Binge eating: six minutes before it starts

Q: Where else can I get help?

The SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential, open 24 hours, and can refer you to treatment near you: 1‑800‑662‑4357 . If you are in crisis, call or text 988 .

Open it when

You are at the fridge and you are not hungry. It is after work and you have not eaten properly all day. Everyone is asleep and the kitchen is quiet. You already started, and the rest of the night feels decided. You are back from the gym and something has flipped. You quit something else recently and this arrived instead.

If you are in it right now, the whole sequence is written out here, step by step, and you do not need the app to follow it.

When it started after you quit something else

This is common enough that people search for it in exactly those words: bingeing that started after quitting drinking, after quitting smoking, after quitting vaping.

Every app built for binge eating is built only for binge eating. If the same six months included a vape you put down and a bottle you stopped opening, that is two more apps, two more sign-ups, and two more things on your phone with names that say what they are for.

Paddle Past never asks what the urge is about. The same six minutes runs for all of it, and there is no field anywhere in the app for naming a behaviour.

That is not a feature we added for this page. It is the reason the app can sit on a home screen without announcing anything about you.

What it does not do

Most of what is on this page is what is missing from it, and each absence is deliberate.

No food log. It does not ask what you ate, before or after. There is nothing to fill in and nothing to look back at with a sinking feeling.
No calories, no weight, no goals. None of those numbers exist in the app.
No streak. Nothing counts days, so nothing resets to zero after a bad night. A counter that punishes you on your worst evening is not a tool.
No notifications. Ever. An app that pings you about food is putting food in your head on its own schedule.
No account. No email, no sign up, nothing to create.

What the evidence says, and what it does not

The exercises come from research on craving. None of it was run on binge eating specifically, and that gap is worth stating rather than glossing.

A short visual task

Thirty-one people, measured in daily life. Three minutes of a visual task brought craving down about 14 points on a 100-point scale against a control task. Food was among the targets.

Skorka-Brown et al., 2015, Appetite. Limits: small trial, undergraduates, effect below the conventional medium threshold.

The only study with a behavioural outcome

Forty-eight undergraduate women used a hand-held device showing visual noise whenever a food craving hit. Craving intensity fell about 23 percent, and craving-related eating fell too. It is the one study in the set that measured what people did rather than what they reported feeling.

Kemps and Tiggemann, 2013, Appetite. Limits: 48 people, all women, all undergraduates.

The full evidence page has sample sizes, effect sizes, and a list of everything we have not verified.

FAQ

Do I need a diagnosis to use this?

No. There is no assessment, no questionnaire and no threshold to cross. If the word binge is the one you use about your evenings, that is enough. If you would not use it, the app still runs the same.

What if I have already started?

Then it is not too late, and it is not a failed night. Even partway through the evening, the same sequence starts on one tap. Paddle Past keeps no record of your sessions, so there is nothing to reset and no lecture.

Is it going to tell me to eat something else instead?

No. Substitution advice is cut from the app entirely, and that decision was made specifically because it is a bad idea here. There is nothing in it suggesting a snack, a drink or an alternative.

Is this treatment for binge eating disorder?

No, and it does not present itself as one. It is a technique for the few minutes when an urge peaks.

If binges are frequent, or you are restricting between them, or it is taking up more of your day than you want, that is worth taking to a clinician who treats eating disorders. Your regular doctor can usually make the referral, and it is a treatable thing.

Where else can I get help?

The SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential, open 24 hours, and can refer you to treatment near you: 1‑800‑662‑4357. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.

Six minutes between you and the kitchen.