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Well, 'compulsive eating disorder', the term is not an official eating disorder diagnosis.
So different people might mean different things by 'compulsive eating disorder'. But, when
I talk to patients and they talk about feeling like they have compulsive eating, I think
one of the things that patients typically are referring to is a sense of being out of
control around food, feeling like they sit down to have a meal or a snack and feel out
of control around it, maybe want to eat more or much more than they originally set out
to eat. For some people, compulsive eating means frank binge eating episodes. So, where
a person's eating a much larger amount of food than most people would consider appropriate
for a typical meal with an associated feeling throughout the binge episode of a loss of
control.
There can be other aspects of eating that can feel compulsive. Being on a diet for some
people can turn into a very compulsive thing where the behavior feels almost, like, larger
than life, or something that they can't resist doing after a while.
So, if you feel like you're struggling with a compulsive eating problem, whatever that
might mean to you, the good news is that there is are good ways to address that out there.
There are good treatment providers, good treatment centers that can really help you with a variety
of different types of compulsive eating problems and help turn what could be a quite disconcerting
psychological problem, or even a troublesome medical consequence of something like compulsive
eating, like overweight, can help turn that around into a more comfortable, stable relationship
with food again.