(Everydayhealth.com) For Carolyn Jennings, author of the poetry memoir Hunger Speaks, having binge eating disorder “was like someone outside me was turning a switch inside me on and off. When I was ‘on,’ I was upbeat — exercising, dieting, and socializing," she recalls. "But when I was ‘off,’ I was stuck on the couch binge eating, depressed, isolated, and scared.”
What It Feels Like to Have Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating is a source of shame for most people who have binge eating disorder, the most common eating disorder in the United States, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Heather Wilkins, a clinical lab supervisor for Washington University School of Medicine's Weight Management and Eating Disorders Program in St. Louis, says, “One of my first patients 27 years ago felt a strong urge to eat huge amounts of food at one sitting, as most people with binge eating disorder do. She’d tell me how distressed, ashamed and guilty she’d feel afterward. She saw herself as a failure for ‘losing the battle’ and bingeing yet again.” Only after working with this patient did Wilkins realize the severity of binge eating disorder.
“I was at the mall and saw my patient eating rolls at Cinnabon. She immediately averted her gaze, and I could see the shame on her face: She’d been discovered when she thought her binge eating would go undetected,” Wilkins remembers. “It was then that I recognized that binge eating isn’t a willpower problem — it's an eating disorder. In fact, in my work with patients with the disorder, what’s most striking are the feelings of loss, [need for] control, and shame that they all experience.”
Like many patients with binge eating disorder, her patient's symptoms occurred regularly, and typically several times a week, Wilkins says.
Binge Eating Disorder Affects Men, Too
Being a man with binge eating disorder is an especially difficult journey, says Matt Shepard, 32, a Los Angeles-based actor, filmmaker, and advocate for men with eating disorders who recently participated in the National Eating Disorders Association's NEDA Walk.
Among adults, about 3.5 percent of women, and 2 percent of men, will have the disorder at some point in their lives.
“The symptoms of my eating disorder were emasculating,” says Shepard. As a morbidly obese man, “I couldn’t see my own penis. I couldn’t fit in seats, and I couldn’t shop at regular men’s clothing stores.”
What made living with binge eating disorder especially challenging for him was that support materials tend to be female-focused. “I don’t think there’s enough information to address the effects eating disorders have on men,” he says.
Living With Binge Eating Disorder
Most people don’t understand binge eating disorder isn’t a lifestyle choice, says Wilkins. “It’s a serious psychological disorder, and people who have it are extremely distressed by their behavior.”
People of normal weight can have binge eating disorder, but it’s more likely to occur in people who are overweight, she adds.
“I put on a significant amount of weight due to my binges, but it seemed like people were more worried about my weight gain than the pathology behind it,” says Chelsea M. Kronengold, 23, program coordinator for the National Eating Disorders Association in New York City. Binge eating tends to occur in young adults like Kronengold; in fact, World Health Organization data published in Biologic Psychiatry in May 2013 indicates that the average age of onset for the disorder is 23.
Kronengold says she tended to eat an average, or even less than average, amount of food in front of other people, but would feel out of control when she was alone with food — and with her emotions.
“I would eat to the point of numbness, until I physically couldn’t take another bite. Sometimes I even ate myself into a blackout where I couldn’t remember what or how much I’d eaten,” she says.
The triggers are different for everyone. “My binges would start with a sensation — a craving that seemed undeniable,” says Jennings. Then she’d head out to buy treats like doughnuts, frozen cakes, chips, cookies, and candy. And she would always have a lie ready to explain away the junk food in case she ran into anyone she knew.
She ripped open the junk food bags as soon as she got into her car and continued bingeing at home, alternating between sweet and salty foods while watching TV or reading. Satisfaction would evade her until she was just too stuffed to continue.
“If I lived with others, I’d hide food in a closet,” she recalls. “The next day, I’d have a ‘food hangover.’ My body was bloated, and I suffered spiritually and emotionally from the shame and abuse.”
Eating alone or in secret is a common symptom of binge eating disorder. “I would hide food. And I would eat huge amounts of food at once, in secret,” says Shepard.
Binge Eating Disorder Symptoms
How do you know if you have the condition? If you have it, you’ll probably have experienced three (or more) of the following:
- Eating much more rapidly than you usually do
- Eating until you’re uncomfortably full
- Eating large amounts of food when you're not hungry
- Eating alone, and feeling embarrassed about it
- Feeling disgusted, depressed, or guilty after eating
If at least once a week for three months you’re eating an unusually large amount of food in a short period of time — two hours, for example — and feeling a loss of control, you could meet the criteria for binge eating disorder, explains Wilkins. She says some people will eat the equivalent of an entire cheesecake, or a pint of frozen yogurt, or 20 cookies in a short span of time. You might eat your food quickly, almost without tasting it, and keep eating until you’re uncomfortably full.
Ways to Get Help for Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating disorder differs from eating disorders like bulimia nervosa in that people who binge eat don’t compensate for overeating by vomiting, taking laxatives, or using diuretics, says Wilkins.
Because binge eating disorder has so little public visibility, people who have it often feel invisible themselves, says Kronengold. “I’ve often been made to feel like my binge eating disorder doesn’t matter — like I don’t matter,” she says.
Effective treatments are available for binge eating disorder, says Wilkins. Cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy are considered especially effective, she notes, and evidence suggests that psychotherapy in general is more effective than medication. Both types of therapy typically involve 12 to 20 sessions, each lasting 50 minutes, over a period of four to five months. While people with the disorder often have multiple relapses, treatment with psychotherapy can result in long-term improvement for many.
Fuente: www.everydayhealth.com
