Seriously, people endlessly ponder, "Why did I binge just now?" They look for all kinds of reasons but really, the reason is quite simple... your brain is wired to do it. Now, you may have wired it that way yourself inadvertently or perhaps you were born with it, it doesn't matter. Bingeing releases endorphins and probably other chemicals that make you feel good. It's like smoking a cigarette, shooting up, or taking a drink if you're an alcoholic.

There's only one reason for it... because you've got an addiction and that's what happens when you're addicted. The lizard wants it. You don't need to go looking for repressed memories or attribute things to emotions and a bad childhood. It's just a waste of time trying to explain these very low level primitive urges, brought on by neural circuitry, on much higher level brain function. The only blame we have is that we haven't used our higher reasoning to outsmart the lizard.

That's where higher level reasoning comes into play. How do I make sure I don't do this again? How do I avoid that trigger? What do I do if I can't avoid that trigger in my environment?

My favorite techniques are:

Remove triggers from my environment (my home, especially). This is huge and what I give credit to low carb to. However, it doesn't help me outside of environments I'm controlling quite so much.

When I walk into a store that triggers me (convenience stores), I've already walked myself through the scenario before hand and walked myself through the consequences of failure.

Deflection: I want Doritos, but a fresh stick of gum or a coffee with cream (rare treat) would feel pretty special to me and make resisting the other stuff much easier. If I'm going to eat at a friend's house, I might bring the dessert which will be low carb and crazy delicious.

When I eat XYZ I start to crave things. So don't eat XYZ.

Avoid triggering places, people, situations when hungry. Have snacks on hand so you don't get to that point. Acknowledge your weaknesses. I know damn well if I eat one chip, I'm going to eat them until they're gone. So don't eat that first one.

Understand failure. Failure reinforces the neural wiring that causes me to do this, and want to do this, that makes me trigger more strongly the next time I walk into a convenience store, or see a bag of chips or whatever. Understanding what failure does to your body in terms of your health is really good too. Taking another step towards premature aging and diabetes and so on. Reading Good Calories, Bad Calories did a lot to stop my cheating.

Then when you are about to enter a triggering situation, you get your higher reasoning to walk through the results of a failure and you can probably avoid it.

Time. Finally, the less you binge, the less you will want to binge. Those neural circuits degrade when they're not constantly reinforced. I guess this falls under "Understanding failure".

Hormones. Not having insulin and blood sugar pushing you around (by eating too many carbs) makes this soooo much easier.