Jun 3, 2026 · 13 min · 4 segments
Most people trying to stop binge eating are focused on the wrong thing. They're trying to fix the craving, the food, the moment they lost control. But Matty argues it's not the binge that keeps the…
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Anyway, we're talking about shame today, and we're talking about that as the, the piece that nobody really talks about when it comes to binge emotional overeating, you know, sugar addiction, all that kind of stuff.
Because really, what happens for many people is that they take these behaviors and do them in secret, and I have definitely done this in the past.
Um, and interestingly, one of the personality types that we have in our quiz is the secret eater.
[laughs] Um, a- and maybe we can put the quiz in the show notes below actually, um, as well to see what kind of eater you are predominantly.
Actually, in that quiz, many of us will have two or three that feel like, "Oh, I could be that, I could be that." But whichever result you get, and I've spent a lot of time on the psychology of, of this quiz, whatever result you get, that's the main person that you show up as most of the time.
Um, anyway, um, so the idea here is that shame and embarrassment and self-disgust and self, uh, you know, disgrace, um, it thrives in secrecy.
And this is why so many people eat their food in the car on the way, way home, or they go off on lunch breaks and try and get as far away from the office as they can and eat whatever they want, or they go to the supermarket by themselves, or whatever it is, you know? Or they order Uber Eats at home so nobody sees them, or the second people have disappeared from the house, they quickly order some stuff and smash it and get rid of the rubbish before people get home.
It's this loop of like, um, th- there's a trigger, and that trigger might just be you're a sugar addict, and the, your blood sugar is like, "Hey, we usually have an addiction worth of, you know, an addiction load worth of sugar in our blood right now." [chuckles] Or it could be a scenario, a trauma, a mem- a memory, procrastination.
Whatever the emotion is, um, there's a trigger, and that leads to an urge, and that urge leads to a binge or, you know, it might not even be a binge.
You know, we try and just pretend it didn't happen, and, and, and we might even actually...
The binge might immediately be, um, proceeded by really focused work or something really productive, and that's often us running away from the truth, right? Trying to hide it.
And then we say something like, "I'll start again tomorrow," or, "I'll start again on Monday," and then we repeat this cycle, okay? And I guess the key point here is that the binge isn't the only issue.
I mean, that's the consequence of not dealing with the issue, but the secrecy is what keeps this alive.
And, and when we feel all of these feelings, it's-- we might not even be intentionally trying to keep the secret, but the idea is that it is a secret because we're not talking to anybody about it, so it lives within us.
There's many books written on this, but there's a whole conversation around metaphysical health consequences, which is that when you, when you keep beliefs, when you keep trauma, when you keep feelings in and you try and contain them and suppress them and never verbalize them or release them from your body, is that they can cause illness and disease, and they can absolutely cause cravings and binge eating.
And so what we wanna do in this scenario is we wanna start speaking aloud, and this can be confronting.
Anyway, we're talking about shame today, and we're talking about that as the, the piece that nobody really talks about when it comes to binge emotional overeating, you know, sugar addiction, all that kind of stuff.
Because really, what happens for many people is that they take these behaviors and do them in secret, and I have definitely done this in the past.
Um, and interestingly, one of the personality types that we have in our quiz is the secret eater.
[laughs] Um, a- and maybe we can put the quiz in the show notes below actually, um, as well to see what kind of eater you are predominantly.
Actually, in that quiz, many of us will have two or three that feel like, "Oh, I could be that, I could be that." But whichever result you get, and I've spent a lot of time on the psychology of, of this quiz, whatever result you get, that's the main person that you show up as most of the time.
Um, anyway, um, so the idea here is that shame and embarrassment and self-disgust and self, uh, you know, disgrace, um, it thrives in secrecy.
And this is why so many people eat their food in the car on the way, way home, or they go off on lunch breaks and try and get as far away from the office as they can and eat whatever they want, or they go to the supermarket by themselves, or whatever it is, you know? Or they order Uber Eats at home so nobody sees them, or the second people have disappeared from the house, they quickly order some stuff and smash it and get rid of the rubbish before people get home.
It's this loop of like, um, th- there's a trigger, and that trigger might just be you're a sugar addict, and the, your blood sugar is like, "Hey, we usually have an addiction worth of, you know, an addiction load worth of sugar in our blood right now." [chuckles] Or it could be a scenario, a trauma, a mem- a memory, procrastination.
Whatever the emotion is, um, there's a trigger, and that leads to an urge, and that urge leads to a binge or, you know, it might not even be a binge.
You know, we try and just pretend it didn't happen, and, and, and we might even actually...
The binge might immediately be, um, proceeded by really focused work or something really productive, and that's often us running away from the truth, right? Trying to hide it.
And then we say something like, "I'll start again tomorrow," or, "I'll start again on Monday," and then we repeat this cycle, okay? And I guess the key point here is that the binge isn't the only issue.
I mean, that's the consequence of not dealing with the issue, but the secrecy is what keeps this alive.
And, and when we feel all of these feelings, it's-- we might not even be intentionally trying to keep the secret, but the idea is that it is a secret because we're not talking to anybody about it, so it lives within us.
There's many books written on this, but there's a whole conversation around metaphysical health consequences, which is that when you, when you keep beliefs, when you keep trauma, when you keep feelings in and you try and contain them and suppress them and never verbalize them or release them from your body, is that they can cause illness and disease, and they can absolutely cause cravings and binge eating.
And so what we wanna do in this scenario is we wanna start speaking aloud, and this can be confronting.
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