Binge Eating Disorder (BED) can be characterized by having frequent episodes of eating an abnormally large portion of food within a two hour period. During that time, the individual often has little to no control while often eating thousands of calories. The rapid, mindless eating is accompanied with intense feelings of shame, guilt, confusion and/or regret following the behavior. The disorder is associated with physical issues such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, etc. Psychological issues including depression and anxiety are also linked to BED.
While some people binge in the midst of intense moments sporadically and infrequently, when it becomes more of a habitual unwanted action, it becomes a greater problem. Some hard dieters and individuals who restrict more seriously for extended periods of time or individuals at a lower body fat percentage may binge as their bodies sense they are calorie deficient; the brain senses a scarcity of food and all of our bodies are hardwired for survival. Others may have previously overeaten as a coping mechanism, reward, or for comfort. When an individual is lacking in something that may be seen as a threat to survival, the brain may compel one to binge to make up for it.
So what exactly is an individual lacking that prompts a binge? Most commonly, it’s restrictive dieting leading to a lack of calories or lack of feel-good hormones such as serotonin. Additionally, it may be a combination of both or other environmental, biological, and external factors. The feel-good hormones or lack of may be reinforced with a certain emotion that acts as a trigger for your brain to use it as an opportunity to binge. Or just the sight or smell of a certain food may immediately trigger your brain to send out compelling reasons to binge. When the trigger occurs, a new brain pathway is created from the trigger, whether it be a range of emotions or a small taste of certain foods (typically those that are avoided by the individual on a typical basis due to their nutritional content.)
Triggers for binge eating are difficult to deal with and the trigger-binge cycle isn’t easily put to a stop. If there's an emotion triggering a binge, and then the binge triggered by the emotion causes certain negative emotions, they may in turn trigger another binge and eventually it becomes a pattern. This, coupled with either a hyperactive response to dopamine in foods, caloric restriction, other mental disorders, and inevitable triggers of food and your emotions can make it extremely challenging to recover.
But why do the triggers initiate a response?
The animal brain explained:
Your “animal brain” or “survival brain” is the evolutionary part of our brains that have helped us overcome the constant dangers that are a threat to our survival since the beginning of our existences. Our “thinking brain” is the more recently developed part of our brain, allowing us to use logic and our understanding of the world to make more rational decisions. The presence of the thinking brain is what separates us, homo sapiens sapiens from other animals. The prefrontal cortex in our thinking brain is greatly involved with our rational decision making, unlike our animal/reptilian brain. Our evolutionary animal brain serves one primary purpose: it’s designed to keep us alive and safe, especially in the presence of danger. It’s only focus is our survival and it becomes especially active when it senses a possible threat to our safety. When that occurs, individuals may lose consciousness and all traces of logic as our freeze/fight/flight response is activated and takes over, leading to our response in a given high stress situation.
So why is this important to understanding BED? In times of famine, which occurred frequently in ancient times, our brains sensed an insufficient amount of calories being consumed. With this scarcity, whenever food was available, the brain would send a signal to consume as much food as possible to hinder the risk of starvation. Our brains would send a signal at any given chance that an opportunity was detected. With BED, even if one isn’t at a current calorie deficit, a trigger signals to the animal brain when there’s a recognizable opportunity to binge. Your reptilian brain is only concerned with your survival, and consuming overly large amounts of food, especially if they are high-fat, high- sugar, ensures
the highest protection against starvation and the most heightened responses of dopamine and serotonin. Thus, at any given chance your animal brain will try to find an opportunity to binge, especially when a trigger is set off. This was designed to keep us alive and has worked for us for hundreds and thousands of years. But now with the abundance of food and less of a need for this trait, it absolutely can and does pose a physical and mental risk.
Some quick statistics about the disorder:
- Binge eating disorder is the most common disorder with 2% of the (USA’s) population
identifying with having the disorder.
- 2⁄3 of those with the disorder are medically obese
- ~1.6% of teenagers are affected with the disorder
- More common in females (~3.5%) than males (~2%) but is the most common eating disorder for men
- Affects ~ 2.8 million adults in the US
You may have the disorder if you:
● Go to great lengths to buy food, possibly sneaking out when you feel an urge
● Buying large amounts of junk food and disguising it as buying it for someone else or sharing it
with others when in public
● Taking other people’s food when binging and feeling guilty
● Asking others for binge food when an urge occurs
● Feel compelled to finish whatever food is on hand during a binge.
● Eating large amounts of food alone, possibly in the dark
● Have poor body image and are constantly trying to change your weight/body, especially after
eating certain foods/amounts
● Think about food constantly
● Assume that anytime you’re around certain foods you’ll end up binge eating
● Sometimes eat to extreme discomfort and sharp physical pain
● Restrict certain foods that you later immensely overeat
● Have a small amount of a “forbidden food” and deciding that the entire day is ruined, thus
overeating that particular food and others
● Feel an urge and it makes you feel anxious and on edge when not immediately met with food
Misconceptions about it, addressed:
It is caused by some deep trauma within you and to overcome the disorder, you must get rid of the trauma first.
