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"When I was sixteen years old, I sold candy bars to raise money for my junior class student council. After carting them around all day at school, I finally gave in to my chocolate craving and had one. Then two. Then three, four, five. Despite feeling sick to my stomach, I couldn&amp;#39;t stop. I ate half a dozen 100 Grand candy bars that afternoon, and then spent the evening trying to make myself throw up.\n\n I&amp;#39;d been obsessed with dieting and calories since I was thirteen, and any attempts to resist junk food always ended with me eating stuff by the bag, box, and tub; but after downing those candy bars that day, I knew something was wrong. I didn&amp;#39;t have anorexia, because I wasn&amp;#39;t starving myself, and I didn&amp;#39;t have bulimia, because I couldn&amp;#39;t actually get myself to purge.\n\n It turned out that I had something I had never heard of before: binge eating disorder (BED), an illness characterized by frequent overeating during which you feel out of control and then very upset afterward. And I wasn&amp;#39;t the only one suffering from it. Despite the fact that people don&amp;#39;t talk about it as much, BED is more common than anorexia and bulimia combined: A study last year by the National Institute of Mental Health found that 1.6 percent of all American teens have it, compared with 0.3 percent who have anorexia and 0.9 percent who are struggling with bulimia.\n\n Kelsey, a seventeen-year-old from Philadelphia, recently discovered that she&amp;#39;s one of the hundreds of thousands of teen girls dealing with BED. &amp;quot;A typical binge will go something like this: I tell myself I&amp;#39;m only going to have one cookie, but it turns into ten,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;After I eat those, I&amp;#39;ll grab some chips because I want something salty. Next thing you know, I&amp;#39;m standing in front of the fridge eating leftovers. Then I&amp;#39;ll want something sweet again, so I&amp;#39;ll have a couple of ice cream sandwiches and some cereal.&amp;quot; She confesses that she repeatedly raids the fridge and cupboards although she&amp;#39;s not hungry, and even when she&amp;#39;s already full. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s as if I&amp;#39;m on autopilot\u2014 just shoving all the food in\u2014and before I realize it, I&amp;#39;ve eaten a ton,&amp;quot; she says. Too ashamed to binge eat in front of others, Kelsey waits until she&amp;#39;s home alone: &amp;quot;When my mom leaves, I sometimes go straight to the kitchen so I can have a huge pig-out with no one around.&amp;quot;\n\n Of course, everyone overeats once in a while\u2014accidentally finishing off a big bag of chips while watching TV or having seconds of pie at Thanksgiving\u2014but binge eaters&amp;#39; behavior goes way beyond that. &amp;quot;The key issue that distinguishes binge eating disorder from the normal overeating we all do is the loss of control, and one sign that there may be a binge eating problem is if it causes distress to the person and interferes with her life in some way,&amp;quot; explains Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program and author of the book Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop (Walker &amp;amp; Company). &amp;quot;This could mean not going out with friends to eat, avoiding social situations, like parties, in which there is food, and choosing to stay at home with your binge foods over going to school or an activity.&amp;quot;\n\n For Kelsey, who&amp;#39;s currently in her senior year of high school, overeating is definitely getting in the way of her happiness. &amp;quot;I binge eat almost every day and I feel disgusting,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve gained fifteen pounds in the last few months, and it&amp;#39;s a struggle to get out of bed every morning. When I look in the mirror I want to cry. None of my clothes fit anymore, so now I just wear sweatpants and T-shirts to school and no makeup. I&amp;#39;ve lost all my confidence.&amp;quot;\n\n Although Kelsey and other teens with BED hate what they are doing, experts say it&amp;#39;s foolish to assume they can simply end the behavior. &amp;quot;Though people might think it&amp;#39;s easy for someone to stop binge eating, it&amp;#39;s no easier to overcome than anorexia or bulimia,&amp;quot; says Ovidio Bermudez, M.D., medical director of Child and Adolescent Services at the Eating Recovery Center in Denver. &amp;quot;Overcoming an eating disorder isn&amp;#39;t just a matter of willpower but requires treatment. Eating disorders, including binge eating disorder, are serious mental illnesses with severe physical complications,&amp;quot; he stresses. In fact, just as genes can affect a person&amp;#39;s risk of developing diabetes or certain types of cancer, some researchers believe that genetics may play a role in BED. One study of overweight individuals found that a person is twice as likely to binge eat if she has a relative with BED, and another reported that if someone in her immediate family had the disorder, she has a 57 percent chance of having it too.\n\n Thanks to a complex mash-up of factors\u2014like genes, individual personality, upbringing, and difficult life events\u2014that could make some people prone to binge eating, the problem can&amp;#39;t be fid simply by learning about good nutrition. In fact, people with binge eating issues can gorge on healthy foods too. