We’re in our wellness era, whether we want to be or not. “What I eat in a day” videos, green smoothies, and fitness influencers are dominating our social media feeds, and somewhere along the way, having a “healthy” relationship with food came to mean having a perfect life.

Unfortunately, the wellness culture that promises health and transformation is fueling one of the most common (and misunderstood) eating disorders in America. Binge-eating disorder (BED) now affects about 3 percent of the U.S. population, making it the most prevalent eating disorder in the country—and diet culture is to blame.

We can’t have this conversation without giving a nod to the restraint model. This is what we know: Dietary restriction (also called caloric deprivation) results in hunger, which leads to a biologically driven binge. My previous mentor liked to say that our bodies don’t care if we are happy; they want us to survive. So just as depriving your body of fluids creates extreme thirst (our body’s way of urging us to drink water), depriving your body of calories creates extreme hunger, and our body........

© Psychology Today