People think they're binge eating because they get home from a stressful day and eat a ton of cookies or an entire bag of chips. Soto explained, "More often than not, this is a reaction to restriction." If you haven't eaten enough during the day or you're restricting certain foods, your body is just trying to make up for the lack of energy during the day.
"A primal need to eat kicks in and you go for what is going to give you quick energy (like carbs or sugar), because your body is super smart," Soto said. It wants to protect you against what it perceives as a famine, so it drives you to eat a lot because it's not sure when the next "famine" might be. Often times, binge eating will stop when you give your body enough calories and the foods it wants.