What is Binge Eating Disorder?

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a serious eating disorder characterized by repeated episodes of eating a relatively large quantity of food in a short period of time. These episodes are experienced as distressing, as it’s common for people to feel as if these binges “just happen” and that they are beyond their ability to control. This may cause you to have feelings of shame, embarrassment, depression, or hopelessness, especially as the pattern of repeated binge eating episodes repeats over time.

In some ways, diagnosing BED might seem difficult because what constitutes “a large quantity of food” or a “short period of time” can be so subjective, right? To determine if BED is a problem for you, a mental health professional can take a big picture view of your relationship with food and notice what kinds of patterns emerge. Feelings of losing control, shame, and despair, and increasing preoccupation with how one is eating are common amongst those with BED. Feeling physically uncomfortable as a result of eating, eating in secret, and withdrawing from social life or other activities due to your eating are also potential signs of BED.

Is BED treatable?

BED is a treatable eating disorder. Folks with BED should expect to see a reduction in the frequency of their binges, an increase in their subjective sense of control and awareness around these episodes, and a decrease in feelings of shame and despair as treatment progresses. They likely will also develop alternative strategies for soothing and managing emotional states that don’t involve food.

Commonly, those of us with BED might try and try again to bring their binge eating episodes '“under control” through their own efforts prior to entering therapy. They may attempt this through dieting or adopting stricter “rules” around their eating. Unfortunately, these efforts usually fail to address the underlying causes of BED, which are complex and evolve as a means of managing one’s emotional state. After months or years of trying to address this problem on their own, folks with BED may come to feel hopeless and powerless about their ability to see positive change in their relationship with food. This is an understandable way to feel, and is usually a sign that someone is at a point where structured eating disorder treatment is needed to help them find more peace in their relationship to food, their body, and feeding themselves.

BED doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And neither should your BED treatment!

BED is an adaptation for managing one’s innermost emotional experience. Your BED treatment should center your inner life — your feelings, your wishes, your fears, your desires, your overwhelm. At the same time, we also know that external social influences, such as patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, heteronormativity, ableism, and cisnormativity shape our innermost relationships to ourselves, our bodies, and how we feed ourselves.

BED treatment should hold space for considering what it is like for you to move about this world and your community in your body, as understanding and being able to express this freely can be an important step in forming a more whole, authentic way of relating to and caring for yourself in our flawed world, where harmful systems of dominance are an unfortunate reality.