Most of us have done our share of out-of-control eating, whether it’s polishing off a family-size bag of potato chips without noticing or eating all the chocolates in the Valentine’s sampler—and we’ve probably felt at least a little guilty for overindulging. But if you find yourself having those “slip-ups” fairly regularly—or if your eating causes you so much shame that you have to do it in secret—your eating issues might be cause for concern.
Whether binge-eating problems are diagnosed or fly under the diagnostic radar, researchers are just beginning to understand their impact on the population. Last year, researchers at Harvard’s McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, polled 2,980 Americans in the first national survey of eating disorders. They found that BED is the most common eating disorder, affecting some 3.5 percent of women and 2 percent of men—making it more than twice as common as bulimia and more than four times as prevalent as anorexia. While BED and other binging behaviors aren’t as well recognized as anorexia and bulimia, “some of the driving forces behind them are the same,” notes Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of Runaway Eating: The 8-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions (Rodale, 2005). All involve “the consistent use of food or food-related behaviors (such as purging or exercising excessively) to deal with unpleasant feelings,” she notes, coupled with “the feeling that these behaviors are out of control.”
Of course, for bingers and other disordered eaters, overeating in response to stress becomes a stressor in itself,” notes Boggiano. “It becomes a vicious cycle of feeling bad about overeating, then eating more to distract from the guilt.”
So before you put that next cookie or finish of the carton of ice cream just think to yourself "Do I need this ?"
sources are from www.eatingwell.com
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