David Sarwer, PhD, director of clinical services at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders and member of the Penn Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery team, explains binge eating.
It seems simple. You want to lose weight. You stick with your meal plan, exercise and drink plenty of water. Then, when you get home from work, you have an uncontrollable urge to eat everything in sight. You give in and before you know it, you’ve eaten an entire bag of chips and a box of cookies.
You might claim it’s a rare occurrence, but the fact is that this happens at least a couple of times each week. You feel hopeless and ashamed, however, you are not alone.
While most people overeat from time to time, binge eating — as it is called — affects a large number of people. Triggered by anything from stress to sadness, or even happiness, binge eaters usually try to maintain an appearance of healthy eating. But, when they are alone, they begin eating all the things they’ve been denying themselves – and sometimes, cannot stop until they have a “food high” or even pass out.
Most people will overeat from time to time. The difference between binge eating and overeating is that many binge eaters use food to help them deal with feelings of anxiety, sadness or loneliness.
Signs of binge eating
Here are some common symptoms of someone with a binge eating disorder:- Eats large amounts of food when not physically hungry.
- Eats much faster than normal.
- Eats until the point of feeling uncomfortably full.
- Often eats alone because of shame or embarrassment.
- Has feelings of depression, disgust, or guilt after eating.
- Has a history of marked weight fluctuations.
When we are working with individuals who binge eat, we first try to help them eat appropriate sized meals and snacks throughout the day and so they don’t become overly hungry. Once we help normalize their eating behaviors, we often address the underlying emotional issues that trigger the binge eating and help individuals find a more appropriate way to deal with those emotions.
Before someone has weight-loss surgery at Penn, they go through a complete psychological evaluation that looks for the presence of emotional eating as well as binge eating. Someone with an untreated binge eating disorder is thought to be at increased risk to gain back the weight they lose through surgery.
Penn also has weight-loss surgery support groups to help those who have had bariatric surgery at Penn stay on track and continue to lead healthy lifestyles.
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