Beck Diet Solution and Overeating
 

I was reading the Beck Diet Solution, which I find to be a really good book. There is a part of the book which says to stop reading if you have an eating disorder and I stopped because I have issues with overeating- don't know if I have an eating disorder though. I binge sometimes but I don't know if I have binge eating disorder, so I wasn't sure if I should keep reading this book or if it wasn't for me. Can anyone relate? Any advice?

Amy

Hi Amy (seabiscuit) - glad to hear you're reading Beck.

Your question is a personal call. My take is that all of us over-eat and some of us call it binging when we eat a lot. I'm not qualified to know if you have an Eating Disorder (ED) or not - only you and a trained ED counselor could determine that. Do you have the opportunity to talk to a counselor?

But if your over-eating is occasional - even if a lot - I'd suggest you give the Beck program a full fledged effort. You will quite likely find that the strategies do help combat the desire to eat.

Good luck with your decision.

I read that as "bulimia or anorexia," although I agree that overeating is sometimes, correctly, considered an eating disorder. But overeating is the behavior that Beck targets. I used to binge eat, so I went ahead with Beck and it has helped me stop the overeating behavior. I continue to hold in reserve the idea that I may want to seek professional help if things get harder for me than they are now, but I would be doing that alongside Beck, not instead of it.

Thanks so much for your input! I think I am going to talk to my trainer and therapist about this and see what they think. I want to try it but I don't want a "diet" - I thought Beck was not a diet per se, but a cognitive approach to weight loss. I am reading Intuitive Eating which says to reject the diet mentality, so I don't want to be reading contradictory books.