Why You Keep Binge Eating Even When You’re Full

You are sitting at the dinner table, your stomach is saying “that’s enough”.

But you can’t stop staring at the food and want more.

Then the shame spirals start:

“What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep eating when I’m not even hungry? I’m lack of self-control.”

You might think this is because you…

• “love food too much”
• “addicted” to food
• lack of willpower
• find the food too delicious

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone and more importantly, it’s none of these reason.

And the true reason might be surprising.

You are in the survival mode

Your body is wired put survival above all, and there’s a special mechanism our body has to do that, in science it’s called “starvation state” or “metabolic adaptation”, and I call it “survival mode”.

It gets triggered when your body feels enough threats - whether from famine or extreme stress (remind your body the days we need to fight monster). And and your body will try to save energy by decreasing metabolic rate, not supplying nutrient to skin, hair and nail and deprioritise hormone (hello irregular and mission periods and low libido); while trying to look out for food, stock more and hold on to them when you can - just in case.

This isn’t dramatic — it’s literally built into your biology.

Unfortunately, the diet culture promoting dieting, extreme portion control, skipping meals, or always thinking about what you “shouldn’t” can make this survival mode easier to be trigger. Hence, we grab onto the food that’s available to us to avoid death.

What to do instead:

✔️ Eat regularly — 3 meals, 2–3 snacks and ditch the all-or-nothing mindset about food. This let your body know food is coming, reliably and generously, so your body no longer freaks out there might be not enough food.

You are not satisfied

Fullness is a body sensation.

Satisfaction? That’s the "mmm yes, that hit the spot" feeling.

You can be physically full from eating a lot - but if it wasn’t what you truly wanted or needed? - you’ll feel meh.

Feeling full but feeling “meh” can come from:

• Eating airy foods (low cal, large volume foods)
• Not eating foods that your body needs (e.g. opt for fruit when you need protein)
• Mindless style eating

And that meh often leads to nibbling on other foods to chase that missing feeling.

What to do instead:

✔️ Ask yourself: “What would actually satisfy me right now?” Include variety, flavour, all the macros (carbs, protein, fat and fibre) in most of your meals. And most importantly? Give yourself the permission to let food brings joy! (this is not bad!)

You need the comfort from being overly full

“What? I like being overly full? That’s absurd.”

That’s usually what my clients say when I bring this up — and honestly, fair enough.

esearch shows that stretching the stomach can activate the body’s “shut down” mode (1), which dulls emotional and physical noise.

For many binge eaters, that’s the most reliable comfort they know — especially when thoughts and feelings feel too much.

You’re not just eating — you’re escaping from the reality

Often it’s food + something else: Netflix, YouTube, scrolling, reading. The food gives you something to do. The background fills the silence. Together, they create a bubble where real life can’t reach you — at least for a little while.

What to do instead:

✔️ Build self-care rituals - regularly ask yourself “what am i feeling? what do I need?” to avoid bottling up stress, discomfort and emotions. the need could be check out to daydream for a few minutes, take a bath, listen to soothing music when you get home, or journalling your thoughts and feeling.

You are not “full enough”

If you’ve been binge eating for a while (usually > a decade), your body may have learned that being overly full = safe.

So even when you’ve had “enough,” you might still chase that extra full feeling, just to feel secure.

It’s not that your stomach is empty — it’s that your nervous system hasn’t caught up yet.

What to do instead:

✔️ Stay consistent with meals and snacks throughout the day and start to check in with your hunger fullness cues before and during eating. Give a conscious pause in the middle of a meal to decide how full you are and if you want to continue eating.

Your emotion void is still empty

Food doesn’t just serve a physical purpose. It resembles comfort, pleasure, relief, escape, connection — especially after a long, stressful day.

However the hard truth is eating can’t solve the actual emotional distress, so when you finish eating, and find out that your emotion void has not lighten up a bit, your instinct can be keep reaching for food which resemble relief.

This is totally human. But if food has become your only strategy to self-soothe or unwind, it can turn into a pattern that feels out of control.

The solution isn’t more discipline — it’s learning how to meet your emotional needs with compassion.

What to do instead:

✔️ Ask yourself, “What do I actually need right now — food, or something else?”. Make a list of non-food emotional boosts (music, texting a friend, lying in bed with a warm drink), and try to pick one of them on the list and do it, then check in again “ do I still want the food?”

