Binge Eating and Obesity

Due to the rise of obesity in today’s society everyone is trying to achieve quick weight loss. This is dangerous, and can lead to developing binge eating disorder. Eating disorders are psychiatric issues in one’s eating habits. Tabloids display the secret eating disorders of celebrities and music artists. Yet the news never discuss how dangerous these eating disorders really are, and how common they are.

Most quick weigh loss techniques require extreme unrealistic diets. Obviously these diets never keep the weight off. Even if a diet works, often the pounds lost are gained back slowly simply because no one can stay on a diet forever. The problem with quick weight loss attempts is that they often require you to avoid junk foods and fast foods. This often leads to binge eating.

Binge eating is eating very large amounts of food in a small period of time. Binge eating isn’t related to hunger most of the time. Often it’s consuming food beyond the point of satisfying one’s physical hunger. Binge eaters often eat huge amounts of food even when they aren’t really hungry. Binge eating often leads to feelings of guilt or sadness because of the future weight gain it will lead to.

Following the popular advice of diets that recommend avoiding junk foods and fast foods is dangerous. When one avoids such foods, one starts craving them more and more. These carvings get out of control and often lead to binge eating. For example if someone has been avoiding pizza, and then decide to have a slice, they’ll often end up eating a few more slices and lose control.

It’s important to note that binge eating is different from bulimia. Bulimia often involves overeating which is followed by self-induced vomiting, or fasting. Binge eating is one of the leading causes of obesity today. Obesity is very dangerous for one’s health, yet often it’s very tough to treat.

Often obese individuals eat for comfort, and end up developing food addictions. These addictions can also be a form of emotional eating. Emotional eating is basically when one eats not to satisfy physical hunger but rather to deal with tough or negative emotions. Stress eating is a good example where one will consume larger quantities of food on a stressful day.

Binge eating is often kept a secret. A food addict will usually overeat in private to avoid others finding out about their disorderly eating habits. This is why binge eating is very challenging to treat because sufferers keep it a secret. Many will overeat until becoming obese and then will eventually become desperate and seek help.

Therapy is the most common treatment for binge eating. There are also recovery clinics that a binge eater can check into. Also there are many books on the topic where the authors share their own recovery efforts, what worked and what didn’t. There are also support groups such as overeaters anonymous and eating disorder support forums online.

Next time you are considering quick weight loss, think again. Trying to lose weight quickly is unnatural and dangerous. Also being obsessed with your body shape can lead to developing eating disorders. It’s best to lose weight naturally through exercise, and gradually implementing healthier eating habits.

This was a guest post by Andrew B is the author of a binge eating blog which contains tips to recovery from compulsive eating.