Binge Eating – An eating disorder?
During my morning coffee today I was getting the brain warmed up for another fun day of work. Came across an interesting article on Binge Eating. It turns out there is a name for the super unhealthy “habit” I learned from my father long long ago, and go figure its a psychological eating disorder! WTF!
Used to be, I would get up drink coffee and smoke until dinner time – then eat a massive dinner. Usually going to bed right after that..
If you’re the kind of person that goes into a fast food restaurant and orders two combo meals – and powers through those for your one big meal a day – you might be a binge eater.
This prompted me to ask the Magical Google. The first result seems to have described me down to a T, and wouldn’tcha know it – there are checklists. Binge eating Checklists!
Ask yourself the following questions. The more “yes” answers, the more likely it is that you have binge eating disorder.
- Do you feel out of control when you’re eating?
- Do you think about food all the time?
- Do you eat in secret?
- Do you eat until you feel sick?
- Do you eat to escape from worries or to comfort yourself?
- Do you feel disgusted or ashamed after eating?
- Do you feel powerless to stop eating, even though you want to?
Let’s see, If I were to answer this checklist two years ago it would have been – yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, only if someone saw me, and yes.
Damn.
But the current answers to the checklist are better – only with cake and butter tarts, sometimes, not anymore, sometimes, not sure, sometimes, sometimes.
But even still today, one and half years after I started changing my life – I find myself staring in the cupboards with a hunger that I can never seem to satisfy. In an effort to keep this in check – and do the least amount of damage to all the progress I’ve made I make sure to keep a lot of healthy(ier) snacks and fruit around.
This hunger hits me the hardest right before bed, perhaps its a leftover of that giant before bed meal. Perhaps there is somewhat of a instinctual thing about going to bed with a full stomach? Either way the best I’ve been able to cope with this is to grab a piece of fruit and get out of the kitchen asap. Keeps my hands out of my wife’s potato chip stash…