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Some men are eating 3,000 calories rapidly, in
one sitting - more than once a week. They are some
of the 2 million plus males who suffer from binge
eating disorder. The Premier Issue of Men's
Edge tells the story. (2-3/04.) Most
experts now believe that anywhere between
40% to roughly half of all compulsive
overeaters are guys.
It's no joke to at least 1 million American
adult men and possibly twice that many, who suffer
from this condition. The great majority of them
suffer in silence, going to great length to consume
their massive, sometime nauseating binges of
high-calorie foods - from mounds of Buffalo wins to
gallons of ice cream - in secret, behind closed
doors.
Although fighting obesity has become a public
health crusade in the early years of the 21st
century, it's only been in the last few years that
researchers have recognized the existence of binge
eating disorder, and the debilitating role it plays
in the life of as many as 4 million Americans.
Despite the recent findings, the problem of
compulsive overeating is still greatly overshadowed
by its two famous cousins in the eating-disorder
family: anorexia nervosa and bulimia. That's not
surprising, since both conditions - which
overwhelmingly attack otherwise healthy young women
- can lead to starvation and malnutrition.
Binge eating disorder is most closely linked to
bulimia, whose victims also binge on unhealthy
quantities of food, but then throw up, or purge.
But binge eaters don't vomit. Some exercise
compulsively, but the vast majority simply gain
weight. Another major difference is that binge
eating disorder doesn't discriminate by gender.
Most experts now believe that anywhere between 40%
to roughly half of all compulsive overeaters are
guys.
You probably didn't know that, because there are
very few men who will ever admit to suffering from
binge eating disorder. Researchers have an easy
time finding female participants for studies on
binge eating disorder, but have great difficulty
recruiting men. Not because they're not there. The
imposing wall of silence that guys have built
around binge eating may explain why so few folks
understand what it is. It's much, much more than
simply Biggie Size-ing your fries. To be considered
binge eating, you have to feel a loss of control, a
feeling that you can't stop. In clinical terms, a
binge eater typically consumers more than 3,000
calories of junk food or items that are high in
sugar or carbohydrates. He eats rapidly. And he
does this often - at least twice a week and usually
more. Some of the favorite binges were raw cookie
dough, brownie mix, or an entire container of Cool
Whip. Often a food binger involves raiding the
pantry or refrigerator late at night. For some
bingers that means a Brunswick stew of whatever's
sitting around - garbanzo beans and a head of raw
cabbage. But more typically it's food that is
sweet, fatty, or filling - cookies, doughnuts, ice
cream, fast food. Some prefer to dine solo in
restaurants where people don't know them. It's
common to obsess over one particular menu item -
ordering Outback's Bloomin' Onion, say, for 15
nights in a row.
But what bingers eat isn't really the crux of
their problem. It's how they feel - not so much in
their growing bellies as in their troubled minds.
Set off by everyday factors like stress, boredom or
anxiety, binge eaters describe the experience like
a trance, an almost out-of-body experience that
they are unable to stop. It's unstoppable, a
slow-motion train wreck. Before they're done, the
binger doesn't just feel sick to his stomach, but
overwhelmed by guilt and even self-hatred.
So, why would anyone do this? Roughly half
of binge eaters suffer from clinical depression,
prompting a "chicken or egg" debate about which
causes which. It may be genetically hardwired.
Indeed, researchers in March of 2003 announced in
the New England Journal of Medicine that there is a
"strong link" between the mutations of an appetite
control gene and binge eating disorder.
But many experts feel environmental factors - a
dysfunctional family where meals were a reward, or
ridicule from other kids of the middle-school bus -
loom equally large. Another factor of men may be an
increasing emphasis in the media on body image
issues like "six-pack abs," an area that was once
only the province of women. Yet, the American
Psychiatric Association still only considers it a
"proposed" diagnosis until its next manual is
published. On newsstands now. (March,
04)
Related Topics: Binge
Eating, Eating
Disorders
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