Finding Om

Bingeing is: (1) eating what most people would regard as an unusually large amount of food
and (2) feeling a sense of having lost control while eating.

1. An unusually large amount of food is something that most people would feel is more than a large
meal.
2. A sense of having lost control while eating might be experienced as feeling driven or compelled
to eat; not being able to stop eating once you have started; not being able to keep yourself from
eating large amounts of certain kinds of food in the first place; or giving up on even trying to
control your eating because you know that, no matter what, you are going to overeat.

Here are some examples:

After work one evening, Dina ate two pieces of chicken, a 16-ounce package of frozen vegetables,
three cups of rice, three fourths of a coffee cake, and a piece of fruit. This is an unusually large
amount of food. While she ate, Dina felt completely out of control, ate more quickly than usual,
and ate until she felt uncomfortably full. Afterwards, Dina was very upset about how much she
had eaten, and said she felt depressed, guilty, and hated herself for giving in to the urge to binge.

Several times a week JoAnne ate lunch at McDonald's with two coworkers. Her usual order was
a Big Mac, a fish fillet sandwich, two large orders of fries, and a large chocolate shake. This is an
unusually large amount of food. Although she ate somewhat more than her friends did and knew
she was eating a lot of high-fat food, she did not feel out of control while eating or feel upset
afterwards about how much she had eaten.

For lunch one day, Joseph had a ham and cheese sandwich with mayonnaise on a roll, a small bag
of potato chips, a candy bar, and a diet coke. Although this was a large meal, it was not unusually
large. However, Joseph felt out of control because he had planned to have turkey on whole wheat
with lettuce and tomato plus a piece of fruit for dessert, but changed his mind at the last minute
while ordering his sandwich.

Carol ate two donuts someone brought to the office one morning. She had started a diet that day
and planned to skip breakfast. Carol initially refused the donuts, but after everyone else had gone
to a meeting she snuck into the break room and very quickly ate the donuts so no one would see
her eating. She felt very guilty and ashamed afterwards and hated feeling so out of control of her
eating, resolving to start dieting again the next day. Although Carol felt bad about eating the
donuts, this was not an unusually large amount of food.

Dina and JoAnne ate an unusually large amount of food, but Joseph and Carol did not.
Dina, Joseph, and Carol felt a loss of control while eating, but JoAnne did not.
Of the four, Dina is the only one who actually had a binge episode, which includes both (1) eating
an unusually large amount of food and (2) feeling a sense of having lost control while eating.

Goldfein, J. A., Devlin, M. J. & Kamenetz, C. (2005). Eating disorder examination-questionnaire
with and without instruction to assess binge eating in patients with binge eating disorder. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 37,
107-111.