You Deserve Treatment for Binge Eating Disorder
If you binge eat, I want you to know a few things:
Binge eating disorder is a real medical and psychiatric condition and NOT a result of a lack of willpower or discipline (AND it’s not your fault).
You’re not alone if you experience binge eating disorder; it’s the most commonly diagnosed eating disorder.
You deserve dignified, respectful, compassionate, and comprehensive treatment from professionals who understand the complexity of the condition and the need to treat you using a weight-neutral approach.
Photo by Dan Meyers (@dmey503) via Unsplash
I have yet to meet a client whose problems with food, exercise, and body image didn’t start with a diet in order to lose weight and manipulate their shape/size. While the reasons people want to lose weight vary, one commonality is that weight loss is perceived as a means to find fulfillment (e.g., I will be successful, find the perfect partner, have a great career, etc.). What most people discover is that weight loss is a false means to fulfillment and that their lives aren’t transformed by a drop in weight on their bathroom scale.
Here’s what happens when we diet and enter the restrict/binge cycle:
We often start diets with a renewed sense of power, control over our choices, and happiness about all the good things to come.
We begin to restrict our food intake and are not satisfied by our food choices because of the amounts or types of foods we’re eating to maintain our restrictive regimen.
We encounter a trigger like deprivation (actual or mental restriction of certain foods/food in general), strong emotions, or circumstances that we want to avoid or delay.
We break our diet because of the triggering experience, leading to a binge.
We feel bad about bingeing (guilty, ashamed) and feel the need to “start over” to try and erase the shame.
So we begin to restrict our intake again and the cycle repeats itself.
Binge eating is subjective and can be any amount of food; it’s also accompanied by a feeling of lack of control over your eating (e.g., feeling like you can’t stop eating). Binge eating episodes are characterized by several of the following behaviors: eating rapidly, eating until feeling uncomfortably full, eating food when you’re not feeling physically hungry, eating alone because of feeling embarrassed by how much you are eating, and feeling intense distress after the episode (e.g., disgusted, depressed, guilty, ashamed). Part of the diagnostic criteria is that binge eating occurs (on average) at least once a week for three months and that it’s not associated with purging behavior (like making yourself vomit). Whether or not you fully meet the criteria is irrelevant; if your binge episodes are interfering with your life and overall health you deserve treatment.
If you think you might have binge eating disorder, getting treatment by a team of qualified professionals is really important. In my practice I treat clients with binge eating disorder. I’m inviting you to work with me when you’re ready to heal from binge eating disorder. If you’re ready to start today, here’s a link to my online scheduling system for you to make your initial consultation appointment.