Binge Eating Disorder and Fasting

Obesity has become one of the most common health issue so far in the United States of America. According to the 2014–2016 (Nutrition Examination Study), around 33.8% of adults in the United States are obese. This is continually increasing every single day. The frequency of obesity has more than doubled over the past couple decades, and current indication indicates that this trend possibly could last if weight control mediations do not become successful and people start changing up their behavior. The severity of this problem is highlighted by the fact that obesity is interconnected with deadly chronic diseases and reduced lifetime expectancy. Binge eating, emotional eating, and intermittent fasting has a huge possibility of developing into something dangerous such as obesity and or other common chronic diseases if we don’t do our research and or act impulsivity. In some way, these three relate to one another. Weather the fact that consumption is happening overall or just the risks in general. While two out of the three are behavior sense, and one is a lifestyle, it’s extremely important to know the risks before adapting to something that can possibly impact us negatively in the future.

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Binge Eating disorder, commonly known as BED, is the uncontrolled ingestion of hefty quantities of food on a repeated basis without the purging of food. Millions from all over the world suffer from binge eating disorder. Those who endure from binge eating disorder tend to have a difficulty with obesity. Even if the victims of BED are not obese, they are typically in poor health. According to The New York Academy of Sciences, BED affects an estimated 1–3% of the general population, making it the most common eating disorder. They also stated that BED patients are 3-6 times more likely to be obese then those without an eating disorder. Binge eating is often used to lower life stress and it possibly could be correlated to continuing efforts of nutrition constraint. (McCuen, Wurst, Courtney). Individual’s with BED (Binge Eating Disorder) display a commotion of eating behavior. It was confirmed in a lab research that BED patients consume way more calories during a binge meal than what an obese person would consume in a day. Lately, BED was found to be correlated with diabetes. There are many theories on BED disorder and how we found room for it in our society, one of the most common theories of binge eating is that it originated from shape and weight concerns, which lead to nutritional restriction, then binge eating, tailed by a continuing series of limitation and binge eating. Regardless if you binge eat healthy versus non-healthy foods, it still has a huge impact on our weight and overall health.

Many all of the world fast; there are so many times of “fasting.” Intermittent and fasting for religious purposes are the most common ones that millions in our world practice daily. Regardless if it’s intermittent fasting or religious fasting it’s somewhat of the same concept. While intermediate fasting is an eating style where you eat within a specific time period, and fast the rest of the time; religious fasting such as Ramadan, Lent, or even Yom Kippur is the willing self-discipline and self-restraint from some or all solid foods, liquids, or even both for a long period of time. Many seem to be intrigued of intermittent fasting due to the fact that it helps with weight management and can also help with disease risk over time. Weight loss is the main factor on why people are interested with this type of fasting and or because they’re dedicated to their religion. However, can intermittent fasting lead to binge eating? Despite evidence that suggest that intermittent fasting might be in some ways beneficial for weight loss for those whom are overweight and or obese, there are many concerns regarding the safety and the potential for binge eating on those unrestricted days. According to an article that talks about intermittent fasting, clinical trials show that intermittent fasting can lead to significant reduction in body weight and adiposity either comparable to or greater than continuous energy restriction. There are also some pros and cons when it comes to religious fasting and what exactly it does to our body. Fasting can usually lead to catabolism, if we have nothing to fuel up with we use our muscle tissue. During the holy month of Ramadan, I fast for thirty days; when it’s time to break the fast and I can unfortunately say that I do in fact overeat which does lead to weight gain for me. I also seem to consume late as night as well before the sun rises to eat a last meal. I then crash right after and when I usually awake I automatically feel extremely bloated. Majority of the time I’m not aware of my actions and can’t seem to fathom why my weight on the scale is getting higher and higher. Imagine overeating for 30 days and what kind of damage that happens to my body and health.

Emotional eating is also something that many people suffer and relate too. Does emotional eating lead to obesity and or chronic diseases? Can emotional eating lead to binge eating? Emotional‐eating is generally described as consumption in answer to a variety of bad feelings. Approximations of emotional‐eating in adolescence range from about 10 to 60%, with the maximum percentages reported by adolescents. Which in today’s society; it’s truly not extraordinary at all. Due to stress from school and or relationships that occur; many adolescents and even adults look for food as comfort and that’s when they tend to emotional binge eat. This, I can relate too and I know others out there can as well. This has lead me and others to weight gain and sometimes even depression. Emotional‐eating is more recurrent amongst adolescence who support loss of control, the understanding of being powerless to control one’s consumption of any quantity of food. Emotional eating is usually answering to emotions such as stress by consuming high carbohydrate, high calorie foods, and or processed foods with little to low dietary value. While both binge eating and emotional eating include a feel of problem monitoring a desire for food, emotional eating may encompass eating from reasonable to great quantities of food and may be the only indication that an individual has or be part of an expressive illness like the most common ones; depression, bulimia, or even binge eating disorder. On the other hand, binge eating disorder is a specific mental illness that is depicted by frequent occurrences of overeating, that disturbed, people overpoweringly eat a sum of food that is considerably higher than that which most individuals consume in a small amount of time (for example, over three hours), even if they aren’t hungry at all. Health specialists evaluate emotional eating by searching for physical and mental health issues. Overpowering emotional eating encompasses instructing the person better ways to observe food and improve their eating habits, distinguishing their causes for engaging in this behavior, and acquire other more proper ways to avert and ease anxiety.

Binge eating, emotional eating, and intermittent fasting is something that millions all over the world practice. In conclusion, these can be a huge impact overall on our health and can lead to behaviors that are extremely hard to take a hold on. Mental health seems to be a huge impact on compulsive behaviors. People who usually struggle with binge eating disorder and emotional eating are usually triggered and might need to see a specialist in order to become better behavior wise. Individuals who religiously fast or intermittent fast need to be conscious what may occur. Binge eating disorder or overeating is something that can occur if they’re not planning out their meals correctly. I can most definitely relate and agree with the research that I conducted. In the future, next time I religiously fast, I have to be conscious of not to overeat and start including nutritional foods in that selection overall.

Brewerton, Timothy D. “Binge Eating Disorder.” SpringerLink, Springer International Publishing, 29 Aug. 2012, link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00023210-199911050-00003.

John F Trepanowski, and Richard J Bloomer. “The Impact of Religious Fasting on Human Health.” Nutrition Journal, BioMed Central, 22 Nov. 2010, nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-9-57.

McCuen‐Wurst, Courtney, et al. “Disordered Eating and Obesity: Associations between Binge‐Eating Disorder, Night‐Eating Syndrome, and Weight‐Related Comorbidities.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Wiley/Blackwell (10.1111), 16 Oct. 2017, nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nyas.13467.

Stojek, Monika M.K., et al. “Associations of Adolescent Emotional and Loss of Control Eating with 1‐Year Changes in Disordered Eating, Weight, and Adiposity.” International Journal of Eating Disorders, Wiley-Blackwell, 18 Oct. 2016, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eat.22636.

“Stress, Overeating, and Obesity: Insights from Human Studies and Preclinical Models.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Pergamon, 11 Mar. 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416303943.