People with the disorder can develop binge eating and vice versa, said Andrea Bazzana, a clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center. People with bulimia also experience binge eating episodes, but regularly repeat purging behaviors such as induced vomiting and excessive exercise to “compensate” for eating. Binge eating itself is not associated with recurrent purging behavior.
And importantly, bulimia interferes with people’s daily lives. Some of Burik’s patients, he said, have stayed up from overeating and feeling sick and have missed work. Others wake up with wrinkled wrapping paper wrapped around their bed sheets and unchewed food still in their mouths. One of her patients ordered a cake for her child’s birthday party and ate it all with her hands on the way home from the supermarket.
Caitlin Schaefer, 36, who manages corporate sustainability efforts for a clothing brand in Toronto, often felt like she was wandering outside her body when she was binge eating. She melted in the minutes between opening a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and rubbing a spoon. bottom of the carton.
Content creator Kelsey Glennan, 25, posted a video on TikTok about being diagnosed with bulimia at the age of 18, saying it was “like a robot.” It was a haven, a shortcut to numbing her stress, she said, and she “wanted to run away,” she added. Online, Glennan found a growing community of people raising their voices and recovering from the disorder. A video with the hashtag #BingeEatingRecovery has more than 7 million views on her TikTok, with countless users sharing intimate details about their binge eating episodes and journey to therapy, shameful. It has helped reduce the stigma associated with this disease, which has many
What Causes Binge Eating?
Researchers are working to identify the role that genetics plays. A history of trauma, especially sexual abuse, can also predispose to the disorder, Dr. Bazana said.
Restrictive diets can develop the disorder in some cases, called the “boomerang effect,” in which people oscillate between undereating and overeating, says Rachel Goode, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Social Work. The longer you go without food, the more likely you are to get hungry and overeat.
Chris Garcia, now a 30-year-old nurse from the Washington, D.C. suburbs, used to try going without food all day in high school, thinking losing weight might reduce bullying. But at night, after his shift at McDonald’s, he would hop from drive-thru to drive-thru, buy French fries and tacos, and sometimes feel greedy and trapped. “It’s really unrealistic to focus on a diet and try to be ‘good,’ but I think it’s really impossible when you’re restricting so many foods,” he said. To tell.
