Short answer: Not inherently. Research shows binge eating and disordered eating risk comes mostly from rigid dieting, perfectionism, poor body image, and emotional instability—not the calorie deficit itself. Flexible, psychologically healthy dieting is generally safe.
Here’s the thing: dieting can be done safely. But it can also harm your relationship with food. And the difference between those two outcomes has almost nothing to do with whether you’re in a calorie deficit and everything to do with how you create that deficit.
Don’t worry, this will all make sense by the end.
To begin, let’s look at a recent review paper that asked, ‘Does restriction lead to binge eating?’, then we’ll look at the two types of dietary restraint (and why one is better), take a brief detour to see if tracking (in any capacity) can have a negative impact, and wrap things up with some recommendations on a few ways you can adopt a healthier mindset to tracking and dieting.
Does dieting cause binge eating?
First, let’s clarify what we mean by binge eating. We’re talking about consuming objectively large amounts of food in a short period while feeling entirely out of control—it’s not “I planned on eating two slices of pizza but ate four.” It’s usually followed by guilt, shame, and the general feeling that you’ve ruined everything.
There’s debate about whether dieting itself might cause this kind of behaviour or whether other factors, like stress or perfectionism, play a bigger role.
That brings us to a recent scoping review that examined 80 studies to see if restrictive dieting leads to binge eating.
Here’s what they found:
About 70% of studies showed a link between restrictive dieting and increased binge eating. But—and this is crucial—it wasn’t just the restriction itself. The connection was strongest when:
- The diet was rigid, extreme, or consisted of arbitrary rules
- People were already stressed or emotionally unstable
- High perfectionism, body dissatisfaction, or emotional instability were in play
The other 30% of studies found no increase in binge eating, and sometimes there was a decrease; this was especially true when people used flexible dieting approaches.
So what’s going on here?
The relationship between dietary restriction and binge eating turns out to be more complex than the simple narrative some people like to push (surprise!).
Restriction alone in otherwise healthy individuals doesn’t appear to universally trigger binge eating disorder (BED).
Instead, the research points to an interaction effect: dietary restriction combined with negative psychological factors—such as high impulsivity, negative affect, body dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem—creates the highest binge risk.
Additionally, the type of restriction matters. Rigid restriction—extreme calorie cuts, eliminating entire food groups, treating dietary rules like religious doctrine—carries far more risk than flexible approaches that acknowledge you’re a human being who occasionally wants to deepthroat a cookie (or five).
Perhaps most importantly, factors like disinhibition (the “fuck it” effect when you break a diet rule) and negative urgency (doing impulsive things when you’re upset) often matter more than the restriction itself.
The bottom line: If you’re psychologically healthy, emotionally stable, and using a flexible approach, restriction probably won’t send you into a binge spiral. But if you’re already struggling with perfectionism, poor body image, high impulsivity, or emotional regulation issues, then dieting can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Next, let’s talk about the two types of dietary restraint that can give us some insight into healthier ways to approach dietary restriction.
The two types of restraint
If you want to lose fat, you have to create a calorie deficit – that is, the amount of energy you consume needs to be less than the amount of energy you burn over time. But sustaining a calorie deficit requires restraint. In the context of dieting, there are two ‘types’ of restraint:
Rigid restraint: You have ‘rigid’ rules around your diet, and any deviation from these rules is automatically seen as a failure. For example, you can only eat certain ‘diet foods’, you’re constantly trying to hit your macros perfectly, and any deviation from this ‘perfect’ plan is viewed as a personal failure.
Flexible restraint: In contrast, flexible restraint involves eating a wide variety of foods without labelling them as good or bad, giving yourself a calorie or macronutrient range rather than strict numbers, and accepting you won’t be perfect all the time, but recognising any deviations from your diet and training won’t impact your goals in the long term as long as you prioritise consistency over perfection.
Both approaches can lead to weight loss – at least in the short term – but they differ in their long-term sustainability and impact on a person’s relationship with food.
Overly strict diets may feel productive, but they can create tension, guilt, and a loss of control. In contrast, flexible restraint in dieting can encourage better adherence and fewer emotional ups and downs, leading to more sustainable weight change.
Wait, what about tracking? Isn’t that like, super bad?
Here’s where people lose their minds: “Tracking nutrition/weighing yourself/monitoring anything = eating disorder waiting to happen!”
And yeah, observational studies seem to show that people who track more also report more eating disorder symptoms.
But not so fast––correlation doesn’t equal causation, and observational studies can’t tell us whether tracking causes disordered eating or whether people who exhibit disordered behaviours are more likely to engage in tracking.
This is where randomised controlled trials come in, and the research here would suggest otherwise. Just to highlight a few studies that have looked at this:
Jospe et al. assigned 250 adults with overweight/obesity to one of the following conditions for 12 months: daily weighing, tracking their diet via MyFitnessPal, hunger training, monthly check-ins, or a control condition. There were no meaningful differences in eating disorder scores, binge eating, or compensatory behaviours across any group.
Steinberg et al. found that daily weighing didn’t worsen depression, anorexic thoughts, or disordered eating.
Bailey & Waller experimentally increased body checking and mainly found null results. Adverse effects only showed up in women who already had unhealthy eating attitudes at baseline.
Dorling et al. published a report summarising the effects of calorie restriction on eating disorder symptoms from the CALERIE 2 study (a 2-year randomised control trial on caloric restriction in normal-weight, healthy men and women). They found that two years of calorie restriction didn’t aggravate binge eating symptoms. Also reporting the percentage of weight lost was correlated with an improvement in vigour, mood, quality of life, and self-image.
