It almost always starts with a diet. It’s a gradual thing, an obsession that slowly grows. I was always careful about body fat and what I ate, then at a certain point I just stopped eating. I enjoyed the hunger because it made me feel powerful, I’d conquered it. It doesn’t matter if you’re 250 pounds or 100 pounds, if you’re on a diet you can develop an eating disorder. At the higher weights it involves binging… at the lower weights, semi-starvation… binging and purging. So it’s not just skinny teenagers who have eating disorders, don’t think you’re off the hook because you’re overweight. In fact, somewhere between 5 and 30 percent of obese people have an eating disorder called binge-eating disorder.
When do your food habits become a disorder?Maybe you occasionally drink a pint of milk when you feel stressed out, or you’re uncomfortable eating in front of some people. Do you have an eating disorder? Not necessarily. The key is, do your behaviors impact your mental, social, or physical well-being? Two of the leading researchers in the eating disorders field define eating disorders as a persistent disturbance of eating or eating related behavior that results in the altered consumption or absorption of food and that significantly impairs physical health or psychosocial functioning. That definition’s pretty broad, the disordered eating in the first part of the definition could mean starving, vomiting, binging, or fearing and avoiding certain foods. The second part is essentially about how it affects you… Has the eating pattern left you malnourished, depressed, or caused heart damage?
The psychological community has given only two eating disorders precise definitions, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and they are working on another one… binge-eating disorder. But many of the 10 million or more Americans with eating disorders don’t make the cut for these precise definitions but still have serious and life-threatening illnesses.
We have all done the binge high!We’ve all gotten stuffed out of our minds at Thanksgiving or left a brunch buffet in pain. You could call it a binge but it’s not the worrisome type, and that’s not the way I’m using the word binge. Eating disorder binging is different from benign binging. The two tip-offs to disordered binging are that you eat a large quantity of food and you feel out of control while doing it. That out-of-control feeling is the main thing distinguishing a binge from a simple episode of overeating or mere indulgence.
People with bulimia, binge-eating disorders, and other types of disordered eating that involve binging, regularly eat 1,000 to 2,000 calories at once or within a two hour time period. That’s what’s typical, but binges can reach. 30 times your daily calorie needs, hitting 20,000 or more calories.
* Pleasure/ disgust. The pleasure you initially get from the taste and the “up” sensation of a binge usually turns to disgust and revulsion.
* Compulsive stuffing. Food is scarfed down, often stuffed in the mouth and chewed almost mechanically, or barely chewed. Often bingers drink lots of water to wash it down, which makes them feel even more bloated afterward.
* Agitation. Bingers feel desperate, driven by the powerful force of their craving, and may pace or wander around during the binge. Getting food is of paramount importance causing people to steal food from others or from stores or to take it from the trash, causing feelings of shame and disgust.
* Altered state. People report going into a trance like state, where eating seems automatic as if it’s not really you doing it. Or, to not think about what they are doing, people may distract them-selves with TV or loud music.
* Secretiveness. Often they eat normally or even less than normal in front of others but binge in private.
* Loss of control. Some get this sense before a binge, some as they start to eat, and for others it happens once they realize they’ve eaten too much. After years of binging, the lack of control may fade, as people become resigned that binging is part of their life. So they plan their binges into their schedule in the most convenient way possible. This may seem like control, but it’s not. They still can’t stop binging, and can’t stop eating once they begin.
There is more information in our body fat reviews plus the best weight loss programs that may be suitable for you.
By: David L Lloyd About the Author:
David Lloyd writes a lot about weight loss related topics. Fat Loss Reviews.biz –
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