Breaking Free from Binge Eating: Brain Over Binge Author Kathryn Hansen on Shame-Free Recovery | Anew Ep 49

Are you tired of feeling trapped in the cycle of binge eating and dieting? Do you wonder why willpower alone never seems to work? In this powerful episode of ANEW Body Insight, host Dr. Supatra Tovar sits down with Kathryn Hansen, author of Brain Over Binge and host of the Brain Over Binge Podcast, to uncover a science-backed, shame-free approach to overcoming binge eating.

Kathryn shares her personal journey of breaking free from binge eating without focusing on emotional wounds or deep psychological issues. She explains why binge eating is not a personal failing but a natural brain response that can be rewired. Her approach challenges the conventional belief that healing requires years of therapy, instead offering a practical, neuroscience-based method to regain control.

Dr. Tovar, a clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, and fitness expert, adds her expert insight into how diet culture and societal influences create a dysfunctional relationship with food, making binge eating more likely. Together, they explore:

✅ The truth about binge eating – Why it’s a habit wired into the brain, not an emotional disorder
✅ How to break free from the binge-restrict cycle – Ditch dieting for good and stop obsessive food thoughts
✅ The neuroscience of binge eating – Understanding the brain’s reward system and how it drives urges
✅ Practical steps to stop binge eating today – Simple, actionable tools you can start using immediately
✅ How shame and guilt fuel binge eating – And how to free yourself from self-blame

For more information about Kathryn Hansen  here are their social media channels link:   https://brainoverbinge.com/about/,  https://www.instagram.com/brain_over_binge/?hl=en,   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL0636ip594MIihqFeNHmrw,  https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B004LHPXNM , https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-hansen-48095822. 

This episode is a must-listen for anyone struggling with food, weight, or body image. Whether you’re battling binge eating disorder, emotional eating, or just feel out of control around food, this conversation will help you understand your brain’s role in binge eating and take back your power.

🎧 Listen now to start your journey toward food freedom!

🔗 Link in bio to listen and watch the full episode.

Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

0:00 Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:01

She challenges conventional therapy approaches by teaching brain based concepts to help others stop binge eating for good. Through her books, podcast, and online course. Kathryn provides practical science back tools for recovery, focusing on self empowerment without delving into emotional or psychological complexities. Okay, so your journey with bulimia and your recovery is very inspiring. I actually heard of your book through a client of mine who was reading your book and then I picked up your book. Can you share what initially motivated you to write Brain Over

