Why Do I Binge on Foods I Don’t Even Like? (The Real Reason You Can’t Stop)

You ever find yourself eating stale chips, freezer-burned ice cream, or the kid’s hairy granola bars and think:

“This isn’t even good… so WHY am I still eating it?”

Yep. Welcome to the club — where your taste buds are unimpressed but your brain is apparently hosting a food rave anyway.

In today’s episode of Nourished & Free®: The Podcast, we’re unpacking one of the most confusing parts of binge eating:
👉 Why you sometimes binge on foods you don’t even like.

Inside this episode:

• Why restriction turns your brain into a chaotic food hoarder
• How emotional eating isn’t the enemy (but maybe your rules are)
• What’s really going on when you eat like it’s your last meal on Earth… and it’s not even a good one
• How to start choosing food that’s satisfying on purpose (novel concept, I know)

So if you’ve ever rage-snacked your way through the pantry and thought,
 “Cool, now I feel gross and unsatisfied,”
this episode was made for you.

🧠 It’s part psychology, part nutrition — and completely judgment-free.

🎧 Grab your headphones and hit play. Your brain (and your taste buds) deserve better.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome Back and Introduction to Food Psychology
01:36 Understanding Binge Eating: The Brain's Problem-Solving
04:14 The Last Supper Mentality and Anticipation of Scarcity
06:18 Emotional Eating: Coping Mechanisms Behind Bingeing
08:38 Ignoring Personal Preferences: The Impact of Diet Culture
10:42 Habitual Behavior: The Autopilot of Binge Eating
13:59 Building a Healthier Relationship with Food

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

🫴🏼 Take my free mini-course, "The Binge Free Blueprint"

Transcript

Michelle Yates (00:00)
Welcome to Nourished and Free, the podcast where mental health meets physical health, food guilt gets ghosted, and toxic wellness advice gets roasted. I'm Michelle Yates, your host, and I'm back from maternity leave. I'm so excited to be back. And if you're new here, I'm a registered dietitian, certified health mindset coach, and a health psychology nerd with a master's of private. So I love blending the worlds of mental health and physical health together and talking about things like food psychology.

Around here, we believe that food should be nourishing, health should be all inclusive, all encompassing, and mental sanity around food in your body is just non-negotiable.

I cannot tell you how many times I've talked to women about a time that they've binge eaten and it's been on foods that they don't even like. Looking back, they're like, Michelle, I don't even like that food. the chips were stale, but for some reason, I still finished the bag. Or the cookies were disgusting. They were rock hard, but I still ate them or what have you.

So I wanna dig into why this is happening because you're not alone if you're experiencing that too. And no, you're not broken or just lacking willpower.

These are frustrating food behaviors to go through. And the good news is that they do have very explainable roots. There's a reason this is happening. There's actually multiple reasons why it might be happening. And I want to go through what those could be so that you can hopefully get some insight into your situation as you're trying to understand why is this happening. Okay, so I've got five potential reasons why you might be binging on food that you don't even like.

the TLDR or the short answer of this entire episode is that binge eating foods you don't even like is your brain's attempt to solve a problem. It's just not in most helpful way. But it is trying

So for the long answer, let's dig into the five reasons why this could potentially be happening. So the first one is that you're trying to satisfy hunger with quote unquote safe foods or foods that are not off limits, foods that are clean foods that are low calorie foods that are low carb.

whatever this list is this hypothetical list Or maybe it's not hypothetical maybe there's literally a list of foods that are okay to eat that you're following. And we feel safety in choosing those foods. So when we're starving, and we need more to eat, we look at our list and we go, Okay, I guess popcorn is okay. I'll binge on popcorn. So then we end up having

ridiculous amount of popcorn, because it's quote unquote safe. So we still in some way feel like we're following the diet or we're still somewhat in control. But at the end of the day, it's still a binge, right? And that binge is a sign that maybe, just maybe the list of foods that are on our approved list is too small. You shouldn't be feeling that way around food. If the diet that you're following or the protocol you're following

is so limited that you feel starving to the point of binge eating, then you might need to reconsider the protocol that you're following.

If you're constantly trying to quote unquote, eat clean or skip meals, your body starts to panic. It doesn't necessarily care about food quality or ingredients when you're in a hypothetical famine. And the truth is, when we're doing these extreme diets, or we're following an extremely restrictive list of approved foods to eat, whether again, like I said, that's physical or hypothetical, your body just wants calories and it doesn't realize that this is all self inflicted.

it just knows you're not getting enough. And this is your body's intelligently designed way of trying to keep you alive because at the end of the day, you do need food and you need a variety of foods. Many different nutrients need to be coming through your system on a regular basis. So if we're not providing it with that, especially if we're on like a low carb diet and you're not getting your body's preferred source of fuel,

it's natural for your body to drive you into this extreme hunger mode where you binge on whatever you can. And if you're still really fixated on staying within the lines of your list of approved foods, then we're just using one of those approved foods to satisfy the binge urge.

