Food Bingeing and PCOS

The Girl Scout cookies finally got to you … you caved in and ate the whole box. You feel out of control and berate yourself for your lack of discipline. You know processed carbs aren’t good for PCOS so how could you do this? STOP.  You aren’t lacking in discipline and you aren’t alone! Almost everyone has food binges on occasion (including myself!) But here is the lowdown – women with PCOS are even more likely to have food binges due to hormones, mood swings, insulin surges and cravings.  And what increases the chances even more is the very restrictive diets that many women with PCOS follow. Google PCOS and diet and you’ll come up with gluten free, dairy free, soy free, non-GMO, low carb, keto, organic, hormone free, and so on.  The problem is that restrictive diets have been shown to increase the chances of binging. So between the hormones, cravings, mood swings, and restrictive diet, you have the perfect storm for a binge. This blog post will give tips on what to do after a binge to help decrease the chances of it turning into a pattern.

First, you’ve probably noticed I used the word “binge” a lot. I’d like to distinguish between an episode of binging or binge eating disorder. Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the U.S. and is formally recognized as an eating disorder in the psychiatric manual DSM-5. However it is often highly misunderstood, stigmatized, and not frequently discussed. Additionally, many people who are struggling do not seek treatment due to shame, guilt, and denial of the seriousness of the illness.  To learn more about the diagnostic criteria, read this link.

A binging episode is just that – an episode of overeating that you may or may not feel out of control with – but doesn’t meet the psychiatric diagnosis. In any case, many of us experience a binging episode from time to time. There are ways of handling them that decrease the chances of reoccurrence.

10 Tips to Handle the Aftermath of a Food Binge

Before I get into my top 9 tips, I’d like to bring up a point about restrictive diets and PCOS. If you find yourself having somewhat regular binges, I’d recommend you re-evaluate your diet. In my experience, women on very restrictive diets tend to have more binges.

You’ll have to take a little detour to read the rest of my blog post! I’m a little nuts in that I have 2 blog. I’m in the process of merging them into ONE blog with a separate section for PCOS. But in the meantime, since Google dings me if I repeat the same post on 2 blogs, you’ll need to hop over to my City Girl Bites blog to read the rest of the blog post …. 9 Tips to Handle the Aftermath of a Food Binge

And once you’ve read that blog post, make sure you read this great guest blog post by Dr.Gretchen Kubacky health psychologist, aka “The PCOS Psychologist” on Get a Grip on PCOS-Related Emotional Eating  Join her PCOS Psychology group on Facebook for more information about managing emotional overeating, depression, stress, mood swings, and more.