"Overeating was a way for me to lose control and stuff down my feelings." She has also stopped being so strict about what she can and can't eat, which has helped curb her binges. "I've learned so much through therapy and reading books about why my relationship to food was the way it was," says Vanessa. Indeed, BED is tough to tackle, but it can be conquered. Kelsey knows this all too well: "I'll go to school and not eat all day, trying to make up for the binge from the night before, but then I'll end up eating a million calories when I get home," she says. It's a vicious cycle and very hard to stop," she says. So the binge usually comes after the diet, or a big binge is what ends the diet. "There's only so long that we as humans can deprive ourselves it's against our nature. "I weighed 117 pounds at the beginning of junior year-but with all the stress of school and my busy schedule, I started bingeing again and am now at 130 pounds." Dieting not only doesn'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. When I got to high school, I was sick of feeling fat so I went on a diet and lost a lot of weight," says Kelsey. "I've struggled with food and my weight all my life. While not everyone with BED is overweight, all of those extra calories can eventually lead to weight gain for many girls. Even though I couldn't bring myself to buy and eat junk food, I still went on to ingest thousands of calories." One time, I went to several stores and bought bran muffins, pita chips, and other things like that. "I remember thinking it was ironic that I was turning healthy things into something extremely unhealthy. "I'd often binge on nuts, granola bars, and whole-wheat bread," says seventeen-year-old Vanessa*, from Seattle, who went to a therapist to help get her BED and poor body image under control.
In fact, people with binge eating issues can gorge on healthy foods too. Thanks to a complex mash-up of factors-like genes, individual personality, upbringing, and difficult life events-that could make some people prone to binge eating, the problem can't be fid simply by learning about good nutrition. 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. In fact, just as genes can affect a person's risk of developing diabetes or certain types of cancer, some researchers believe that genetics may play a role in BED. Eating disorders, including binge eating disorder, are serious mental illnesses with severe physical complications," he stresses. "Overcoming an eating disorder isn't just a matter of willpower but requires treatment.
"Though people might think it's easy for someone to stop binge eating, it's no easier to overcome than anorexia or bulimia," says Ovidio Bermudez, M.D., medical director of Child and Adolescent Services at the Eating Recovery Center in Denver. Although Kelsey and other teens with BED hate what they are doing, experts say it's foolish to assume they can simply end the behavior.
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