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One of the things that I see frequently is someone who eats a “normal” amount of food, but that eating event is accompanied by all of the other hallmarks of a binge eating episode. What happens in this case? In prior blog posts, I referenced Loss of Control as well as other indicators of a binge episode (eating alone, shame at how much was eaten, feeling uncomfortably full, and others). It’s entirely possible for someone to experience a loss of control and other component

When is eating large enough to be a binge? Binge eating is complicated. It seems like it shouldn’t be, because it’s just “eating a lot of food” in most peoples’ minds. However, I hope that in other blog posts you’ve seen that the process of diagnosing binge eating is quite a bit more complicated than that. After all, scientists and doctors love to have a clear-cut answer! I think of it like getting your blood levels checked at the doctor – they have strict cutoffs for w

Eating disorders are a very interesting type of mental health disorder – these diagnoses look very simple from the outside, but diagnosing folks experiencing disordered eating will often be much more complicated in real life . It is uncommon for eating disorders to be diagnosed easily or in a straightforward way. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most often it’s because eating disorders have existed for a very long time and individuals have built their lives around t

Binge Eating and Compensatory Behavior The act of binge eating can be very upsetting. In fact, distress about the amount eaten is a piece of what we are looking for when we are assessing binge eating episodes! To learn more about what binging is from a clinical perspective, please take a look at the first blog post – there’s plenty of great information in there to get a better understanding of that particular difficult behavior. But we’re not here to discuss binge eating

What is Binge Eating Disorder Binge Eating Disorder is a recurring pattern of eating large amounts of food with associated loss of control in a discrete amount of time . While this sounds pretty straightforward, in practice this definition is pretty vague and leads to a lot of confusion for people who may be experiencing symptoms. How long is “a discrete amount of time,” how much is a “large amount,” what is a “loss of control,” and how frequent is the “recurring pattern”?