Binge Eating Disorder

While bulimia and anorexia are universally recognized as the two most commonly seen eating disorders, another eating disorder that is fast making its presence felt, especially among Americans, is the binge eating disorder.

More and more people have been diagnosed with binge eating disorder, especially in America. The numbers are higher for women than for men, though it is not unusual to find men who also suffer from binge eating disorder.

What is binge eating disorder?

So now you may ask –what exactly is binge eating disorder? Binge eating disorder is an ailment that makes people work out their anxieties and traumas by feasting on food. They use food as a means of exercising control over their minds.

As in other eating disorders, the patient does not devour large amounts of food in full public knowledge; it usually remains the patient’s secret, until they are diagnosed with the disease.

Binge Eating Disorder vs. Anorexia and Bulimia

There is a major difference between people suffering from binge eating disorder and bulimics, i.e. people suffering from bulimia. While bulimics feel compelled to purge the entire food they have consumed, there is no such urge among people into binging on food.

People suffering from binge eating disorder generally consume very large quantities of food over a very short time span. This time span can be as short as a two-hour period.

This causes a major difference in the way people from binge eating disorder look, as compared to anorexics and bulimics. While anorexics and bulimics are often painfully thin, people suffering from binge eating disorder are usually very much overweight, and could be obese too.

Basically, people with binge eating disorder are unable to stop eating once they get started. They know that what they are doing is bad for their health; that they will put on excessive weight, but are unable to stop themselves from doing so.

Exerting control

In all the three types of eating disorders that we have discussed so far – bulimia, anorexia, and now binge eating – the fundamental issue is control. While anorexics try to exert control by eating very less amounts of food, bulimics tend to exert control over their situation by purging all they have eaten.

Binge eaters, on the other hand, try to cope with anxiety and stress by sheer overeating. While the whole thing is about control over anxieties and uncertainties, they basically lack the control to stay off the food itself. In this respect, they find it much harder to lose the excess weight than other obese people.

Causes of Binge Eating >>