Understanding Compulsive Eating

Do you turn to food when stressed, angry, or lonely? Do you find yourself inhaling food in binges, planned or unplanned? Compulsive eating, also known as binge eating, affects an estimated 1.2% of people in the US, around three million adults annually. It also leads to physical, emotional, and mental conditions.

Once you learn why you turn to compulsive eating behavior, you can break the cycle.

Why people turn to compulsive eating

Some people struggle to remember a time when they did not compulsively eat. They may have started as a child, especially if their childhood was rough. Perhaps their parents were too busy to spend quality time with them, or they were bullied. They may have suffered a loss or trauma and found that food provided temporary comfort.

Compulsive eating behaviors can also develop in adulthood. For example, if you’re the parent of three children, but your husband is always gone, you might feel neglected, abandoned, and lonely. These feelings can lead you to nightly binges after the children go to bed as your way of coping with the loneliness and stress.

The brain is a remarkable organ. It can adapt and reward us for behaviors that lower our stress and comfort us. Unfortunately, this also means that when you binge and feel that surge of dopamine that makes you feel good, your brain learns that is a pattern it must reinforce.

For example, if stressed after work, you might stop at a fast food restaurant for a combo meal and secretly eat in your car. It is not that you are hungry, but for a moment, you are doing something you want to do and begin to relax.

Your brain recognizes this behavior. You might feel the same stress the following week and drive to the fast food place for another combo meal. After a while, anytime you feel stressed, your mind will send cravings for fast food or thoughts about salty fries. You may find yourself compulsively eating fast food daily.

But eventually, the dopamine level tapers off, and you need to eat more of the foods to get the same hit. Now, you might stop for a large combo meal on the way home, eat it in the car, and then eat dinner at home, followed by a nightly bowl of ice cream. Your eating may turn into binges unless you seek help now.

God created us to crave Him, yet we get our wires crossed and try to fill that emptiness with other things, like food. When we engage in the behavior often enough, it becomes a pattern, a compulsive behavior that delivers temporary relief from pain.

But only searching for God can remove a misdirected craving. You can use psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques to change your thought processes, but only a relationship with Jesus Christ can fill that deep-seated wanting.

Symptoms

How do you know if your compulsive eating is a problem? Doesn’t everyone overeat once in a while? People do tend to binge during the holidays or special events. You may have even heard of people eating nothing but ice cream and chocolates during a breakup.

But genuine compulsive eating behaviors are consistent actions. Ask yourself if you engage in any of the following behaviors or notice any of the common signs:

• You eat a large amount of food within a short period, usually two hours.
• You feel out of control.
• After a binge, you feel disgusted with yourself.
• During a binge, you lose track of time and do not even taste the food.
• You eat too fast during a binge.
• You may eat different types of food during a binge (salty, sweet, carbs, fast food, etc.).
• You can binge while already feeling full from a meal.
• You eat until your stomach hurts or you feel uncomfortably full.
• You eat moderately in public but privately binge.
• You hide the evidence of a binge from those closest to you.
• You might binge in your car, alone in your bedroom, or in the middle of the night.
• After a stressful day, you may plan a binge, buying your favorite foods.
• You binge at least twice a week for six months or longer.

Most people who compulsively eat feel ashamed of their out-of-control behavior. They tell themselves that this is the last time, and they will stop. Yet, they fall into the same behavioral patterns the first time they feel overwhelming anxiety or loneliness.

When you binge, you eat quickly and eat past hunger and fullness. You may feel as if your stomach is empty until you make yourself ill. Acid reflux and heartburn become more frequent as the acids move out of the stomach and into the esophagus.

Compulsive eating also brings about feelings of low self-worth and self-esteem. In addition, most compulsive eaters are overweight or obese, which may belittle their confidence. Unfortunately, this can perpetuate the vicious cycle of recognizing feelings of low self-esteem and embarrassment and then turning to compulsive eating to drown out those sensations temporarily.

Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for compulsive eating

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a technique used to treat bulimia nervosa, an eating disorder, effectively. According to research, it is also effective in treating other disordered eating like compulsive eating behaviors.

The foundation of CBT is the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Your negative thoughts stem from beliefs or stories you tell yourself. These stories may be ones you heard from someone else or ones you inferred based on past experiences.

For example, you may believe you need to be skinny, maybe even underweight, to find a spouse. If you are average size, overweight, or obese, these thoughts can leave you depressed and lonely. If you compulsively eat, you might binge to make yourself feel better. But once the dopamine/serotonin/sugar rush subsides, you feel worse than before the binge.

CBT aims to challenge the stories you tell yourself and, by doing so, change your thoughts and the emotions attached to those thoughts. Once you have reframed those negative thoughts into positive thoughts, you can work to break the cycle of compulsive eating.

An example of CBT in action is leaving work on a stressful Monday. In the past, you might have stopped at the fast food drive-thru for a combo meal, eaten in the car, then binged on leftovers and ice cream after the kids went to bed. With CBT, you pause to identify the thoughts running through your head.

“I’m tired. It was a long day, and I slept poorly last night.”

“Every Monday is like this. I should treat myself.”

“What does it matter? No one cares what I look like anyway.”

If you notice these thoughts every Monday, you can prepare for them by arming yourself with answers. For example, “Instead of eating when I’m tired, I’m going to drink a cup of herbal tea and call it an early night.”

Or, you can address the negative thoughts about yourself with “I need to treat myself with respect and honor. I am worth the extra time it takes to drive home and make dinner without bingeing.”

If you repeat these exercises and resist every time you feel the urge to binge, eventually, the craving will subside and weaken. If you say the new belief enough times, your mind will accept it as your new reality, and your behavior will follow.

CBT takes practice, and you may want to contact a counselor to help you get started.

Finding help for compulsive eating.

Binge eating is a compulsive behavior that may take professional help to stop. You may need to change the way you think about your thoughts and emotions. A counselor can help you reframe your thoughts and feelings and change your compulsive eating behaviors.

Contact our office today to schedule a one-on-one counseling session.

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