Ep 72- The Long Term Impacts of Binge Eating
June 26, 2025
Every binge matters. It's easy to brush it off with thoughts like "just one more time," but in reality, each time you overeat, you vote for the habit to continue. Today’s episode will help motivate & inspire you by looking at the truth about how binge eating negatively impacts your life.
I cover…
The shocking financial cost of binge eating and how it can add up to over $1 million in your lifetime
How binge eating affects your health & well being, increasing the risk of serious conditions like diabetes, chronic pain, heart disease, depression and more.
The generational impact of binge eating and how it can affect your children or loved ones
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, confident eaters, do you ever feel like your brain gives you the excuse of just one more time to binge? One time won't hurt. Bingeing isn't that big of a deal. I can start over tomorrow. I. I'll stop eventually. Then this episode is gonna be for you because we are going to talk about the long-term impacts of binge eating.
Now, this episode is not to scare you or for you to shame yourself, but simply so you can start to show your brain the truth about binge eating, and it will help you see why every single time you binge does matter, and it is important to stop this because each time we binge, we're essentially taking a vote in our brain. We're putting a check mark in it saying, yes, this is something that I want to do. And it's really easy for our habits to slowly start to slip their way into years and then decades of our life without really anything changing.
So I'm gonna be covering what the research has found about some of these really interesting long-term impacts of binge eating and also what I have found personally as just someone who's been there and struggled with binge eating for many years and some of the impacts that I saw it having on my life. And when you have these points as reminders it will show you why you're wanting to stop binge eating. The stronger of a why we have behind changing our eating habits, the more motivated and driven we feel. I. This is what will help us push through when things get hard, when we need to sit with our urges, when we need to change our thoughts.
So use today's episode as an assessment of where you are in your eating habits, and then use it to fire up a spark, a motivation that will drive you to make a big change this week And so you stop telling yourself and having this lower brain excuse of, oh, it's just not a big deal when it really is. And then you have the whole truth about what you're doing and your eating habits and the truth sets you free. I've talked about this before on the podcast in episode 31 about how to stop believing you're binge eating lies where you need to tell yourself the whole story. A lot of times the reason we binge is because we're perceiving binge eating as pleasurable. We only tell ourself about how good it's gonna taste once we take that first bite and we don't tell ourselves the rest of the story about the negative after effects.
So this is what today will help you do is really tell yourself the truth of there are a lot of negative after effects and there are a lot of long-term impacts. I am going to start today with some of the lesser known effects that aren't really talked about enough, and then we will go into the second portion where we'll talk about how all of this excess foods specifically impacts certain parts of your body and health, and what the research specifically has shown.
So the first long-term impact of binge eating is that it will cost you so much money. There is the obvious cost of, of course, all the extra binge food and all the extra times you go out and you go on a binge run or you stop by takeout and food is expensive nowadays. I definitely do not wanna be eating any more than my body actually needs.
I was probably eating about twice the amount I'm eating right now overall, when I was binge eating, and even though it might have looked like my day to day, I was eating these little cute, healthy meals. My overall intake of food was so much higher.
I recently had someone reach out to me in my Facebook messages, and they're asking about this weight loss, meal delivery service called Bistro md, and they're asking for my thoughts on it and if I thought it was a good meal plan and a meal service, and I thought it was kind of funny that she asked me this. It's such an innocent question, something I would've definitely asked too. But because the answer is not another meal service, the answer is addressing our brain. The reason all these programs and diets and meal plans that you do aren't working is because they're not going to the underlying reason of why you're binge eating in the first place.
They're just slapping on a bandaid solution. And the thing with these things is you're gonna have to pay these people for the rest of your life. If you're doing Weight Watchers, if you're getting a meal plan, if you're working with a dietician, they're only telling you how to eat and you're not getting the skills of how to eat like a normal eater on your own, that's gonna be a very expensive lifelong plan that you have to be on.
I actually did a little calculation today that was so interesting, which is how much binge eating will cost you if you binge the next 70 years of your life, which you know, it could happen. I have clients who come to me in their seventies who have been struggling with food their entire life because they haven't done this deeper inner work, and I calculated that binge eating will cost you over $1 million in your lifetime. And here's how I calculated this number.
So if you spent the next 70 years binge eating, let's say that every year you'd spend about $5,000 extra on therapy or other programs that aren't addressing the root cause.
I have had clients come to me with up to 10 years of therapy under their belt, and the thing about therapy is it's great for a lot of reasons, but it oftentimes can just re ingrain these thoughts over and over and over again. The more we talk about them especially in traditional talk therapy, and most therapists are not trained on how to help you stop binge eating, even eating disorder therapists.
The thing about binge eating is it wasn't recognized as an eating disorder until 2013, so this is just a little bit over 10 years ago, meaning if any therapist was trained more than 10 years ago, they weren't trained on how to help people to stop binge eating. And there is so much modern, new research on how to stop binge eating and how to change your brain that most people aren't working with.
