Maybe you have had this kind of experience where you allowed yourself to eat just a little more and you felt you lost control, couldn't stop eating but weren't even really tasting it or enjoying it, feeling hugely guilty afterward. Maybe you've just felt the urge to binge. Either way, this feeling can make you afraid to eat more. You might be wondering if you'll be able to stop once you start eating more...

How it works
It might help to understand where this feeling is coming from.
What happens is that your body hasn't been fed for so long, it's gotten used to that. It stopped expecting to get enough food, and it stopped asking for more, because that didn't work anyway. Now, when you start eating a little more, your body wants to take advantage of that now that it can. It wants to be healthy and in order to do that, it needs food. It cannot see into the future and know that you are planning to keep on feeding it. Since it learned that you don't listen when it asks for food, it tries to make the message as obvious and urgent as possible, to increase its chances of being listened to. And that message can result in bingeing.
What adds to this, is that you have been eating so little for so long, that normal amounts of food, the amounts your body needs, seem like a lot to you. Everything that's more that what you planned to eat, you have labeled as WRONG. When you eat something labeled as wrong, even if it's just a little bite, you feel guilty. You might feel like all is lost for that day, you overate anyway, so you might as well have more, it doesn't matter either way. It's as if one extra bite, a little more than you planned, screws up your entire day because it was forbidden. But one bite is just one bite. If you felt the need to eat it, that's all right. Your body wouldn't ask for it if it didn't need it.
Of course I'm not telling you to give in to this kind of thing and just eat until you burst. Your body doesn't really need THAT. It just needs a little more and since it usually gets less than it asks for, it aims high.

Being bored, feeling scared or sad, feeling lonely... feelings like that can also cause this urge to binge. When you feel this way you can be tempted to turn to food, not because you are hungry or because you just feel like eating it, but to make the feeling go away, to give you a sense of comfort or to distract you. This is a different kind of bingeing and requires a different approach. There are two things you need to do: deal with that feeling, and distract yourself in a different way. Dealing with how you feel, you can do that by calling your best friend, or writing somebody an email, meeting somebody, writing down what's bothering you, or just having a good cry. Distracting yourself means doing something fun, something you like to do, like going for a walk, seeing a movie, reading a book, whatever makes you feel better. These things are a better way to deal with how you feel, and they won't make you feel bad afterward.

How to handle it
What can help to actually eat something when you feel this way. Your body is trying to tell you that even though you've been eating more, and it feels like a whole lot to you, it's not enough. Listen to that signal. When you do, your body can start learning that it doesn't have to send extreme signals anymore and this bingeing urge will go away. It is the hardest in the beginning, but after a while your body will learn that you listen to signals even when they are a little more subtle. It just takes time for your body to learn this, just as it takes time for you to learn to listen to it. This isn't an all-or-nothing situation. Eating (almost) nothing isn't right. Bingeing all the time isn't right. You and your body will have to find the right balance.
Another reason to allow yourself to have a little something, is that things that are forbidden are all the more attractive. That's true for most things, isn't? Try and tell yourself that if you're hungry, or craving something, that's allowed. Don't label food as forbidden or wrong. That way, when you have a little more than planned, you don't have to feel guilty. Remind yourself that your body is asking for food because it needs it, not because it's trying to get you fat.
Maybe you're thinking, easier said than done. If I give in to this feeling and eat just a little bit, I won't be able to stop. I'm not strong enough. Well, let me tell you, if you were strong enough to starve yourself, you're certainly strong enough to feed yourself. All that willpower and strength you used to keep yourself from eating, you can now use to keep yourself from really bingeing. When you eat a little more than you planned, don't think all is lost. You can stop then, no panic. You ate a bit more than planned but that's all right, you probably needed it. There is no need to take it into the extreme because there IS a difference between a little more than you planned and a lot more than you planned.

Of course it's hard to distinguish between the two types of binges / bingeing-urges. You are the only one who knows whether your body is actually asking for food and just asking loudly, or whether your mind is asking for food so it can avoid dealing with how you feel. It might help to make a list of feelings and what triggered them, situation you know make you feel bad. Also list people you can call and things you like to do and next time you feel this way: contact somebody and do something!

If you did binge
Whatever you do, DON'T don't throw up, take laxatives, diuretics or diet pills. Why not? Aside from the fact that purging damages your body, it will only make the urge to binge stronger. Your body will learn that it cannot trust you and will give those extreme signals even more frequently.
Also, ask yourself if it was really all that much? Often, it feels more than it is. And what you've eaten isn't much compared to 'normal', only compared to what you had planned...
If you did binge, apparently your body needed it. Forgive yourself for 'overeating'. Let go of it. You're not a bad person. Everybody eats too much every once in a while. Don't spend days trying to make up or compensate for this, either by eating less or exercising more, it will only make it worse. Eating more than you need won't make you fat overnight.
Ask yourself what caused you to binge, take inventory and figure out what you can do differently next time, whether it's eating more during the day so you won't be hungry at night, or dealing with your feelings in a different way.

Remember that making changes takes time, and that you're allowed to make mistakes, you're only human. Nobody is perfect and nobody changes over night. Forgive yourself when you feel you handled something poorly. Just try and to better next time.