There are different types of situations that we face in this quickly changing society regarding the body and food. There are so many things that can trap you (or lead you there) in disordered eating: emotional stressors societal pressure and all such things. The two most common eating behaviors that are misdiagnosed are compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder (BED). For example, although they look the same on the outside, the two conditions are very different in many ways that do matter to women’s health and their mental health. However, there are those underlying emotional and psychological triggers that first have to be addressed and women have to know that about these disorders because a great deal of it stems from these disorders.
What is Compulsive Overeating?
Compulsive overeating is a long-patterned, habitual type of excessive food intake designed in response to ‘emotional distress’ or external cues. Compulsive overeaters don’t feel full or satisfied eating past the point of fullness. They don’t eat compulsively simply because they are physically hungry.
Key Characteristics of Compulsive Overeating:
- Lack of Control: According to the person who feels he/she is compulsive overeater, he or she believes he or she can not stop eating when he or she should.
- Emotional Eating: Usually, this kind of overeating is strongly emotional (due to stress, anxiety, loneliness, or boredom). Eating is a way to cope with certain negative emotions.
- Constant Snacking: Compulsive overeating and binge eating are not the same thing. People can therefore consume endlessly all day round say when they are watching a great movie or working.
- Guilt and Shame: After overeating someone gets often too guilty, but they can’t stop.
- No Specific Episode: That compulsion to eat doesn’t equal ‘binge’ to me… its an underlying disorder of compulsive overeating.
However, if someone is made to eat past the time when they actually feel full, then it can get serious very rapidly, leading to to being overweight, high risks of being obese, obesity related illnesses (heart disease and diabetes) and bad mental health (depression and anxiety). Most compulsive overeaters can’t change their behavior without help from a professional and they don’t all work.
Binge Eating Disorder:
The fifth edition, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM-5), includes a binge eating disorder, or an eating disorder, as a form of the disease. The ‘binging and purging ED’ (BUDE) or BED, is a type of eating disorder where people experience eating so much — so much, and so fast, all at once — that it is uncomfortable. In the case of an inmate during the binge itself, the inmate will lose control over what is eaten.
Key Characteristics of Binge Eating Disorder:
- Discrete Episodes: For instance, in BED people eat too much extra food in relatively brief periods for the same reasons, among others.
- Loss of Control: It doesn’t matter if they’re hungry or full, but people think it’s impossible to stop eating. And that’s about the word people use to describe that ‘out of your body‘ feeling, which is in some respect kind of eating – you do feel almost mindless.
- Emotional Distress: Often people who binge eat quickly have emotional feelings of intense emotions of blame guilt and disgust. This pattern plays out when you’re high for you, you get emotional binge eating, and you’re emotional binge eating.
- Eating Quickly and Secretly: Some don’t eat fast, as much as BEDers are embarrassed to eat fast, they are embarrassed to eat fast, some eat fast and some ate fast and then secretly.
- Physical Discomfort: This is why people usually keep on eating until they are full, uncomfortably stuffed, too sick to continue, and again this is always a painful or an uncomfortable binge episode.
- Frequency of Episodes: Other ways of defining binge are at least one binge episode per week for 3 or more months or at least one binge episode per week for 3 or fewer months.
Because of such disease, BED brings about obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and other types of mood disorders. Compulsive overeating refers to eating more than one feeding per night, less constant than the bed, and such is defined by repeated binge episodes with distinct and patterned disordered eating.
Compulsive Overeating vs. Binge Eating Disorder: The Key Differences
While compulsive overeating and binge eating disorders share some common elements, they are different in key ways:
The Pattern of Eating Behavior:
– Compulsive Overeating: All day long, habitual overeating. For example, grazing is the usual way, but not with anything close to as urgent and serious as with BED.
– Binge Eating Disorder: It’s logical, it’s about days full of gigantic eating under severe schedule constraints.
Emotional Triggers:
– Compulsive Overeating: The other is more often associated with using food in response to emotional distress or another external cue such as stress or boredom. And it’s not about how often you do it: it’s about how often you go to food as a coping response.