Then you're spending probably $3,000 a year extra on groceries that you don't need on binge sessions. Again, remembering my food when I was binge eating was pretty much doubled. Another thing people don't think about is your missed income potential. So when you're spending all day long thinking about food, figuring out food, Googling how to stop overeating, how to lose weight instead of growing your work skills or showing up at work during your day, you're gonna miss out on raises and new opportunities and new connections that you could have been making had you not been so in your head about what you were eating all the time. So I calculated that to be, let's say you're missing out on a raise or a new job that could be worth 5,000 a year.
Then if you're constantly gaining weight or fluctuating between, you lose weight and then you gain weight, you're having to buy a lot of new clothes. So I spent so much extra money. A thousand a year about on buying new clothes. So if I calculate all of those things added up together, that's 14,000 a year and almost $1 million over the next 70 years.
And that does not factor in any healthcare cost or if you start doing a weight loss drug, which research is now showing you have to be on forever in order for the weight loss to continue otherwise, you just gain it all right back. So if you're trying Ozempic or Wegovy or any of these other things, it might work for a little, but then if you don't wanna gain the weight back, you're gonna have to stay on it, and it's very costly. And then all of the other health costs that we'll be talking about later today are also so pricey. So this could easily get you into $2 million over a lifetime of struggling with binge eating.
If someone came up to you and told you, Hey, you're doing this one habit that's costing you over $2 million, you would probably do everything you could to stop it. And if someone said on the flip side too, Hey, I can help you save $2 million by just working on your eating habits for a couple of months, you would probably do that as well. It would be a worthwhile investment.
Okay. The second long-term impact of binge eating is countless memories that you've either skipped out on because you binged or you feel really bad about your body in that moment, or memories that you're just not present for because there's so much food noise going on through your head. So I remember so many nights with my girlfriends where they would wanna go out, but I had binged that day and I did not wanna put on any cute clothes. I wanted to lay in my bed and watch TV and mope around. And so I missed out on memories of going out with 'em. And I was also so scared of the calories of alcohol, so I skipped on that too, especially once I was binge eating all the time. I still don't drink a ton now, but I'm no longer scared of alcohol calories. It's just because I genuinely just don't love the after effects of drinking. I tell myself the whole story about it, so I don't drink anymore, but I never wanted to go out because I was like, oh my gosh, I just binged, I'm feeling so bad about my body. I'm not confident at all.
And then there was moments where I'd be out at dinner and I'd be thinking the whole time about what I was gonna get from the menu, what I was gonna have. It took me so long to decide what to eat because I couldn't decide, do I wanna be bad today and get the burger and fry? Should I be good and get the salad? And all of these missed memories can further any feelings of loneliness, disconnection, and isolation that you're already having.
Then there's often the hopelessness that can come with binge eating, which can lead to depression over time. When you feel like you just can't get out of this, that you've tried so many things, that there's no point anymore, there's clearly no hope for you, you are gonna feel sad and depressed, and it sucks. I get it.
This is one of the worst feelings to be in. I found a study that looked at the prevalence of depression in binge eating disorder that was from the Journal of Effective Disorders, and it found that over 50% of individuals that struggle with binge eating disorder also suffer from depression.
And what's interesting is that the severity of depression was directly related to the frequency of binge episodes, meaning those who binged more often had significantly higher levels of depression. These two things were correlated. In this feeling of sadness, depression, hopelessness, it can start to bleed into other areas of our life where you just don't have any confidence in your ability to do hard things. You don't believe you're gonna get that next new job. You don't believe that that person will wanna go on a second date with you?
At the end of my program, so many clients tell me how stopping binge eating has opened up like this portal for them where they feel like they can do anything in the world because if they can conquer this thing that has been so hard for them in their life, clearly they can do so many other hard things and so much possibility opens up for them. Life just gets expanded and their goals get bigger. They dream bigger for themself and think that more is possible.
It's one of my favorite things in the world when I can see people start to do things that they never even dreamed of after they have finally solved the binge eating for good.
Okay. If you are wanting kids one day or you are thinking about having kids, this one was really interesting. Children of parents with binge eating disorder were four times more likely to develop some sort of eating disorder, including binge eating disorder, bulimia or anorexia, compared to the children whose parents did not have eating disorders. So your binge eating now has a generational impact. Of course, it is not a for sure guarantee that if you have kids, they will end up with an eating disorder but don't you wanna be an example of someone who has a healthy relationship with food in this diet obsessed world. I would also be really curious. This would be hard to do an actual study on or to find, but if there's an impact on our friend groups when someone is binge eating, I think in my journey when I was at the peak of my binge eating and eating disorder struggles, a lot of my friends were also dealing with something similar. Of course, we never talked about it to each other 'cause we were just pretending all was good and we were just trying to lose weight and it was no big deal. It was so normalized in our culture to have friends dieting together. But I would also like to think that when you heal your relationship with food, this is also gonna have a really positive impact on everyone else around you in your life too. Whether that's if you have kids or future kids, or if it's just on your partner, your romantic relationship, or your best friends. You can be a leader by example.