In particular, many individuals often get told this by therapists, but it is simply not true.
If you do happen to have trauma in your past and also identify with having the disorder, it does not mean there is a direct correlation between the two. You are capable of overcoming your binge eating disorder regardless if your trauma is resolved or not. Binges may be a way of coping with negative emotions brought on from past trauma, but it’s due to the desire of finding a way to temporarily relieve yourself of stress, anger, sadness, etc. Afterwards, oftentimes, an instant connection between avoiding dealing with your emotions or the emotion and binging forms.
You probably have the disorder
Though we all likely have overeaten at one occasion or another, binge eating is a different story entirely. Overeating, though may be uncomfortable and may be emotionally driven at times, is a conscious decision where one is making the choice to indulge. They are controlling the food, the food isn’t controlling them. Binges may occur as not part of the disorder for varying reasons, such as a response to major calorie restriction. Binge must occur frequently (at least 1x/week for three months) for it to be classified as Binge eating disorder (BED).
Binge eating is just emotional eating, and who doesn’t do that?
While the trigger for an binge eating episode to occur may be set off due to emotions, (typically an uncomfortable feeling), the emotion is not credited for the episode itself. Emotional eating usually serves as comfort to an individual in the form of pleasure, numbing, and/or satisfaction. Emotional eating may serve as a catalyst into binge eating disorder, but stopping by the grocery store to buy and eat an entire sieve of Oreo’s after a break up as comfort, differs from feeling compelled to gorge on food without even having the time and awareness to enjoy the food. Binges may have started occurring as an attempt to numb feelings, serve as comfort, and/or to seek pleasure out of food, but when it becomes a disorder, the binges occur as an immediate response to the desire/emotion (that serves as a trigger), one that doesn’t serve to make one feel better but seen by the survival brain as an opportunity to binge. One thing to understand, is that your “survival brain” will do whatever it takes for you to binge, as the extra calories and dopamine released is seen as helpful. This may mean your brain will come up with irrational reasons to binge, taking many different forms. In the moment, no matter how silly the reasons are, they all make perfect sense and are compelling and rational.
Binge eaters just like food more and don’t have enough willpower to stop themselves.
Humans, since the beginning of time, have been hardwired to enjoy food, especially since it wasn’t as abundant and accessible as it is nowadays. In modern times, experts in the food science field have manipulated food to be more palatable and easier to overeat, creating foods that created large dopamine responses in the brain. For those who have restricted their diet for longer periods of time or are deprived of sufficient nutrition and/or calories, their body may send an urge to binge on food as a survival tactic that would ensure not dying of starvation.
In many instances, binge eating may occur due to a trigger. When it occurs, binging isn’t seen as an option; it’s primarily inevitable. Triggers for binge eating can be a wide scope of things: negative emotions, positive emotions, a certain food, or event. The first time it occurs, a new brain pathway is set in place. The animal side of your brain that is only concerned with survival and pleasure/comfort and takes over once a trigger is introduced. Willpower is hardly a factor when an overwhelmingly compelling urge takes over. For many, it is incredibly difficult or feels impossible to even stall the urge. It has been shown however, that those with certain eating disorders may have skewed neurotransmitter responses to
food.
A special diet will stop binge eating completely.
Though binge eaters have been found to have more intense sensations of the pleasure released from the chemicals dopamine and serotonin from food, the binge eating is not caused by the taste of food itself. It becomes a habitual response to external stimuli, set off by a trigger. An automatic response to the trigger caused by the brain pathway causes the episode. Helpful dietary changes may include to eat sufficient amounts of food, specifically ones that fill you up without leaving you feeling restricted (*think high protein and less simple carbohydrates and sugars!) This will benefit you if your binges are caused by over
restriction or insufficient calories needed for your body. The likelihood of this to be the cause of the disorder (not an initial binge) is rare. As noted, binge eaters will eat well past the feelings of discomfort and fullness.
So why isn’t binge eating disorder more openly talked about?
Like most mental disorders, stigma surrounds the disorder consequently leading for individuals to leave their problems unaddressed. Higher bouts of shame may be experienced with binge eating disorder in particular, as some may perceive individuals struggling with binge eating as weak, gluttonous, lazy, disgusting, undisciplined, . Many don’t even believe it is a real mental disorder, but it is quite real- affecting millions of individuals and lowering their quality of life as they often struggle for years in silence. Additionally, food and body shaming largely occurs, as the majority of binge eaters do not fit the ideal body type standards with the majority of them being overweight and obese.
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