Binge Eating Disorder Blog with Nadine Ann

Compulsive Eating at a Funeral?

Compulsive eating at a funeral? Absolutely. This is THE place for a binge to happen if you are stressed out and sad about the person dying…and of course who wouldn’t be. It’s the after party or reception that can be your downfall. There is usually a buffet and plenty of alcohol. The mix of those two components along with grief can be very deadly…no pun intended.

I’ve been to plenty of wakes and funerals and I think the most important thing is to try to limit your alcohol. Drinking intensifies the effect of grief and is actually a depressant. You might start out feeling like it’s an anti-depressant but in reality it will have the reverse effect on you.

Talk about your feelings instead of eating or drinking them when you are in a very sad situation such as a funeral. This is the time when you band together and rely on friends and family to get you through the tough times. Use the people in your life for that…not food.

Can I Be Any More Stressed Out?

My daughter was at Girl Scout Camp all last week and the weather was less than cooperative. We had thunder storms, tornado watches and flooding most of the week.

The weird thing is that the day would start out decent like it was going to surprise you and be sunny later on but then this weird Dorothy of Kansas weather would kick in around noon and would literally spiral downward until the kids got off the bus from camp.

One day Jess got off the bus looking like she had seen a ghost. Apparently it isn’t much fun being in a thunderstorm in a mess hall in the woods.

Needless to say, I have been completely stressing about the weather for this week because sure enough she is back at camp!

So I need a mass prayer for my daughter please!!!!!!!

-Nadine Ann

photo credit: Wagner Machado Carlos Lemes

The Secret Shame of Binge Eating

In Thursday’s post from the study USA Today did on Binge Eating Disorders, there was a sentence that read, “estimates of eating-disorder cases are probably low because people are very ashamed of these and tend to under-report them”. I can only imagine what the true number of cases would be if everyone reported it.

The secret shame the study mentioned is so very real. I had incredible shame and hid my binge eating from everyone including my husband. What’s funny (not in a haha way though) is that I hid my disorder from the people I knew would NOT judge me! But there is this secret feeling a binge eater has inside that tells her to hide because if people saw what she really ate they would be repulsed and lose respect for her instantly.

Now I know if you are reading this and you are a family member of a binge eater you are shaking your head saying, “I would never do that!”

I know.

But if you have never walked in the shoes of a binge eater you simply can’t know the secret shame.

Now I ask you if you are a binge eater why you think we can’t admit this to the people we love? Is it because we are not ready to begin healing? Or that we think they will kick us in the ass instead of help us? Are the relationships we are in that bad for us that we feel we cannot speak of a food disorder that affects millions of people around the world? Are we just not educated enough about the disorder?

I think in the end it is up to each one of us to decide on WHAT we want to feel, WHEN we want to feel it and HOW long we want to feel it for.

Think of what your life would be like if you did not have an eating disorder or secret shame.

-Nadine Ann, C.N., H.H.P.

5 Tips to Stop Binge Eating

Tip #1Give yourself permission to eat when and what you want. There is nothing like saying you “can’t have this” to make you want to have more of it! If you are binge eating you feel shame and guilt on top of all the calories you are consuming which is causing you to binge even more. When you get to the root cause of why you are compulsively over eating you can then work on a healthy eating plan.

Tip #2 Develop positive coping skills to use for managing stress. Stress is a huge concern for binge eaters because negative or bad stress leads to unhappy feelings and emotions which leads to wanting to soothe those feelings which lead to binging. That is a typical binge cycle. Practice assertiveness training if you are having trouble dealing with stressful situations.

Tip #3Acknowledge your feelings and emotions. People who binge eat sooth their feelings with food because they don’t know any other way to deal with their painful emotions that they do not want to face. By dealing with your feelings you can face them head on instead of burying them in the sand. What is it that you are running away from? What is causing you pain? Binge eating has nothing to do with being out-of-control but everything to do with not facing your true feelings.

Tip #4Use the power of your brain to bring about changes. It’s called the Law of Attraction. When you focus on what you want instead of focusing on what you don’t want you will get more of what you want. In other words if I said, “I want to be happy, healthy and confident” versus “I don’t want to binge anymore or feel bad”, what is my brain actually hearing? In the first sentence it hears happy, healthy and confident and in the second sentence all it hears are negatives. Your brain does not hear the word “don’t” so change the way you talk and you change the way you think.

Tip #5Grab a journal and start keeping track of exactly when, where, and why you are binge eating. See if you can determine what feelings you were having so you can deal with those feelings. Were you stressed out? Did the boss tell you he wanted to see you? Did you not make a deadline? Did you get in a fight with your boyfriend? What are you having trouble dealing with? All these things can help you better understand what triggers your binge cycles so you can become more aware of them.

Nadine Ann, C.N., H.H.P.

Industry News About Binge Eating Disorder

Study: Binge eating is No. 1 food disorder in USA

(BINGE, BY DEFINITION
Binge eating disorder “is quite different from the ordinary munching you might do for the Super Bowl,” says Harrison Pope Jr., a researcher who treats people with eating disorders at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. People who have the disorder “can’t stop once they get started even though they feel uncomfortably full.”)

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Binge eating disorder — frequent, uncontrolled bouts of eating without purging — is the most common eating disorder in the USA, more widespread than anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, according to the first large-scale national survey on these conditions.

The binge disorder, which afflicts 3.5% of women and 2% of men and lasts an average of eight years, can lead to severe obesity, says lead researcher James Hudson, director of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

Such people eat large amounts of food in short periods of time at least twice weekly. They feel out of control when they are overeating, Hudson says. “Binge eating disorder may explain in part why it’s so difficult for some people to control their weight” and why some become severely obese, he says.

A 5-foot-6 woman is severely obese if she weighs 248 pounds or more; a 5-foot-9 man falls in this category if he weighs 270 pounds or more, he says.

Hudson and colleagues analyzed data from about 3,000 people who were asked about their mental health in face-to-face interviews in a separate national study. Findings in the journal Biological Psychiatry:

• About 0.9% of women and 0.3% of men said that at some point in their lives they have had anorexia nervosa, which is self-starvation. It lasted an average of 1.7 years.

• 1.5% of women and 0.5% of men said they have had bulimia nervosa, the binge-and-purge disorder that often involves self-induced vomiting. It lasted an average of 8.3 years.

• Fewer than half the people with the disorders got treatment.

• People with the eating disorders often have other mental health problems.

Estimates of eating-disorder cases “are probably low because people are very ashamed of these and tend to under-report them,” Hudson says. The disorders have become more prevalent in the past 50 years, he says.

Obesity and Overeating

Why dieting doesn't work! What do you think happened to Kirstie Alley and her 83 pound weight gain after losing it for Jenny Craig Weight Loss Center? Do you think the pressure just got to her and once she had gotten to her goal and left the public eye she just caved in?

I talk about dieting all the time and how it doesn’t work but her weight gain of 83 pounds was incredibly fast. She has admitted to binge eating.

I think she was doomed from the start.

Here’s 3 quick reasons why:

She never dealt with her underlying issues behind her eating disorder which she definitely had for years (just look at her past few years of binging)
She was in the public eye and felt fear about not reaching the goal which is the ONLY reason why she made it. Money talks but when the contract was done, so was she.
She made drastic changes to her diet instead of very slow and tiny changes that her brain could “digest”!

So now she is back to being obese, unhappy and binging more than ever. She has promised to lose the weight AGAIN! Shall we watch her journey to self destruction one more time? Think anyone will ever figure out that if something didn’t work in the past that it won’t work in the future?

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