About Binge Eating

Binge eating is much more common than you may realize. Although the diagnosis of binge eating is farily new to the book of diagnoses, it has been around for a very long time.

Binge eating is characterized as eating excessive amounts of food, ignoring your body’s signals of fullness. It also not uncommon to eat long before you are hungry. This happens because there is a fear of being hungry, often a feeling similar to an emotional emptiness.

It’s this emotional emptiness that leads you to food to “fill it up.” Of course, you never actually fill any emptiness inside and often end being critical and blaming yourself.

Thus the cycle begins again. You swear you won’t do that again. Maybe you don’t… for a day or two or maybe just for an hour. But the emptiness never goes away or gets better and so the binge returns to fill up on something. As well, the binge doubles quite nicely as a distraction. Focusing so much on hating yourself for doing it again, you never have time or energy to think about anything else, especially how empty you feel inside.

The binge eating cycle will continue until you can find a way to address the emptiness in a way that actually works.

The emotional emptiness needs something (not food). As you learn to give that to yourself, your need to eat to cope will lessen.

As you can imnagine, this is not always so easy. If it were, you would have figured it out by now. That’s where you may need help from someone else. Just getting help from another is a part of the healing. After all, if you feel empty inside, someone supporting you can begin to fill that emptiness.

What is considered a binge eat?

What Is Binge EatingBinge. The word is often used to describe an episode of heavy drinking. However, it can also mean something different when the substance that is overconsumed is food. In some situations, binge eating can be considered an eating disorder, called binge eating disorder.

Why do people binge eat?

After bingeing, a person feels guilt or shame because they ate too much. These feelings can cause more overeating. Stress and Anxiety. Sometimes people binge after they’ve gone through a major stressful event, like a divorce or losing a job.

What happens when you binge eat?

Every meal you eat – regardless of macronutrient composition – triggers dopamine release. Dopamine is a feel-good chemical associated with feelings of happiness and reward. … Second, with binge eating, your pancreas goes into overdrive, releasing larger-than-normal amounts of insulin.

How do you know if you binge eat?

Behavioral and emotional signs and symptoms of binge-eating disorder include:

  • Eating unusually large amounts of food in a specific amount of time, such as over a two-hour period.
  • Feeling that your eating behavior is out of control.
  • Eating even when you’re full or not hungry.
  • Eating rapidly during binge episodes.
Can you gain weight from one binge?

No, you can‘t actually gain weight from one day of overeating. You would have to eat 3,500 additional calories that day to gain just one pound of fat. … Many people complain that they gain weight around the holidays, but you‘ll be happy to know that you can‘t really gain weight from a single meal or day of overeating.

How many calories is a binge?

Binge eaters can consume as much as 5,000 to 15,000 calories in a single binging episode; this level of intake far exceeds the calorie recommendations for both men and women for an entire day.

Why do I binge at night?

Nighttime eating may be the result of overly restricted daytime food intake, leading to ravenous hunger at night. It may also be caused by habit or boredom. … Binge eaters also tend to eat very large amounts of food in one sitting and feel out of control while they are eating