Binge Eating: Why Enough Isn’t Enough
The most surprising and informative facts about binge eating
Binge eating is such a new concept in the medical community. For years, I’ve worked alongside physicians, providing mental healthcare to patients who come to their doctor for health reasons such as diabetes, heart disease, or other medical conditions. What we’ve found is that many people have eating concerns, such as binge eating, that go untreated and unnoticed. As I train as a psychologist, I hope to provide as much information as I can about mental health.
Society normalizes overeating and then promotes weight loss pills and fad diets. All the while diet culture grows and gets richer.
We’re being gaslit.
According to this article by TIME magazine, diet culture is a $66 billion industry…yep, you read that correctly. That’s billion with a “b.”
Remember those movies where a woman went through a horrible breakup and ate a whole pint (or gallon) of ice cream? This happens so much that people are advertising what kind of ice cream to eat based on your type of break up.
What about the restaurants that serve plates with 3 portions of food? This is something called “overfeeding”, which has become the norm in restaurants. We’ve learned that big portions are to be expected, and we unknowingly eat so many calories. At this point, it’s difficult to actually know what is an appropriate portion of food.
Basically, we’ve all learned to cope with hardship with comfort foods, which is reinforced by the large portions we’re fed at restaurants. Then, diet culture will swoop in and promise to help you lose weight fast. It’s a vicious cycle.
Therefore, I’m writing this article to shine some light on BED, while also highlighting what can be done about it.
Binge-eating disorder (BED): What it is
BED is a psychiatric disorder that is under-researched and the most prevalent eating disorder in our population.
The lifetime prevalence estimate for BED is 2.8%, compared to 0.6% for anorexia nervosa, 1.0% for bulimia nervosa.
BED is more common in women at 1.75x the male population.
BED was previously seen as a physical disorder for people who were obese. But, no weight-loss interventions were effective. Unfortunately, BED is linked with distress and other psychiatric diagnoses such as depression and anxiety.
It has been estimated that 30% of individuals seeking bariatric surgery have BED.
BED is described as periods of binge eating, where the individual eats a larger amount of food that most people would eat in the same time period, without compensatory behaviors (i.e., throwing up or over-exercising).
Further criteria include at least three of the following for binge-eating episodes:
Decrease in control over eating during the episode
Eating more rapidly
Feeling uncomfortably full
Eating when not hungry
Eating alone
Feeling disgusted or guilt afterward
The symptoms associated with BED have a later age of onset and longer duration.
There’s hope, yet! Here’s what can be done to improve BED.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy for BED
Treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help with BED based on strong research backing. CBT takes a deep dive into a person’s negative thoughts and how they affect our emotions and behavior.Concerning BED, CBT was associated with significant improvements in binge eating, even during six-month and one-year follow-ups.
The version of CBT for BED has a greater focus on:
Negative thoughts about body size
Developing healthy habits for eating
Eating foods in moderation
A better way of thinking about food
With overeating being a predominant component of BED, successful treatment outcomes include decreasing binge eating episodes.
It has been proposed that binge eating is a result of rigidity in dietary restraints. If individuals with BED have rigidity in their eating and beliefs surrounding diet, this perpetuates the notion of disordered eating. When binge eating, people follow extreme and specific dietary rules instead of adhering to general guidelines about eating. Intuitive eating follows 10 principles:
1. Reject the diet mentality
Get rid of things that include fad diets or losing weight quickly.
2. Honor your hunger
Keep your body biologically fed or you may trigger the primal drive to overeat.
3. Make peace with food
If you tell yourself you can’t have a type of food, it can lead to feeling deprived. This can ultimately turn into a binge.
4. Challenge the food police (Even the one in your own head)
Say “NO” to thoughts that come up about foods that are good vs. bad. Diet culture has created these rules, and we can abolish them.
5. Discover the satisfaction factor
Enjoy the pleasure of eating what you enjoy, feeling satisfied and content. Over time, people find that it takes just the right amount of food to be “enough.”
6. Feel Your Fullness
Trust that you will give yourself food you enjoy. Pause in the middle of eating to ask how the food tastes and what your level of hunger is.
7. Cope with your emotions with kindness
Coping with eating may distract for the short-term, but food won’t solve our problems. Emotional eating may make you feel worse. Deal with the underlying emotion.
8. Respect your body
All bodies deserve respect, as we all have our own genetic blueprint.
Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. — intuitiveeating.org
9. Movement — Feel the difference
Shift your focus to how it feels to move in your body and its positive effects. This can include having more energy, focus, and fewer aches and pains.
10. Honor your health — Gentle Nutrition
Eat foods that honor your health and taste good, while understanding that it’s what you eat over time that matters.
Key takeaways: Changing how we view BED and weight loss
Researchers at Brown University have conducted an over 20-year long study about individuals who lose weight and keep it off. What they found was that many people who lost weight had failed many times. However, they remained motivated and found something that worked for them.
That’s what this whole article is about, finding something that works for you (whether you have BED or not).
One participant in a medical weight loss program had years of losing and gaining weight, with periods of emotional eating. From her TIME magazine interview, she stated, “It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works,” she says. “Not every day is going to be perfect, but I’m here because I pushed through the bad days.”
For anyone struggling with eating or weight loss, you can find what works best for you. Progressing towards your goals is what matters, rather than perfection or reaching a lofty expectation. After all, each set back provides a moment for growth and learning from your mistakes. In a way, you’ve just learned what may not work for you in moments of “failure.”
Recalibrating our expectations on weight loss and body shape will not only change our relationship with nutrition but may also change the general perspective on what it means to be healthy.
Demolishing the $66 billion diet culture will take years and years of effort. It all starts with changing how we think about food, exercise, and body shape.
