Binge eating disorder is a complex illness that involves bingeing episodes, during which a person eats exorbitant amounts of food while feeling as though they've lost control. Other common aspects of the disorder include depressive moods, low self esteem and body image, and history of dieting and/or obesity. Since the illness is muti-faceted, multiple treatment options may best ensure proper healing and long-term recovery.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps a person struggling with binge eating disorder better understand and cope with feelings and situations that serve as underlying issues of the disorder. In groups or through individual counseling, people with the disorder are lead to examine negative feelings and situations and how they contribute to bingeing behaviors. Since bingeing has often become a coping mechanism, healthier means of coping, such as discussing your feelings, are addressed.
According to the Mayo Clinic, CBT can help people gain heightened sense of control over negative behaviors and eating patterns. Since CBT isn't directly helpful in reducing weight, those who are extensively overweight may require additional treatment. However, in many cases, addressing thoughts and behaviors provides important foreground for healthy weight management to begin.
Interpersonal Therapy
Interpersonal therapy is a treatment option that addresses a person's relationships with others. If you have binge eating disorder and sense that strained relationships with others trigger your bingeing thoughts and behaviors, interpersonal therapy may help you reduce bingeing episodes by encouraging you to improve communication and overall relationships with people in your life.
In addition, interpersonal therapy can help people evaluate the ways in which they interact with others and develop useful strategies for dealing with troubled relationships and communication problems. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), effective treatment for binge eating disorder should address how people feel about themselves, since many struggle with poor body image and low self esteem. In this regard, the relationship between you and yourself may be equally or more significant in terms of repair than relationships with others.
Behavioral Weight Loss Therapy
Binge eating disorder often invokes emotional, behavioral and weight concerns since many of those with the disorder are overweight. According to the APA, binge eating disorder affects 8 percent of the obese population in the United States. Since obesity raises risk for a variety of conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart attack and stroke, and may further dampen struggles pertaining to poor body image, weight loss may be addressed as part of behavioral therapy.
The Mayo Clinic suggests that in most cases, the behavioral aspects of the disorder are best treated first since dieting may trigger binge behaviors. When weight gain is severe, however, of if a person is adamant about addressing weight loss matters as an immediate aspect of therapy, medically-supervised weight loss my occur.
