Samantha Michaels - Overeating?: How To Stop Binge Eating, Overeating & Get The Natural Slim Body You Deserve

A self-help guide to control emotional eating today!

Have you ever felt a strange craving for food you havent eaten in a while? Sometimes, you might decide to indulge your craving, and find yourself overeating too quickly until youre too full you feel like your stomach is going to burst. Congratulations, youve just experienced binge eating.

Occasional overeating does not pose much of a problem, but it can soon lead to habitual binge eating that can already be considered a form of eating disorder.

What is binge eating disorder (BED)?

The term binge means excessive indulgence, and was used originally to refer to excessive drinking. Today, we use it more often to refer to binge eating, or compulsive eating which leads to consuming too much food in a short time.

Binge eating is considered one of the most common eating disorders at present. If unchecked, it becomes a serious health problem as it eventually leads to obesity and other ailments like diabetes, heart diseases, gastrointestinal problems, and even certain types of cancer.

Symptoms of a binge

A person who has developed a serious case of binge eating disorder may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

• Frequent binge eating episodes, characterized by trancelike rapid food intake until your stomach feels uncomfortable.

• Stress and agitation that can only be cured by food.

• Inability to control what you eat and how much.

• Compulsive overeating even when you dont really feel hungry, sometimes even throughout the entire day.

• Eating a lot of food in secret, because you dont want to be seen consuming all that food in your plate.

• You feel guilty, depressed, or disgusted with yourself afterward.

Fig.1.1. Binge eating episode.

Image source: diseasesymptomstreatment.com

How you feel during a binge

Moments before you experience a binge, you might feel a craving so intense for a certain food. Minutes stretch into hours as you attempt to get to the food stash, and you feel more agitated with each moment. Youve got to eat, and youve got to eat now!

Then, when the food is in front of you, it begins. You might not notice the amount of food you are consuming, because you are too focused on savoring what you eat: the taste, the textures, and you lose yourself in that sensation.

You just feel the need to eat, and eat, and eat, forgetting table manners and stuffing the food in your mouth almost mechanically, as if you are going to die if you cant have that next bite. Its like your stomach has turned to a bottomless pit that you cant fill.

You dont notice how quickly the food is disappearing from your plate. Its almost like youre in a trance: you dont know what youre doing and you cant seem to control it. Then, once the episode is over and youve had enough, it hits you. You realize just how much youve eaten, and thats when the negative feelings set in.

What happens to your body when you binge?

If you have exhibited any of these symptoms and felt exactly that same way described above, theres no need to panic or feel even more guilty or depressed. Remember that there is a cure to every disorder you just need the mindset to overcome binge eating.

After you have aptly diagnosed your problem, the first step in curing yourself is to go to the root of the problem. You need to understand what causes you to binge.

Scientifically speaking, people who undergo frequent binge eating episodes are unable to break a behavioral and physiological cycle that the body experiences: the binge eating cycle.

First, when you consume a lot of food in a short time, this causes a sudden surge in your bodys blood sugar levels. This spike in your blood sugar then sends a message to your pancreas to create more insulin, the hormone that helps break down fat and carbohydrates in food.

However, the sudden release of more insulin causes your blood sugar level to fall. This fall of your blood sugar makes your brain think that you need more food to increase your blood sugar.

So, instead of feeling full, your cravings intensify, particularly for starchy and sugary foods. You keep eating even when youre not physically hungry anymore. As you consume more sugary foods, your blood sugar levels increase again, and the cycle begins again.

This is why binge eating is very difficult to overcome, especially if the severity of the binge episodes has intensified to uncontrollable levels.

Causes of binge eating

There are a lot of factors most of them psychosocial which might cause a person to develop binge eating disorder. More often than not, people who acquire this condition are people who are experiencing emotional downs, and binge eating becomes a form of coping mechanism for negative experiences in life.

Here are some of the main causes of this disorder:

• Stress. While stress is a normal part of our daily activities, experiencing sudden stressful events such as losing your job or a loved ones death may cause emotional trauma that leads to emotional eating. The same is true if work or school has become too stressful, such as when an exam is approaching or if your boss has given you a lot of work to do.

• Depression. Studies have shown that half of binge eaters have experienced depression sometime during their life. The exact nature of the relationship between depression and eating disorders is unclear if binge eating is caused by depression or vice versa.

• Low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem often seek refuge in food, and are more likely to develop a form of eating disorder than people with normal self-esteem. Because they feel unaccepted and awkward in social situations, food becomes a form of escape for them.

• Personal problems. In some ways, binge eating is similar to typical addictive behavior to substances like alcohol and drugs. People who cant find a way to solve their problems and who feel helpless tend to escape those problems by overeating.

• Negative emotions. Studies have shown that emotional eating episodes are often triggered by negative emotions, such as anger, loneliness, boredom, or anxiety.

• Behavioral factors. Certain behavioral problems may also trigger binge eating, including impulsiveness, escapist tendencies, irresponsibility and substance abuse.

• Dieting. Although there are no conclusive studies yet that solidly link dieting to binge eating, many people who have undergone excessive dieting claim that it was the deprivation of food which caused them to have emotional eating episodes. Binge eating is also often a result of a failed dieting regimen.

Dieting: the culprit, not the cure

Overweight and obese people are often looking for new dieting fads and regimens to lose weight. However, if the statistics are any indication, excessive dieting often leads to the development of an eating disorder like binge eating.

These are the reasons dieting will never cure obesity and instead cause eating disorders:

• Often than not, a diet and weight loss regimen often entail cutting down on your carbohydrates and daily caloric intake. Some diets, like the after-six diet even recommend skipping on meals and avoiding certain food types, even those necessary for the body to function well.

• Diets never work because they are often composed of unhealthy weight loss methods focused on excessive exercise and food and nutrient deprivation, which cause you more harm than good.