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;d often binge on nuts, granola bars, and whole-wheat bread,&amp;quot; says seventeen-year-old Vanessa*, from Seattle, who went to a therapist to help get her BED and poor body image under control. &amp;quot;I remember thinking it was ironic that I was turning healthy things into something extremely unhealthy. One time, I went to several stores and bought bran muffins, pita chips, and other things like that. Even though I couldn&amp;#39;t bring myself to buy and eat junk food, I still went on to ingest thousands of calories.&amp;quot;\n\n While not everyone with BED is overweight, all of those extra calories can eventually lead to weight gain for many girls. But dieting isn&amp;#39;t the answer either. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve struggled with food and my weight all my life. When I got to high school, I was sick of feeling fat so I went on a diet and lost a lot of weight,&amp;quot; says Kelsey. &amp;quot;I weighed 117 pounds at the beginning of junior year\u2014but with all the stress of school and my busy schedule, I started bingeing again and am now at 130 pounds.&amp;quot; Dieting not only doesn&amp;#39;t fix BED, it may make the eating disorder worse and lead to obesity, warns Amy Jaffe, R.D., a nutrition therapist in Coral Gables, Florida. &amp;quot;There&amp;#39;s only so long that we as humans can deprive ourselves; it&amp;#39;s against our nature. So the binge usually comes after the diet, or a big binge is what ends the diet. It&amp;#39;s a vicious cycle and very hard to stop,&amp;quot; she says. Kelsey knows this all too well: &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ll go to school and not eat all day, trying to make up for the binge from the night before, but then I&amp;#39;ll end up eating a million calories when I get home,&amp;quot; she says.\n\n Indeed, BED is tough to tackle, but it can be conquered. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve learned so much through therapy and reading books about why my relationship to food was the way it was,&amp;quot; says Vanessa. &amp;quot;Overeating was a way for me to lose control and stuff down my feelings.&amp;quot; She has also stopped being so strict about what she can and can&amp;#39;t eat, which has helped curb her binges. &amp;quot;I let myself eat what I want, healthy or not. So now I don&amp;#39;t go out and overeat healthy food when what I&amp;#39;m really craving is little bit of junk,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve also educated myself on the vitamins and minerals that are in food. Thinking about how they can help my body instead of focusing on calories has helped me see the big picture and not view food as good or evil.&amp;quot;\n\n Emily, nineteen, from Houston, says she&amp;#39;s on the path to recovery after educating herself about BED. &amp;quot;I knew that I didn&amp;#39;t like my body and that I snuck food and overate regularly, but I didn&amp;#39;t understand that it was a psychological disorder at first,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Finally being able to put a name on something I&amp;#39;ve struggled with my whole life was the most important step toward getting healthier, both physically and mentally.&amp;quot; Emily still binges once in a while, but she doesn&amp;#39;t beat herself up about it as much. &amp;quot;I felt more ashamed about it when I didn&amp;#39;t know why I was doing it. I used to think I had no self-discipline, which really sucked, because I worked very hard to be the best at everything. Now, I feel more at peace with myself and I don&amp;#39;t let frustration and shame overwhelm me when I slip up,&amp;quot; she says.\n\n As with Vanessa and Emily, seeing a therapist and reading self-help books helped me figure out what was going on in my relationship with food. Eventually, I completely recovered from BED. If you&amp;#39;re worried that you might have a binge eating problem (even if it&amp;#39;s not full-blown BED), educating yourself is the first step toward getting better. In addition to checking out books on this topic, learn the basic facts at the Binge Eating Disorder Association&amp;#39;s website (bedaonline.com) and check out support sites, like something-fishy.org and nationaleatingdisorders.org.\n\n Telling someone you trust about your binge eating can be scary, but it&amp;#39;s crucial as well. Talk to an adult you trust, whether it&amp;#39;s your parent, sports coach, or school counselor, and ask them to put you in touch with a psychologist or eating disorders specialist. Lastly, be willing to accept help when it&amp;#39;s offered. &amp;quot;My mom was the one who first noticed my struggles, and I used to push her away,&amp;quot; says Kelsey. &amp;quot;Finally, I told her I wanted help, so she called our family doctor, and he referred me to a therapist and nutritionist. Now I&amp;#39;m receiving treatment, and I hope to get better.&amp;quot;\n\n*Name has been changed. \n\n Sunny Sea Gold is a former binge eater and author of the book Food: The Good Girl&amp;#39;s Drug (Berkley Trade). She can be reached through her website, healthygirl.org."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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