In the March 2009 issue of Fitness Magazine, writer Colleen Oakley confesses her struggles about being a borderline binger. Unlike those who meet the clinical criteria of BED, which clinically defines BED as “eating larger amounts of food than normal during a two-hour period at least twice a week for six months,” Colleen doesn’t quiet make the mark. Her binge pattern is a 30-minute, four times a month habit. Martin Binks, Ph.D., the director of behavioral health and research at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, North Carolina asserts that people who share Colleen’s struggles and behavioral patterns have varying levels of “discontrol,” which means that they have mini-binges, eating hundreds rather than thousands of extra calories at one sitting. Through her personal essay, she touches on the same psychological and biological accoutrements that accompany full-blown eating disorders, as well as the often-coexisting self-loathing and relapsive behavior.

I’m delighted that such an article made it to print, because while, clearly, this behavior is as prevalent, if not more, than BED, the narrative doesn’t contain extreme behaviors (or weights) or tales of survival. Rather, it depicts behaviors that so many people share… dipping into the chip basket at a Mexican restaurant for the third and fourth time… planning to eat healthy, then (somehow) finding oneself gorging on junk food instead… behaviors that lead, according to Dr. Binks, to the same health and psychological consequences as people whose eating disorders have reached maturation.

Whatever anyone wants to call it, disorder or “discontrol,” I’m happy that the dialogue is happening, because it needs to. Personally, I don’t think borderline bingeing is all that different than BED—it’s just another way of saying that someone is controlled by food, hence the “discontrol.”

As a recovering bulimic, the article really resonated with me because Colleen’s relapses have been, somewhat, a part of my process of recovery. My process has been about harm reduction; so, before I could fully abstain from bingeing, purging, and restricting, I had to minimize the behaviors. Over time, the episodes became fewer and farther in between. I eat whatever I want, but there were many times in the past that, while I didn’t “binge,” I overate like a “normal” person would eat.

I think that Colleen’s behavior is representative of how powerful food is in everyone’s life and how people in our society, many unknowingly, use food as a coping mechanism. As can be seen, by all of the shapes, sizes, behaviors, marketing tactics, and gimmicks surrounding food and losing weight, our society, who tries to act like eating three square meals a day is the norm, is anything but normal. In fact, “discontrol” has become “normal”… so I’m expecting we’ll be seeing many more stories like Colleen’s in the future.

To me, while these stats are alarming, they’re hardly surprising. Frankly, what most surprised me was not the jump in the number of referrals, but rather the number of referrals in general. When I think about the statistics extracted from NEDA about how many people have eating disorders, which are not even up to date, I’d think that their referral numbers were for a single month, not an annual total.

In any case, my question is, why does it take a tragedy to raise awareness about eating disorders? It’s because we live in a society that appreciates and feeds on shock value. Headlines about prevention and awareness for eating disorders don’t hold the level of punch as headlines about teenagers dying from anorexia. Analogous to this lies the fact that anorexia has the highest mortality rate, yet disorders like schizophrenia gets more attention in the areas of funding and research. How many more have to die???

Clearly, by the way society reduces eating disorders to something of a vanity problem instead of the mental disorder that it is, more education and advocacy is necessary. It does take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to raise awareness about eating disorders, or any cause for that matter. Complacency is the death to any cause. So, for today, let’s do what we can to spread the word. Advocate! Advocate! Advocate!

What do you think is the fattest city in America?  Detroit?  Phoenix?  Kansas City? Los Angeles?  Well, according to Men’s Fitness Magazine, Miami takes the cake.  Surprised?  I have to say the results made my face respond in such a way that could drive some women to dash out for a shot of Botox.  If the issue simply is about exercise and eating right, with the cornucopia of health food and exercise options, there isn’t a reason why sun-soaked Miami should be on the list…or maybe there is.  Besides being appalling on many levels, the fact that there is even a title, “Fattest City in America,” reflects the existing epidemic of obesity in this country that’s acknowledged in the public’s eyes to the extent that it makes headlines for a day, yet isn’t explored on any deeper levels.

When I was in school for social work, we skimmed the surface of the obesity epidemic, as it related to culture, education, and the intertwining social and governmental institutions.  From our studies, the class deduced that the epidemic is caused by an existing cultural poverty, and because of this, people lack the funding and education to buy nutritious food and exercise.  Oh, and it could be genetic.

While I agree that the validity to this assumption holds a lot of weight in sociological circles, I think there is another level.  First, not everyone who’s obese is part of a cultural poverty, uneducated, or has an “obesity gene.”  Second, even if people were part of this presupposed faction, couldn’t living poorly and working for pennies warrant depression and binge eating?  I think so.  Couldn’t bingeing contribute to their financial issues, therefore, creating a vicious cycle similar to other eating disorders and addictions?  Not once in our discussions, did anyone, besides myself, question if this cultural issue could be tied into an eating disorder, like Binge-Eating Disorder.

What’s appalling is that while anorexia vacillates between public scrutiny and glamorization, stealing all of the attention, people ignore the other end of the spectrum because of the stigma attached to people who are overweight, which, sadly, is reflective of our societal values.  Consequently, there hasn’t been enough research completed about the underlying issues with people who are overweight or obese to publicize it.  Case in point, Binge-Eating Disorder is such a new topic that when I looked it up in my DSM-IV-TR, it’s listed under “Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study.”  Further study? I’ll say.