The Intrinsic Wisdom of Bingeing
By Lindsay Birchfield (they/them), Center for Discovery's National Director for Virtual Programming & Innovation.
There’s a quiet kind of magic in marcescence—the way some trees keep their dry, faded leaves all winter long instead of releasing them like the rest. Arborists aren’t exactly sure why this happens. Some think it protects against hungry animals. Others say it slows down the tree’s nutrient loss or keeps branches moist for next season’s buds. Perhaps none of these theories tell the whole story, and maybe that’s the point. Despite not exactly understanding this phenomenon, trees keep surviving and growing anyway.
Seeing Wisdom in Unexpected Places
As a dietitian who works with eating disorders (and definitely not an arborist), I’ve always been struck by this tree magic. To me, marcescence feels like the tree’s way of saying, I’m doing something that makes sense, even if you can’t see it yet. This mirrors how disordered eating behaviors often serve hidden and sometimes surprising purposes in support of a person’s well-being. Disordered eating often emerges as a form of adaptation—an ingenious way of coping, connecting, or protecting oneself in maladaptive environments.
Bingeing as Communication
This understanding shapes how I think about bingeing. A mentor of mine describes eating disorder behaviors as the body’s way of speaking its truth— demonstrating what it has learned about how to stay safe in an unpredictable world. Bingeing can be an excellent communicator of these dynamics. Bingeing often carries both comfort and fear, much like a relationship with someone who has been both protective and inconsistent. A binge might start as a search for safety, familiarity, or relief, only to become tangled with distress or shame afterward. Our relationship with food, like our relationships with people, can reflect what we’ve learned about safety, attachment, and care.
Beyond a Single Explanation
Yet bingeing is often flattened into a single explanation—treated as a symptom, a problem to fix, or a failure of will. That narrow view overlooks the deeper intelligence at work. Just like marcescence appears across many species of trees for different reasons, bingeing shows up across many forms of eating disorders—not just Binge Eating Disorder. It may arise in response to food scarcity, overwhelm, sensory overload, or emotional deprivation. It might be the body’s attempt to self-soothe, to rebel against injustice, or to stay connected to the self in moments when everything else feels unstable. Bingeing might be an attempt to express a boundary that words have not yet found. Bingeing could serve one or all these functions. Like the marcescent leaves, these behaviors resist a single explanation—each layer serving a distinct and meaningful purpose.
Curiosity Over Pathology
That’s why eating disorder treatment frameworks matter. If we start with pathology, we’re likely to miss the forest for the trees. But if we start from curiosity—and assume good intent—we can begin to see the wisdom embedded in even the most painful patterns. Each binge might hold a clue about what the body and heart are trying to manage when it comes to safety, regulation, expression, or connection. This understanding can shift recovery from a project of “stopping” to a process of listening and discovering. When we slow down to listen without judgment, often something new and compassionate starts to grow.
Lessons from Nature
As meaning makers, we often long for clear answers and narratives to explain causation. But life—like nature—rarely works that neatly. Trees don’t wait for scientific consensus to adapt; they respond instinctively to the demands of their environment. They hold on when needed, then let go when the conditions are right. Those who binge are frequently making wise adjustments to both their external and internal environment, using the best skills they have at the time. Recognizing that behaviors are trying to work for us, even imperfectly, is often where healing begins.
Mystery as a Portal for Healing
Marcescence reminds us that mystery can be a portal for a self-discovery process. The trees aren’t malfunctioning; they’re responding to the world around them in nuanced, adaptive ways we may not yet understand. Bingeing, like marcescence, may be part of a person’s ongoing response to stress, culture, or trauma—a way their body and mind are trying to balance complexity and need.
In the end, leaning into the mystery of bingeing—much like appreciating the mystery of marcescence—asks us to embrace complexity over certainty. It challenges us not to pathologize what we cannot yet explain and to trust that every persistent behavior has roots that make sense within its context. Trees remind us that mystery can be a form of adaptive resilience. Perhaps embracing uncertainty—both in nature and within ourselves—is one of the most healing acts we can offer.
Lindsay Birchfield (they/them), or “LB” as many of their colleagues refer to them, is CFD’s National Director for Virtual Programming & Innovation. While they wear many hats at CFD, one of the meaningful parts of their role includes overseeing CFD’s inclusive binge eating program, Path to Peace. CFD’s Path to Peace program believes healing happens inside of safe relationships, thus, the program invests efforts to be accessible healing environments that foster connection and community.