– Binge Eating Disorder: Both conditions are emotionally triggered, but while with emotionally triggered eating in BED, the emotional distress is there, it happens before and concurrent with the binge episode and then goes away; with DBT, the emotional distress is also intense, but it happens both before (and) during (and) after the binge episode. It’s more like a cycle of guilt, shame, and loss of control.
Sense of Control:
– Compulsive Overeating: People may convince themselves that they cannot stop their ongoing eating and that this ‘continual’ eating is not the same time, episodic, intense type of bingeing. The second regards people who are aware of what they eat but there was asking if they were big problems in this regard.
– Binge Eating Disorder: BED is full loss of control. The difference between bulimia and compulsive overeating is that the bulimics did not feel they could stop, and they didn’t—they couldn’t stop: they didn’t have control.
Post-Eating Behavior:
– Compulsive Overeating: If you eat you could feel guilty or feel ashamed, but there’s nothing immediate like extreme discomfort. However, emotional consequences can build up slowly.
– Binge Eating Disorder: Overeating in many cases leads to a binge episode that is so physically painful–and so emotionally upsetting–that, even with all the pleasure involved, most of us want to stop as soon as is humanly possible. Said otherwise, people feel such ways and often try to compensate by dieting or exercising, or fail to do so only increasing the cycle of disordered eating.
Causes and Risk Factors
Both compulsive overeating and binge eating disorders can stem from a variety of complex causes, including:
- Biological Factors: Both conditions may be developed according to genetics. If you have an eating disorder in your family, have obesity or mental health conditions yourself, you are at risk of misusing the opportunity to eat compulsively or of having BED.
- Emotional Distress: Differences between these two disorders are in dealing with emotional problems, such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or trauma. Food is often used as a way to cope with the not dealing with emotional pain.
- Dieting: This is a history of restrictive dieting and that makes you more likely to binge eat. Restraining food can lead people to episodes of bingeing or overeating when restraint is lifted.
- Environmental Factors: Disordered eating patterns can be imposed by society on a person to look a certain way, body image issues; and the glorification of certain body types. Compulsive overeating and BED are fueled, in part, by people feeling pressured to eat in secret or to restrict eating at all.
Treatment of compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder includes a variety of psychological treatments, for example; Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and nutritional counseling. Support groups, medication, and working with specialists trained in treating eating disorders, may all be helpful for both disorders.
Compulsive Overeating:
The treatment alone usually aims to break the food or emotional tie, develop healthier coping mechanisms. This can be treated with therapy, counseling regarding nutrition, and maybe even group therapy to help people identify triggers and replace overeating with more constructive behavior.
Binge Eating Disorder:
Treatment of BED may require more intensive forms of therapy that help you understand why you are binge eating. However, CBT is often effective for BED because it works through the thoughts and behaviors that help cause binge episodes. Some medication is used, too, to regulate mood and appetite.
Help and Recovery for Women
Whatever problem a woman is facing from compulsive overeating to binge eating disorder, help is needed. Treatment options vary but often include:
- Therapy: Women can receive help with the emotional triggers for disordered eating through individual, group or family therapy.
- Nutritional Counseling: Women who are working with a dietitian can help develop a healthy relationship with food.
- Support Groups: Support groups and groups of women listening to women talk afford women a new space to talk to other women, who to a great extent are experiencing similar struggles, in a solidarity.
- Medical Intervention: When, in severe cases, of binge eating disorder, medications, or more intensive medical treatment is required.
Conclusion
The first step in healing many women is a distinction between compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder. It seems that both of these disorders are multifactorial, emotional and psychological, and also socio-economic factorsized differently so they approach with different methods towards fixing these.
If you or someone you know is struggling with compulsive overeating or binge eating disorder, it is important to seek professional help. At Revelare Recovery in Atlanta, A qualified mental health professional can provide support, guidance, and effective treatment options.