Kathryn Hansen: 0:03

So it really renewed that commitment to write the book when I recovered. And I did that and I published it in 2011. And yeah, that was really the story behind it. I think the main. concept, it's just that you're not broken. Nothing is deeply wrong with you. That was a main thing I learned in therapy that you have emotions you can't cope with, or you have some sort of problem from your childhood that is manifesting in binge eating, or you're struggling with all these problems like depression, anxiety. Loneliness, you know, these different things, low self esteem, and you have to fix all that in order to stop this behavior of binging that's really ruining your life. So that was a path I was on for a long time of trying to fix those other things and really thinking something was deeply, deeply wrong with me emotionally, mentally. Even spiritually, and when I kind of redefined things in terms of the brain, I was able to recover rather quickly. So I think people responded to the fact of like, this isn't such a deep, deep problem. This is something that you actually can recover from in an efficient way without needing to solve all of your life's problems. Yeah, I like that you brought up the primitive brain because that's a big part of what I teach. That most of the time, the first episodes of binging develop due to dieting and due to food restriction. Now it can develop from overeating that increases over time and eventually becomes binge eating, but for now let's stay on the path of dieting and food restriction. There's been research that shows that this creates a primitive response in your brain for survival. It's a survival mechanism that when you are food deprived, your brain is going to make food the ultimate priority. You're going to think about food more than you ever have, and anyone who has gone on a diet knows this. it's all in that primitive brain system, that really ancient part of our brain that doesn't really have a lot of rational thought. It just senses when our survival is in danger. And it motivates us to do things to help us survive. So it really makes food your primary interest. And when I thought, I thought about food more than I ever had in my life. I wanted to eat more than I ever had in my life. And eventually that culminated in my first binge where I just felt so out of control and ate more than I ever had eaten in my entire life. And it's this mechanism where your primitive brain kind of takes over in that moment to help you survive. then as you do that, it gives you a reward, it, it makes you feel good temporarily to eat all this food, of course, like when you're, have self imposed starvation and then you eat a lot of food, it is going to be sort of a pleasure process in the moment, of course, it makes you feel terrible after, but that cycle gets rewarded in the brain. And then your brain seeks to repeat that, and it becomes like any other habit, addiction, that you seek out that pleasure, you seek out that dopamine response, and it becomes wired into that primitive part of your brain, because the primitive brain is in charge of your survival, it's in charge of your habits, it's in charge of your pleasure, so it really becomes this repeating cycle where you want this behavior. that you know is bad for you and you know is ultimately harming your life, but those urges just keep coming up in the primitive brain and driving you towards something you know you don't want to be doing. There's been research that shows that this creates a primitive response in your brain for survival. It's a survival mechanism that when you are food deprived, your brain is going to make food the ultimate priority. You're going to think about food more than you ever have, and anyone who has gone on a diet knows this. it's all in that primitive brain system, that really ancient part of our brain that doesn't really have a lot of rational thought. It just senses when our survival is in danger. And it motivates us to do things to help us survive. So it really makes food your primary interest. And when I thought, I thought about food more than I ever had in my life. I wanted to eat more than I ever had in my life. And eventually that culminated in my first binge where I just felt so out of control and ate more than I ever had eaten in my entire life. And it's this mechanism where your primitive brain kind of takes over in that moment to help you survive. then as you do that, it gives you a reward, it, it makes you feel good temporarily to eat all this food, of course, like when you're, have self imposed starvation and then you eat a lot of food, it is going to be sort of a pleasure process in the moment, of course, it makes you feel terrible after, but that cycle gets rewarded in the brain. And then your brain seeks to repeat that, and it becomes like any other habit, addiction, that you seek out that pleasure, you seek out that dopamine response, and it becomes wired into that primitive part of your brain, because the primitive brain is in charge of your survival, it's in charge of your habits, it's in charge of your pleasure, so it really becomes this repeating cycle where you want this behavior. that you know is bad for you and you know is ultimately harming your life, but those urges just keep coming up in the primitive brain and driving you towards something you know you don't want to be doing.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:08

to what you have. And so it really slows down your thermogenesis. It suppresses it and makes sure that it's holding on to the very calorically dense fat molecules. And then it's, you know, slowly letting go of water and a muscle mass, but it's actually keeping the score the whole time. It's actually a proportional measure that's being recorded by the brain and by the body. And that's what usually slingshots you to binging. And trying to, your body's desperately trying to go back. to the weight it was before. How did it for you, turn into more of a habit? If it really wasn't about what's gone on in the past for you, and I'll agree with you, I think for some people it is rooted in history, it is rooted in some deeper psychological issues, for some people it is really about what's the restriction binge compensatory cycle primarily.

Kathryn Hansen: 0:10

I'm not saying don't, but we can't ignore this primitive process in our brain and how habits get formed and what calorie deprivation does to our body. So You know, everyone has issues when I like to tell people like life is hard. But it still doesn't mean you're broken. Like you can look at these primitive responses. Yeah, for sure. And last thing to that, I was so young and I know that that's the case with so many people is you're so young and you don't know what the dieting is doing to you. And then again, go to therapy and oh my gosh, something's wrong. Instead of really, educating the patient that dieting is the problem. And even though it's a harmful behavior that causes pain in your life in the moment that you're relieving yourself from starvation, it does feel good. It is highly rewarding. All the neurochemicals are firing that make you feel like, Oh my gosh, this is the right thing to do in the moment. There are some differences there, but the body and brain actually react as if you need the alcohol to survive. And the same thing happens with binging. Of course we need food to survive, but we don't need massive amounts of it. But that's how the brain and body come to respond as if you need massive amounts of food. Yeah. And I always want to give credit to the book that helped me the most, which was Rational Recovery by Jack Trimpey. And it's a much older book and it was about alcoholism. I just mentioned alcohol, alcoholism and drug use. And he talked about the beast brain. And it was a very simple way that he described it, that you have this primitive force inside of you, but it's not you. from it without really being able to describe what I was doing. The urges were the direct cause of the binging. Like, all of the emotions, any stress, all the childhood issues, whatever, that was indirectly related, maybe in some ways, but it was this urge that made me feel like binging was necessary for survival. That was the direct cause. So I had to just learn to recognize the urges in any and all situations, regardless of whatever emotions were going on, and then stay detached from them, stay separated, be able to observe the urge and not act on it.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:17

