Compulsive Overeating

What is it?

A compulsive over-eater has an addiction to food. Their self evaluation is unduly influences by body weight and amount of food they eat.

Compulsive over-eaters spend much time thinking about food. They devote much of their time to food – such as reading recipe books, and secretly plan and fantasize about their binges.

The person not only binges, they even ‘graze’ and eat and pick at food throughout the day.

They engage in episodes of uncontrolled eating, or binge eating, where they might eat more quickly than normal. During these episodes the person may feel out of control and frenzied. The episode does not necessarily occur when a person is feeling hungry, and they may go on eating even after feeling uncomfortably full, and sick.

The sad thing is that, these people aren’t happy overeating, it is not something they enjoy, and instead, they feel guilty and depressed.

Unlike in anorexia and bulimia, the sufferers do not attempt to compensate for their over-eating by purging. They do

Types of Compulsive Overeating

1.       Addictive / Dissociative type

Food is used to block out feelings and emotions as a way to cope with stress, emotional conflicts and daily problems. It normally begins in childhood when eating patterns are formed.

It could also be that

the excess body fat is used as a protective layer (metaphorically). This protection is useful to those people who have experienced sexual abuse. They sometimes believe that being fat will make themunattractive, or less noticeable and therefore less likely to get attention and be abused even more.

2.       Deprivation-sensitive type

This usually occurs when the person is unhappy with their weight and try to counter this with dieting. This can worsen the condition in that it can lead to feelings of deprivation – which the compulsive overeater tries to block out by binging and over-eating. Thus a vicious cycle develops.

.

Signs and Symptoms

.

Physical

Behavioural

Psychological

Emotional

Social