Do you have BED?

Wait, what do I mean by BED? It stands for Binge Eating Disorder, while binge means that you eat huge amount of food in a short period of time and feel out of control while doing it, without regular use of compensatory measures such as vomiting, excessive exercise, laxatives etc to counter the binge. This is different from anorexia and bulimia but more common than both.

I believe that most girls have the problem of overeating, feeling guilty and decide to starve the next day, but continue to eat and promise to really go on a diet the day after...and the cycle goes on and on...I am this kind of girl.

And then while I was on a detox diet (will share more about my recent successful weight lost in later post), I popped by the library and came across this book "Food: the good girl's drug". Then I thought, great, I should not feel guilty anymore because food is a good girl's drug..but wait, the subtitle went "how to stop using food to control your feelings". Ok, let's see what is this book about.

I rarely finished a book in 3 days but this book really enlightened me. Not only that I know I wasn't the only freak who felt the same way and there are reasons behind BED, it helped me to overcome the craving of food during my detox diet.

Ok back to BED, so how do you know if you have BED? Here are some of the symptoms:

• Frequent episodes of eating large quantities of food in relatively short periods of time
• Feeling out of control over eating behaviour
• Feeling ashamed or disgusted by the behaviour
• Eating rapidly
• Eating in secret
• Eating until uncomfortably full

I think I had the above 2 symptoms during my puberty years when my school life was stressful, friendships were broken, and parents were seemingly unfair to me. Then my mother strongly suggested me to lose weight, so I took slimming pills. It worked at the beginning but once I stopped taking, my weight bounced back and increased! Then I started to have the eat-starve-eat cycle..it gone worse and worse that I went for slimming massage, slimming devices, exercised vigorously, more slimming pills/supplements, all those silly ways...and yes, I managed to slim down alot to wear a nice cheongsam on my brother's wedding and wore bikini at Gold Coast. However, after the failed long term relationship, I started to binge again. I would reject my friends' invitation to gatherings and parties so that I can hide at home and eat until my stomach hurt, and my chest burned, and I would take laxative to remove all my "sins" and starve myself the next day, these procedures should heal me for my "lost" in relationship and distances in friendships. After 3 years of all these and the sudden deaths of my 2 beloved relatives within a year, I think it's time I should take control of my health.

I had all the above symptoms for sure and plus another additional symptom: I hate my body. I never felt slim or pretty enough. Does that sound familiar? I think 8 out of 10 girls feel that way, but that will lead to starvation and the eat-starve-eat cycle..dangerous...

So girls, take control of your health, do not be ashamed to recognize your real problem and seek help if you can't do anything by yourself. Sometimes, starving and exercising do not work because you didn't solve your root cause of overeating. If you think that you have some of the symptoms and wish to get a "quiet" help first, check out this book 'cause you may find the reason behind your BED.

xoxo