into account that because you aren't eating enough food, fatigue is going be more likely, mood swings are going be more likely and this will weaken your decision making because your brain literally functions off glucose, if you're not giving your brain what it needs, your control and your kind of what's the word I'm looking for the function, those decision making that you've got and the clarity of thought is going to be impacted. So anyone who's ever said I'll be good in the week and then blur it at the weekend knows exactly what this feels like, especially kind of over Christmas and it's a similar like, you know when people say no carbs before marbs, it's a similar concept. So how the cycle shows up at Christmas is something that happens to most people because December is really hard and it kind of supercharges the problem because routines disappear, people panic about overeating so they pre restrict to save calories. People skip breakfast before a big meal, they end up eating very little or weak because the party is coming, or they quite commonly will say well it's pointless starting now, might as well wait till January and equally they end up grazing on sweets all day because hunger is high from under eating and there's this overwhelm from constant food availability and equally the emotional stress from family dynamics disrupted sleep because of alcohol and the tiredness and all of that comes in.
• 7:10
  The problem probably isn't the amount of mince pies, it's the fact that you haven't eaten properly throughout the time period and things kind of come off and we forget the basics. Inequally for that what happens is you end up in that kind of shame spiral, you overeat which leads to guilt, guilt leads to restriction, restriction leads to a rebound eating and then January arrives and people feel worse when they started. People get in the cycle? So diet culture teaches people to fear calories and there's these kind of unrealistic rules that have absolutely no substance like no carbs, no sugar, no snacking, no this, no that and the emotional stress and the lack of sleep and this kind of high December workload, it all impacts and compounds, so we have this kind of all or nothing mindset. Often people use food as a reward around stress and alcohol as well, that's a separate issue, where people will, know, they'll have a really high stress work, sorry high stress week from work going forward into the end of the week and Christmas is coming, they reward themselves I deserved it, I've been good!
• 8:12
  But equally as well there's no structure around these main meals and so what happens is people just kind of end up picking at little bits and the fallout of that is that they're kind of not nourishing themselves properly. And then what people do is they'll skip meals and they call it discipline, when actually it isn't discipline. This isn't a willpower issue, it's completely a fuelling issue. I want you to feel full control of December and this festive period, so that come January you feel like you've given yourself the best chance to have the best 2026. You are in full control of what happens now, you're in full control of what you put in your mouth and it's really important that you recognise that.
• 8:53
  I hope this helps, any questions please do let me know. Pawdnnutritionist I also have a binge and restrict resource, so message me the word binge or restrict or both and I'll ping across that resource for you. Any questions let me know, thank you for listening and I'll speak to you next week. That's it for this episode of No Forking Nonsense where the fluff gets binned and the facts get served. If you found this helpful share it with someone who could do with some clarity from an expert.
• 9:18
  That's me by the way. And make sure you hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want more straight talking, no nonsense nutrition advice, come and find me on Instagram Paul, the nutritionist. Until next time, eat smart, feel human again, and stop falling for the forking nonsense. See you next time.