Binge Eating Disorder

Binge eating disorder is what some people also think of as Compulsive Eating. Hmmmmm .... well it's one I seem to have escaped but only just!

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In my yo-yo dieting days I stopped at plenty of corner cafe's and bought a couple donuts and candy bars and wolfed them down in one sitting and felt horrible afterwards.

My car was my private binge bar. Where I could shut myself and food in and the eyes of others out. This was quite common when I was recovering from Anorexia and when I broke one of my many diets.

Here's a rather typical excerpt from my diary dated: 22.6.1990:

Yesterday I sneaked 2 donuts, 2 tex bars, a kit kat, 3 packets of chips and if that wasn't enough I then gorged a huge piece of carrot cake. I could have burst. I gobbbled it all down so fast I didn't even taste it. Now I feel guilty and ashamed and full of self-loathing for my lack of willpower. So much for the 29 kgs (63.8lbs) I've just lost on diet.

But in my case it was sporadic so I can fortunately say that while I did plenty of unhealthy over eating - I somehow managed to avoid the type of regular compulsive over-eating that would have qualified me.Whew!

What is Binge Eating Disorder? You want to know.

It's as if food is everywhere and a binge eater is forever hyper-aware of it all the time.

One of the hallmarks of Binge Eating Disorder is that this disorder is marked by a complete loss of impulse control. Once the start of eating has been triggered (for example by an emotional event), binge eaters feels as if the 'stop switch' disappears.

Typically binge eating happens on a whim. A thought of food enters a binge eaters head (it could be triggered by driving past an a billboard, hearing a food advert on the radio, seeing another eating, passing a food store or so on) and that's it.

They imagine they'll have just one piece of chocolate but inevitably it expands to something else, then something salty and next thing they're surrounded by food wrappers and wrapped in guilt and shame.

The other hallmark of Compulsive eating disorder is that the eating is accompanied by feelings of distress. And unlike Bulimia victims, those people with compulsive eating problems don't purge afterwards. The result is that many experience rapid weight gain.

And just as anorexics can cycle over to bulimia, it's not uncommon for a person to swing between binge eating disorder and bulimia.

How common is Binge Eating Disorder

Wow - doesn't that say something powerful?

For many, dieting interrupted by episodes of binge-eating is very common. I certainly know this was true for me!

I was surprised to see that binge eating disrupts as many as 2% of U.S. men, I didn't expect it to be only 1,5% behind women according to a report in Biological Psychiatry. But thats what a survey of face to face interviews with 3000 adults between 2001 and 2003 over 8 years concluded.

This makes this disorder more common than both Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia.But still, you won't find Binge Eating Disorder in the DSM-IV as an official diagnosis.

What causes Binge Eating disorder?

For those with compulsive eating disorder, Western society is a minefield of triggers. And even best intentions get easily waylaid.

And as any regular dieter can attest, the end of almost every diet is followed with a binge as we reach for all the things we denied and deprived ourselves of on diet.

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