Hahn et al. assigned female college students with no eating disorder history to track their diet with MyFitnessPal versus a control group for one month. There were no differences in eating disorder risk, mental health, or health behaviours between groups.
Hagan et al. studied 840 adults and found that dietary restraint driven by anxiety about diet and obsessive focus on weight control was strongly linked to binge eating and higher BMI. But systematically monitoring caloric intake—things like adhering to caloric limits and consciously choosing lower-calorie foods had no significant correlation with binge eating.
Finally, Stewart and colleagues dug through 50 years of research on dieting, dietary restraint, and caloric restriction. They concluded that:
Neither the intention to diet nor actual CR [calorie restriction] appears to reliably result in ED [eating disorder] development.
Also noting:
Healthy eating, exercise, and appropriate energy balance behaviors, without the promotion of negative body image, shaming or stigma, can be safe and effective for the enhancement of physical and mental health.
In short, tracking isn’t inherently harmful. However, it can become harmful when combined with rigid rules, perfectionism, and emotional over-investment in the numbers, which is the rigid restraint profile discussed earlier.
The research on tracking reveals something important: the same behaviour can have opposite effects depending on your psychological relationship with it. Nowhere is this clearer than in how you think about food restriction.
“I Can’t” vs “I Choose Not To”
In a review titled “The Psychology of Food Cravings: the Role of Food Deprivation,” the author noted that when you deprive people of foods they love, their cravings for those foods increase, at least in the short-term.
But, studies lasting several weeks to several months find the opposite:
Weight-loss studies in overweight individuals consistently show that caloric restriction leads to decreases in food cravings.
The author explains the food cravings people experience in the initial stages of starting a diet are learned responses. And the longer you limit exposure to these foods, the less intense those cravings become.
So reducing the frequency of craved foods can help reduce cravings over time, but only when done in the proper psychological context.
This might sound like it contradicts flexible restraint, but it doesn’t. A key part of flexible restraint is whether you’re making the decision based on what works for you or following someone else’s rules. To illustrate:
Imposed rule:
- “I can’t eat ice cream because carbs/sugar/[insert food group] is bad”
- Following arbitrary rules because the internet/diet book/influencer said so
- Doing something that feels outside of your control
Your decision:
- “I choose to eat ice cream less often because when I have it in the house, I struggle with portion control, and it makes sticking to the deficit harder”
- Making decisions based on what works for you
- You’re making a choice that helps you move toward a valued outcome
A practical example of rigid vs flexible restraint
Let’s say you love ice cream–because who doesn’t love ice cream–and you’re trying to lose fat.
Rigid approach: You read that sugar is “toxic” and decide ice cream is now a forbidden food. You white-knuckle it for two weeks, constantly thinking about ice cream. Then one night you crack, eat an entire pint, feel like a failure, and think “fuck it, I’ve already blown it” and eat another pint plus half a box of cookies. You then spend the next few days berating yourself for being a big dumb dumb who can’t stick to a diet, only to restart this same restrictive diet approach a week later.
Flexible approach: You notice that when you buy ice cream to keep at home, you tend to eat more of it than fits your calorie target. Not only does this make adherence harder, but it’s also stopping you from achieving a goal you value. So you decide you’ll only have ice cream when you’re out with friends or as a planned treat, but you’re not keeping it at home right now because that setup isn’t working. You still have ice cream occasionally, enjoy it without guilt, and your cravings for it actually decrease over time because you’re not creating a forbidden-fruit dynamic.
In both of these examples, the behaviour is the same–eat less ice cream–but one has a significantly better psychological outcome and increases the chance of you achieving the goal.
Now that we’ve addressed the relationship between dieting and binge eating, the difference between rigid and flexible restraint, and why your psychological approach to restriction matters more than the restriction itself, let’s wrap up by looking at ways to implement the above.
How to diet so you don’t fuck it up
Prioritise adherence over perfection
The goal isn’t to hit your exact calorie target every single day. The goal is to be in a deficit on average over time. This means:
- Use calorie and macro ranges rather than exact targets (e.g., 1800-2000 calories rather than 1,847 calories or 100-120g of protein over 123g protein)
- Avoid the “fuck it” mindset where one deviation results in throwing everything out because you’ve “already ruined everything.” The irony of this mindset is that it’s rarely one day that ruins your progress, but rather all the days that come after.
Use tracking as data, not judgment
If you track your food or bodyweight, the numbers are information–not a reflection of your self-worth or character.
- The scale went up? That’s data about water retention, food volume, hormones, etc.
- You ate 2,200 calories when you planned for 1,900? That’s information you can use to adjust tomorrow or to identify patterns (e.g., “I always overeat on days when I skip breakfast”).
Build in flexibility from day one
If your plan assumes perfect conditions, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure every time life slaps you in the face.
Instead, if you go into it accepting that things will be imperfect and have strategies in place for when they inevitably are, you give yourself the best chance to stay in the game long enough for progress to happen. Practically speaking, this means building in flexibility for social events, travel, weeks where stress and workload are higher, etc.
Bottom line
You can pursue fat loss goals while maintaining a healthy relationship with food. The key is choosing flexibility over rigidity, autonomy over imposed rules, and using data to inform your decisions and habits, not as a moral scorecard.
Important caveat: This article is aimed at people with no pre-existing eating disorders. If you have a history of disordered eating or are concerned about your eating behaviours, then the ‘safe dieting’ research doesn’t apply to you, and you should talk to your health professional before starting any type of diet.
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