The Difference Between Overeating & Binge Eating Disorder…
“I had a binge this weekend” or “I’ve been binging all day”. We hear it all the time right? The word binge gets thrown around a bit, but was it really binge eating? Or did you just eat a lot of food? Or… did you just eat more than your current diet plan tells you to?
Let me start with this, Binge eating disorder is not just eating a lot of food. It’s so much more than that.
Binge eating is a reaction to unmet needs, it’s a trauma response that has become a way of coping. For many, it can provide a sense of escape. The feeling of being uncomfortably full is the only time you can truly disconnect from whatever negative emotion you are experiencing. It can feel like an out-of-body experience where your brain completely switches off during the act of binging.
But it is quickly followed by feelings of sadness, disappointment, stress, guilt, shame, and even disgust. It’s mostly done in secret and any evidence of the binge is hidden or thrown away to make sure nobody will ever find out.
Binge Eating Disorder is a recognized mental health condition and it’s actually the most prevalent of all eating disorders. Characteristics of BED according to the DSM are:
“1. Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances
2. The sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating)”
Binge Eating is described as:
“Eating until feeling uncomfortably full
Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry
Eating alone because of being embarrassed by how much one is eating
Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or very guilty after overeating”
(DSM-IV and DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for binge-eating disorder)
I offer a one-to-one coaching program designed to help you overcome Binge Eating and Emotional Eating. If you would like to heal your relationship with food, for good, book a discovery call to find out if the program is right for you.
Reference:
Management and Outcomes of Binge Eating Disorder (2023) The National Library of Medicine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338301/table/introduction.t1/