P.S. emotional eating isn’t bad, and sometimes, food is the only coping option and that’s ok

You are having a “special occasion” mindset

“it’s only a special occasion”, “Not every day I get to eat these” or “I’ve already ruined it, I might as well”

These thoughts often sneak in after eating something “off-plan” or during holidays, weekends, or celebrations. It’s called a scarcity mindset — where you're convinced this food is rare or “bad” and should be consumed quickly.

Even if you’re full, the message becomes: “Get it in while you can.”

And that urgency? That’s what can trigger a binge, even after you’ve already had enough.

This mindset is often a leftover from dieting — where foods are constantly categorised as “good” or “bad,” and enjoyment is something to be earned or limited. Over time, you learn to overeat not because you’re hungry, but because you’re afraid of when you’ll be “allowed” to have it again.

What to do instead:

✔️ Give yourself full permission to enjoy all foods — not just on weekends or holidays, so weekend and holidays just becomes another day. When you no longer hold food scarcity mindset, the “fear that I will lose control” food, will just become another normal food - you might crave it sometimes, but you don’t go out of control.

You’ve been conditioned to finish food

If you’ve been taught leaving food is wasteful, you might find it hard to stop reaching out for food even when you feel physically full.

For many of us, the habit of finishing everything on the plate is deeply ingrained — not because we’re hungry, but because we were taught that leaving food is wrong:

“don’t waste the food.”

“You aren’t getting dessert until you finish dinner”

These seemingly harmless phrases can stick. Overtime, it teaches you things:

• It’s rude, shameful to leave food
• Good things need to be earned

This creates a pattern where you feel compelled to finish your meals — even if you’re full:

1. Deep down, you’ve linked clearing your plate with being good, respectful, or responsible. (especially you are the guest on the dinner table)
2. You are trained to "food trading": Finish the boring stuff → earn the fun stuff. Now, normal meals become borings, if you don’t eat the “fun stuff”, you feel you’ve let million dollars on the table

But your body is not a bin. Finishing food just for the sake of it doesn’t make you more virtuous — it just makes you disconnected from your fullness cues.

What to do instead:

✔️ Consciously leave the last few bites on the plate to fight the “wasteful” mindset. And allow yourself to enjoy both the meals and the dessert - both are delicious.

You haven’t yet built enough tools to address your triggers

Sometimes bingeing feels automatic — like you’re watching yourself do it from the outside.

That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your urge to binge has become a well-practiced habit loop:

a trigger → uncomfortable thought → disturbing emotion→ eating.

To change that, you don’t need more willpower, you need a toolbox.

What to do instead:

Build a toolbox to break this loop:

• Self-awareness: are you physically hungry or mentally hungry? How hungry/full are you
• Tools to allow thoughts and emotions to exist but not affect you: accept the emotions, recognise thoughts are opinion, not fact. you can journal down your thoughts and emotion to externalise them
• Coping tools: nervous system regulating tools, distraction tools, soothing tools, problem solving tools, connection tools and self-care tools.

💡 Ready to break free from the “why can’t I stop eating?” spiral?

If this blog felt a little too real — that’s a good thing.

It means you’re starting to see that your overeating isn’t about being broken, greedy, or lacking willpower.

It’s about survival instincts, emotional needs, unhelpful food rules — and habit loops that can be rewired with the right approach.

✨ That’s exactly what I’m covering in my free training:

3 Steps to End Overeating

Inside, you’ll learn:

✔️ The hidden reasons overeating keeps happening — even when you know better

✔️ The top 3 mistakes most people make when trying to “fix” it (and what actually works instead)

✔️ A proven, step-by-step method to break the binge–overeat–guilt cycle for good

It’s practical, warm, and made for you — especially if you’re tired of the eat-regret-repeat cycle.

👉 CLICK HERE to grab your spot to the free webinar

Come as you are. No rules, no pressure, just real support to help you feel more in control — without obsessing over food.

Reference:

1. Bonnet MS, Ouelaa W, Tillement V, Trouslard J, Jean A, Gonzalez BJ, Gourcerol G, Dallaporta M, Troadec JD, Mounien L. Gastric distension activates NUCB2/nesfatin-1-expressing neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract. Regul Pept. 2013 Nov 10;187:17–23. doi: 10.1016/j.regpep.2013.10.001. Epub 2013 Oct 10.