Okay, so let's think about how binge eating impacts your health specifically, and I'm gonna go through the studies with this. So, of course, if you are eating more than your body needs and you are consistently ignoring your fullness signals, you are going to be at a higher weight than your body's naturally supposed to be at. Sometimes people will ask me about this concept of your set point weight which is this idea that your body has a natural weight range, that it's meant to be at genetically, and that your setpoint weight is a real thing. But again, if you are overeating, you are not at your natural weight. Your natural weight is gonna be the one that you're at when you are eating from hunger and stopping from fullness 90 ish percent of the time. Then of course with the amount of high carb, high sugar foods that tend to be eaten during a binge, there is a big risk of type two diabetes. All of these high sugar, high carb foods are not bad. I don't want you to think that, but when we are flooding our system with them frequently, that can lead to insulin resistance, which can lead to increasing the risk of type two diabetes and over time needing medication.
Those with binge eating disorder have a 50% higher risk of developing type two diabetes compared to non binge eaters. Some of my clients have come to me pre-diabetic, and I can tell you it puts so much more pressure on you to have to change your eating habits, and it is so much easier to change them now before it gets to that point.
If you are at that point now, I can still help you, but again, why let it get that bad? Why not just get it taken care of now? Then there's digestive issues. So anytime we're overeating large amounts of food at once, that was really overwhelming to our digestive system, which can lead to bloating, constipation, acid reflux, of course, stomach aches and pains. And over time this can lead to more severe gastrointestinal disorders like irritable bowel syndrome or gerd. I had a client three years ago now about whose GERD symptoms completely went away when we worked together, and she stopped overeating. She had worked with GERD specialists, so many people, but the key was she just needed to stop overeating. And once she did that, we didn't even really work on any nutrition, any sort of biological things within her symptoms. We literally just worked on the overeating and it cleared up all of her digestive issues. So if you feel like you have digestive issues and you are binge eating, so much of it will stop when you stop binge eating.
Overeating leads to a weakened immune system, both because of the stress associated with all the overeating itself. Again, when you're thinking about food all day and you're stressed about what decisions you're gonna make, you're really anxious around food that has an impact on your body alone, even if you don't actually overeat or binge, just that stress is so harmful for our health and our immune system.
But then additionally, the excess consumption of high sugar, high carb foods can impair our immune function and triggers our stress hormones like cortisol, which can interfere with our immune responses, making individuals much more susceptible to infections and illnesses over time.
There's a lot of overall inflammation that happens in the body, which can lead to acne, joint pain, all kinds of things. I have struggled with acne most of my life, and I've been on my own. I. Natural acne healing journey. But if I was still struggling with my relationship with food too, there's no way I could have been healing my acne like I am Now. I'm gonna read a few more really interesting statistics just to rattle them off.
Those who binge eat are 80% more likely to report chronic pain conditions, like fibromyalgia and arthritis, inflammation also makes your pain perception worse. Those who binge eat have a 62% higher risk of developing heart disease are 42% more likely to have elevated blood pressure and 35% more likely to have abnormal cholesterol levels. They're also three and a half times more likely to develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease compared to those without binge eating disorder. And 60% of individuals who binge report significant sleep disruptions, including insomnia and frequent waking, which worsen as the binge eating episodes increased and frequently.
In frequency, so pretty interesting stuff, right? I'll leave you with one final statistic. Approximately 40 to 60% of individuals who binge experience significant improvement after receiving treatment. Now, what This can also be interpreted as as 40 to 60% of people who are receiving traditional therapy and treatment are not recovering from binge eating disorder. Google seemed to think that this was a high rate of recovery, but I think not. I will not settle for that low of a rate that people are recovering from binge eating.
So I want you to know that if you've been trying other things and you haven't gotten to where you wanted to be, or if you resonated with any of these things that I've talked about today, you started to see them show up in your life. You're starting to feel a little nervous, a little scared. I want you to know that there is a way out, that you're not stuck and that people have changed this, and you can too.
I know it can be scary sometimes, But this is the long-term reality of what it's like to deal with binge eating. Our body is not meant to process so much food all the time, so of course there's gonna be negative impacts from it.
Use today as a loving wake up call that nothing changes if nothing changes, you have to do something differently than what you've been trying. I coach on binge eating and overeating and helping people become normal eaters again, because I have been there. I have come out. This is exactly what I help my clients do inside of my Confident Eater program too. And if you're listening to this in real time, I do have a few select spots open for one-on-one coaching with me.
I would absolutely love to help you. You can find all the details in the show notes, and I hope to talk to you soon.