Absolutely. You're basically describing the concept of mindfulness, which I think, you know, I resonate very much with it's a big part of my book. I think when we raise our conscious awareness And we look at what we're doing objectively. We can then take the emotion out of it and we can see the behavior for exactly what it is and then be able to kind of rationally decide whether or not we want to engage in that behavior. They can, you know, often equate it with vomiting. And I think that you did also engage in that behavior, but your, but your compensatory behavior was mainly exercise. Can you give our listeners a better picture of what that actually looked like?

Kathryn Hansen: 0:19

It's almost like your higher brain comes back on board after your lower brain had taken over your lower brain is what I call the primitive brain. And you feel like you have to do something to kind of make it right. But the problem is it doesn't make it right at all. It compounds the problem. It's a dangerous behavior. But it is in some way a way to try to undo the damage. But like I said, it really just causes more damage. So I did try to self induce vomiting. thankfully it never worked for me. There's the way maybe my physiology is. I never could do it. So I turned to exercising as my way of trying to burn the calories. I mean, there was a point in my bulimia where I was exercising seven to eight hours on days after binges. And it was like completely exhausting. I mean, it took up my entire life. I would bring my, like, college books and put them on the elliptical and just ride all day and study. And it was awful. It was terrible.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:20

What was it like, if you could just describe, I, I, I can only be on the treadmill for like, like a mile, and I'm like, oh, that's enough. What did it actually feel like to be there hour after hour? Did your feet go numb? Were you you know, injuring yourself. What was the experience actually like?

Kathryn Hansen: 0:21

And it's, I know people feel the same way about self induced vomiting or taking laxatives. Like, even though it's awful, they feel compelled to do it to try to undo the damage of the binge, but it just creates a bigger problem.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:22

Absolutely. I think that that is one of the biggest myths and you know to to hear that you went through that and you know saw people Responding more when you were thinner speaks to that kind of myth. Did you ever notice anyone else in the gym struggling like you were?

Kathryn Hansen: 0:23

Yeah. I published it just independently back in 2011 and I would mail the individual books from, my house when they were ordered for my website, I wasn't even on Amazon at the time. So I remember the first email I got from someone that's that said, Oh, this has changed my life. It's completely turned around the way I view things and I've stopped binging. 5 stars on Amazon or something like that. Like, so there's negative ones there too. And and people who, you know, it is a controversial message in some ways, like, and I've really tried, I've published a second edition of Brain Over Binge that is a little more, tries to make a bridge to therapy a little more.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:25

And, you know. Being a therapist, reading your book, you know, and first hearing about it, I was like, Oh, that's a little scary to think about. That, you know, this is, this is a book that's absolutely rejecting therapy. But when I read through it, what I realized was the overwhelming message that you were getting was that you were broken. And it may have deeper rooted, you know, background, or it may just be coming from something like dieting. You know, if we, as therapists, are giving that message, I think that we need to do a little bit better. And so, even if you You know kind of gotten that backlash. I think that that's important and I see, you know, you you creating the second book to help bridge that but I think it I think it was important to say and I think that's why it's resonated with so many people who've struggled for so long And I think it's really important as a clinician that you adopt more than just the kind of, you know, broken, you know, therapy person model. You need to employ behavioral techniques. You need to speak to somebody on a logical level too. You also need to speak to them on a somatic level and really help them understand and get in contact with their body. So, I do think you're teaching people no matter what, you know, if you received a little bit of a negative feedback from the therapy world.