Eating Disorders >> Overeating / Emotional Eating

OVEREATING / EMOTIONAL EATING

In this section:
• What is Emotional Eating?
• Are You an Emotional Eater?
• What is the Difference Between Emotional Eating/Overeating and Binge Eating?

WHAT IS EMOTIONAL EATING?
Emotional eating is when you eat in response to your feelings instead of to hunger. Experts estimate that 75% of overeating is caused by emotions.
(WebMD)

Emotional eating has become a short term solution for many people to provide themselves with comfort. Mistakenly people turn to food to try to heal their emotional problems and before they realize it, eating becomes an unhealthy coping skill which prevents them from learning other coping skills that could more effectively resolve their emotional distress.

ARE YOU AN EMOTIONAL EATER?

Do you ever eat without realizing you’re even doing it? Do you often feel guilty or ashamed after eating? Do you often eat alone or at odd locations, such as parked in your car outside your house? After an unpleasant experience, such as an argument, do you eat even if you aren’t feeling hungry? Do you crave specific foods when you’re upset, such as always desiring chocolate when you’re feeling depressed? Do you feel the urge to eat in response to outside cues like seeing food advertised on television? Do you eat because you feel there’s nothing else to do? Does eating make you feel better when you’re down or less focused on problems when you’re worried about something?

SOURCE: www.about.com

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMOTIONAL EATING / OVEREATING AND BINGE EATING?
Although Binge Eating may begin as emotional eating, it goes a step further. While emotional eaters may eat only for comfort and not to achieve fullness, binge eaters have a compulsion to keep going until they are over full.

- A Binge Eating episode is characterized by:

Eating a larger amount of food than normal during a short period of time (within any two hour period) Lack of control over eating during the binge episode (i.e. the feeling that one cannot stop eating).

- Binge Eating episodes are associated with three or more of the following:

Eating until feeling uncomfortably full Eating large amounts of food when not physically hungry Eating much more rapidly than normal Eating alone because you are embarrassed by how much you're eating Feeling disgusted, depressed, or guilty after overeating

- Marked distress regarding binge eating is present

- Binge eating occurs, on average, at least 2 days a week for six months

- The binge eating is not associated with the regular use of inappropriate compensatory behavior (i.e. purging, excessive exercise, etc.) and does not occur exclusively during the course of bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa.

SOURCE: http://www.edreferral.com/binge_eating_disorder.htm