Okay, second reason that this may be happening is that you're stuck in the last supper mentality. Maybe you've heard me talk about this before. It's basically the period before scarcity, when you're anticipating scarcity. You know you're not about to have access to food or you're about to not have access to foods that you like or you're about to on a diet where carbs are off limits or sweets are off limits or whatever it is.

So we're anticipating that and in anticipation of that, we want to like, bulk up on those foods that we're about to be missing out on. And so if you've ever said to yourself, okay, this is the last time I'm eating junk starting tomorrow, I'll be good. Your brain is going to throw a food party about all the restrictions you're about to have, and it will grab whatever's around even if it's not your favorite.

just because it knows it's about to be on a diet or it knows it's about to not have access to something. Now this could happen even outside of a diet. It's not specific to a diet. It could be like if you're about to go on a, like on a religious fast or if you're about to go visit somebody's house where you know they don't have a lot of food available or they don't have the foods you like available.

I was just talking to a client who was at a summer camp with her students. She's a teacher and at the camp, I think it was week long, if I remember correctly, the camp they were staying at just serves the absolute worst food in the world and she was miserable. so that's like a sense of foods. That's an example of food scarcity that is different than what we traditionally think about, right? Like you can have food scarcity because of poverty. You can also have this state of scarcity.

Activated when we're just not around food that we enjoy for a long period of time or we're anticipating Having those foods removed from us. So like I mentioned if we're anticipating that if we know we're gonna start over tomorrow, we might Just bulk up in anticipation of that and have as much food as we can Whatever is around and that might not be your favorite foods. It might be food that's expired or that's gone stale, but it's there and tomorrow You're gonna be starting over so you better enjoy it

since it's here and while you can.

The third reason, and this is probably the biggest one why this happens in terms of why we binge on food we don't even like is because we're binge eating to cope with emotions, not to enjoy the food. It's really not about the food, right? It's about running from whatever emotions are coming up, whether it's sadness, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, procrastinating,

There's so many different emotions that we can feel that we don't like, that we don't want to be a part of, and that we want to have relief from. So the binge is a function of finding relief. It's a vehicle to get us to a place of relaxation and getting us some dopamine and just kind of pulling us away from our problems for a little bit. And the hard part about this is that it does work.

Right? Like I was just talking to a client about this this morning who binges every night and she's got a lot of really hard life circumstances going on right now. And what we're talking about was like, the worst part about this is that it really does help, doesn't it? In the moment that temporary dopamine hit or distraction, distraction does take you away from all the hard things that are going on in your life. And she was like, she's kind of laughing. I was like, yeah, it really does help in the moment until after the fact or the next morning when I think back and I feel so ashamed.

So that's the tricky part about this binge eating cycle is that if you're using it to cope and not to enjoy necessarily, you're using it to escape or have relief from hard things, it does help, which is why you keep going back to it because you know it does. And it would be much easier to stop the cycle if it didn't because you'd be able to you would be able to just not do it, right? Like that stupid advice we hear all the time, like just stop eating.

Just don't do it. Just don't binge. Right? Like just eat until you're full and then stop after that. It's no big deal, right? Except it is a big deal when you're trying to run from something and you know that that helps. used to and we know works. So we go back to it.

In these moments, it's not about savoring our food. It's not about enjoying all the flavors, the texture, the smells we're eating for escape, not for flavor. So any food goes. Doesn't matter if it's good or not. the fourth reason is that you may have been taught to ignore what you actually like. There's a lot of instances where I'm talking to clients like actually that same client this morning.

We were having a conversation about her breakfasts, and I was like, okay, why don't we add in a fruit there? What kind of fruits do you like? And she's like, well, I blueberries a lot because they're supposed to be the best for blood sugar. She couldn't even answer the question about what fruits she likes because her automatic response was, well, I was told this was better for me, so that's what I eat.

And this happens all the time with the clients I'm working with. ask them, like, what do you enjoy? What do you like to eat? And they're like, I don't know. Nobody's asked me that in years because it's all been about what's the best thing for me to eat, what I should eat, what's going to help me lose weight, what's going to help me control my blood sugar, what's going to do X, Y, and Z for me. It's never about what I want. And so we've been taught to ignore those things and ignore what we actually like. And then you might get to this place where you're like,

I generally just don't like food anymore because I have such a toxic relationship with it that it's hard for me to have satisfaction around it.

It's a sensitive subject. I don't want to talk about get used to associating food with hard feelings, complicated feelings, conflicted feelings. And it gets really hard to actually find enjoyment in it anymore. Or maybe a food that you did enjoy, you used to enjoy now has so many bad experiences around it that you don't anymore, right?

but you still go to that food because at one point you did enjoy it. You used to like it. You used to get that dopamine rush from it. It used to make you feel better. So let's try it again. And then you binge on again, even though now you don't get that same effect from it.

