What is Binge Eating Disorder or Compulsive Eating?
Binge-Eating Disorder or Compulsive Eating is characterized primarily by periods of impulsive gorging or continuous eating. While there is no purging, there may be sporadic fasts or repetitive diets. Body weight may vary from normal to mild, moderate, or severe obesity. A significant number of people suffer with “other” eating disorders which do not quite fit the criteria for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Clearly there are some who abuse vomiting and/or exercise without bingeing as forms of weight management, while there are others who indulge in repetitive episodes of bingeing without purging. Eating disorders arise from a combination of long-standing psychological, interpersonal, and social conditions. Feelings of inadequacy, depression, anxiety, and loneliness, as well as troubled family and personal relationships, may contribute the development of an eating disorder. Our culture, with its unrelenting idealization of thinness and the “perfect body,” is often a contributing f
