Emotional Eating Or Binge Eating Disorder?

Have you ever ordered multiple items from a fast-food restaurant (or multiple restaurants, even) pretending to order for several people but knowing that you were going to eat all of the food by yourself?

Do you eat food and hide the ‘evidence’ in the trash so no one will see what you ate?

If either of these scenarios apply to you, you are not alone!

Emotional eating is what most of us do in response to an emotional trigger – whether happy, sad, celebrating, frustrated, angry, depressed, or scared – and this is how many us come to have eating disorders and the weight gain that typically goes along with such disorders.

Sound familiar?  If not, you may be in the majority of people who don’t recognize the emotional aspects that go into eating habits. It’s quite common to not be aware of the factors that impact emotional eating.

In fact, most of the decisions we make each and every day, including eating, involve an emotional component well before we have the chance to make a rational decision.

We are subconsciously conditioned through years of exposure to family, friends and advertising, that food just makes us feel good. Food fills a real biological need in us so that the body has energy to burn.

But, as we move into eating for emotional satisfaction, the food is being used to fill another void – one which should be filled elsewhere and in other ways.

There is a fine line when it comes to emotional eating and full-blown eating disorders. People who have either a binge eating disorder or a problem with compulsive overeating go beyond the basic behaviors of emotional eaters, and there are ways to tell which category you fall into.

There are specific characteristics that are evident in people who have full-blown eating disorders. They regularly binge – eat large amounts of food very rapidly – and they will typically ‘feel’ out of control about food, often feeling they are actually obsessed with food.

Other behaviors that distinguish emotional eating from a person with an eating disorder is that people with eating disorders regularly hide foods around the house, or they may eat in hiding.

For instance, the primary shopper may purchase foods that they hide from the rest of the family, and then eat after everyone else goes to bed or leaves the house.

Eating Disorder Treatment

Many times people who are emotional eaters and who also have other eating disorders as well have experienced one or more traumatic events in their lives – physical or sexual abuse for example. The number of people with eating disorders who have experienced this abuse is much higher than those with simple emotional eating.

Anyone suffering from binge eating has several challenges, not the least of which is the fact that the condition isn’t as well known as anorexia or bulimia. They may not know for sure whether or not their eating disorder stems from a medical disorder.

Therefore you should never attempt traditional weight loss solutions or try to stop binge eating on your own. Instead, you should seek the advice of a trained licensed therapist.

While people who have significant emotional or binge eating habits aren’t at the medical and psychological risk that people with full-blown eating disorders are, they may nonetheless suffer just as much because their condition is not as well known and so is not as noticeable.

If you feel like your condition is severe enough, there are eating disorder clinics that are designed specifically with these disorders in mind, where eating disorder therapy and help losing weight, if necessary, is readily available to you.

More on overcoming emotional eating…..

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