So here's the thing, when you're not allowed to eat what you want, your brain still wants something, it still wants food, and we typically seek pleasure. That's pretty hardwired thing, that's hardwired into us is to seek pleasure.

If you've got these rules in place that you're not allowed to eat what you want, but you're still seeking pleasure, you end up grazing, picking, eventually overeating food that doesn't really satisfy you because we are trying to find that pleasure. Even though we've got the foods that actually we do like are off limits, we ignore those and we try to get that same sense of pleasure from other foods.

and then the last reason, the fifth reason that we might be bingeing on foods that we don't even like is that our brain is wired for habitual behavior. Sometimes bingeing, as I mentioned before, isn't about the food at all. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's a lack of nourishment, we need more of something, whether it's calories, protein, fiber, whatever it is, which is just an imbalance in general with our nutrition. But

But other times it's not, it has nothing to do with the food at all. Like reason number three, we're using food as an escape, not as a source of enjoyment or to find flavor and satisfaction, right? So when the binging isn't about the food, it's just a loop that our brain has practiced of reaching for food to cope. It's running on autopilot at some point when we've done that behavior so many times, it becomes a very easy behavior for us to run to. It's just automatic.

Right? It's a habit that we have learned. Your brain loves efficiency. If you've responded to stress, loneliness, or boredom with food in the past, it'll keep offering that solution because it's familiar. Even if you're not enjoying it, even if it's not something that you logically want to do, but you don't have the energy to override the autopilot or to figure out how to make this thing not happen this time.

right, especially that stress that boredom if you're fatigued, it's so much easier to go to the things that are autopilot, they're automatic, then fight for the logical solution that you're like, I know I should not be doing this, but I'm doing it anyway. Right. There's oftentimes a gap where we know we're not supposed to binge eat logically, reasonably. Yeah, this is not healthy for me. But we do it anyway. And there's

usually some sort of autopilot subconscious thing going on underneath the surface that's making that happen. so examining and identifying what are these, what are these subconscious things? What are the, the reasons that this habit has become a habit that you are running on autopilot and

you have to interrupt these streams of subconsciousness with consciousness. And that involves curiosity, awareness, not shaming yourself, having direction on what could be happening, somebody helping you see your blind spots. And so the takeaway here is if you're binging on foods you don't like, it doesn't mean you have a food addiction or that you have zero self control or that

you aren't good enough or that you're unworthy or that you can't figure this out,

That means that your body, your brain or your emotions are just trying to meet a need. They're just doing their best with what they've got. And they haven't learned any better yet. They're doing the best they can with the tools they've got. And the fix is build a better toolbox. Let's find new ways to cope with the stress, the loneliness. Let's build new habits. Let's make sure your nutrition

is on lock so that you don't end up in a hungry state of mind. Let's make sure foods aren't off limits so that you don't end up in that last supper mentality, right? You need to eat enough throughout the day. Give yourself that unconditional permission. Yes, even the fun stuff. Give yourself permission to eat the fun stuff too. The stuff that you're like, logically, I know this is doing nothing for me. But guess what it is doing for you? It's satisfying you. And if that satisfaction prevents a binge later on, then yeah.

that's healthier for you, right? We need to understand our emotional patterns, we need to ditch the rules, and we need to learn how to reconnect with what satisfaction really feels like. And find new coping strategies for the stress, the loneliness, the pain that comes up that we don't want to experience, so we turn to food to avoid.

You don't have to stay stuck in this cycle. Hear me when I say that. Just because this is where you're at now doesn't mean it's where you're going to be out in the future. It doesn't mean you can't get out of it. It's not just the way you are. With the right tools, the right support, the mindset shifts, you can build a peaceful and normal relationship with food. One where eating feels calm, not chaotic.

this hits a little too close to home and you're ready to have some support with this so that you can just be free and be done with ASAP, I highly recommend my coaching program Nourished and Free.

It's a high touch four month process where you'll be going through your own online materials and modules. And you will also have support from me, a body image therapist and our community manager who is a former Nourished and Free member. We will all be supporting you along with a group of like-minded women

so that you can get through this. No shame, no gimmicks, no guilt tripping, no willpower needed, just logic, reasonable methods, things that make sense in your life and evidence-based tools. We're going to keep this as brass tacks as possible because you don't need all that extra fluff that's just been leaving you extra confused. Let's get you nourished, satisfied, and actually...

free. If you're interested in learning more, you can go to the show notes and apply. If you want to have a better idea of what my program is all about the philosophy behind it, then you can go to yatesnutrition.com/signup up to take a free two day mini course to give you really good understanding of how we do things around here. Again, it's totally free. So it's like the lowest commitment thing you can possibly do to figure out if this is a direction that you want to go. I'll also put the link to that in my show notes.

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