There is probably no validity to this and I admit that its part of my black and white, no grey area thinking on the subject, but I can't help but think that every obese/overweight person has an eating disorder.

Fundamentally, to me, it makes sense. If someone eats normally than they shouldn't be overweight. I've heard many times "I love to eat, I love food" to justify large portions of food....well I LOVE to eat and I LOVE food too, but that doesn't mean that I should be eating 3000 calories at one sitting. A person can enjoy fantastic food and eat McDonalds if they choose without being overweight.

Not trying to start a debate, but I was just wondering if I am the only one suffering from this skewed thinking. Do I think this way because I struggle with disordered eating?

I think you're right that *something* is a problem with their relationship with food. Whether it extends to a disorder for every person who is, say, 30 pounds overweight, I really don't know. Then again, I'm capable of some denial in that area.


Food issues of some kind might include (speaking for myself here) trouble with sweets (can't stop at one), excessive hunger (emotional or physical), and trouble with portions in general (just really like the taste of some things!).

I think it's a question of degree. I think there's probably a spectrum. And various kinds of problems to varying degrees, whether it be sugar addiction, bingeing, etc.

What I know for sure is that my thin friends don't think about food as much as I do, don't have trouble eating just one brownie, are full much sooner than me, etc. For me, it really isn't about willpower so much as staying out of the way of things you have trouble with (not keeping stuff in the house) and regulating how often you can have treats (only at restaurants) or fast food, not making comfort food, etc. Some people naturally regulate these things. I think I have a sugar addiction. I don't speak for everyone who is overweight...I'm about 35 pounds overweight now and it keeps coming back to the sweets for me. When I went low/lower sugar is when I did the best at weight loss.




JMHO (from a newbie here)

When obesity was rare, I think it was easy to believe that there had to be something fundamentally wrong with anyone who was overweight. But with the obesity numbers climbing every year, that no longer makes sense (you're telling me that nearly 50% of the population has an eating disorder?)

Lifestyle-associated diseases that are linked to obesity are also on the rise, even among people who are not "overweight" and at younger and younger ages. Grade school kids are being diagnosed with type II diabetes (not all of them overweight).

Have you read, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler?

Very interesting book, and it explains why in this modern environment it's becoming more "normal" than not to overeat. The foods we're eating are designed to trigger overeating (even lab rats can't resist - and I don't think a lab rat can have an eating disorder as humans understand it).

I spent most of my life thinking I had a severe eating disorder. I had disordered eating, but it was not "cured" by therapy, it was cured by changing what I was eating, not why I was eating.

When I stopped crash dieting, I stopped bingeing. It didn't result in weight loss, but it did end my weight gain. Since age 5 until I stoped the crash/diet binge cycle, I was always either steadily gaining or steadily losing. There was no stable weight. Until I abandoned crash diets, and my weight stopped ever-climbing upward.

When I first started taking birth control pills, I also experienced a drastic change in eating. The hormone control reduced PMS cravings and insane hunger. Before that I would gain weight during the 7 to 10 days around my period and would have to spend the rest of the month working ot lose it.

When I changed my diet to low-carb/Primal or paleo eating (less sugar and starch), I can lose weight at a decent rate and I have more energy and less desire to eat. On a very low carb diet (probably too low to be healthy) I can even "forget to eat." I never in my life experienced that before.

Since medical intervention and low-carb eating "cures" my eating disorder, I don't think it ever was an eating disorder. I think high-carb foods trigger out-of-control eating and even trigger the emotion part of the emotional eating equation. On a low-carb diet, I don't get the emotional highs and lows that I do on high-carb eating. Therapy didn't help me stop emotional eating, but low-carb did! Seems like emotions weren't the problem in the first place, and the emotional imbalance seems to have been caused by what I was eating, not the other way around, because I don't GET as emotional when I eat high fiber, low-carb.

I wasted decades trying to resolve my "underlying emotional problems," only to learn I didn't have underlying emotional problems. Eating was causing emotional problems, not the other way around.

I know it's not popular to advocate a low-carb diet high in non-starchy vegetables. Americans don't eat 5 servings of vegetables, they don't want to hear anyone tell them to eat 10. And eliminate bread? Are you crazy?

It's an unpopular theory, because it's seen as either unhealthy or impossible to maintain (or both). In more than 3 decades of dieting, I never gave low-carb or no-grain diets a chance because "everyone knew" they were unhealthy. The only diet that has ever worked for me, the only diet that has ever allowed me to eat without feeling like a caged, starved animal - a diet that has improved my physical health in many ways - I never gave a chance because I thought I knew it was an unhealthy diet. I was wrong - oh so very wrong.

Kaplods - that is very interesting and I understand EXACTLY what you're saying. I really like that thought about emotional "instabilities" being a result of what is eaten and not vice versa. I almost want to say thats true in my case because I've been eating right and naturally have been feeling better....without medication, which I was very close to asking for because I felt so out of control. Since deciding to cut the high fat/processed foods, I haven't had the daily cravings for starches and that afternoon snickers.

tea2 - That is very true.....The issues span across an entire spectrum rather than the black or white, something is wrong or not, way I am seeing it.

being a mental health professional myself, obesity is never "cured" by therapy. i've been in therapy for the past three years, and only now have i taken action. therapy has helped me in some way, as it does bring certain things to light, but its always up to the client to take REAL ACTION..no therapist can do that for you. i've read research that shows that therapy isn't do i credit my therapist? to a certain extent. food is just one of the things i don't take control over.
does everyone who is obese have a disorder? its hard to tell. either way, its a negative relationship with food most of the time. its not always some deep rooted psychological process.
so many things contribute to obesity- in trying to get healthy myself, i've spent so much more money on groceries. healthy stuff isn't cheap. veggies and fruit can be expensive, low-calorie foods are sometimes pricier, even ground meat that super lean is more expensive per pound than the 20% fat options. also, many people go out to eat a lot at fast food places, for convenience and because sometimes they'll get more for their money...

I never meant to imply it would. I myself have a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology (with emphasis on behavioral, cognitive-behavioral and developmental psych). I know the "psychology" of behavioral change forward and backward.

I was putting the effort in - herculean effort. The hunger was so difficult to control that to lose weight, I had to abandon almost everything else in my life. I had to white-knuckle it, every moment because I felt like I was starving all of the time. "Not eating" felt like "not breathing," sure I could do it for a while, but eventually I'd lose control.

And I was told the answer was to "work harder," though I often couldn't imagine working any harder. I was putting every ounce of mental and physical fortitude I had into losing the weight. It was exhausting and torturous, and only mildly effective (effective only as long as I spent every moment of the day obsessed with what I was and wasn't eating).

I was told dieting had to be torturous (and I can tell you that no, it does not. On a low-carb diet I am not hungry, do not feel tortured and lose more weight than I ever did on the same calorie level of high-carb eating).

This has been such an "easy" cure, that I believe that had I discovered it when I was young and active the weight would have fallen off me. I also would have fewer decades of bad habits to unlearn. The more I comply with the low-carb diet, the faster I lose and more comfortable I am with the diet, but it's still hard to shake the "carbs are healthy" mentality that drives me to repeat an experiment which has always ended in failure. I cannot succeed by experimenting high-carb foods. I've proven to myself that it doesn't work for me. Eating low-carb does.

I personally believe there is a huge combination of things that have made obesity explode in America. There is the mass advertising that places food images up in your face at every turn. There is the mass availability of packaged food that doesn't need to be prepared or cooked. The microwave oven created a kitchen culture of not waiting for food to cook in an oven or on a stove top. Schools and offices allowed vending machines. Fast food restaurants with drive through created a lifestyle of eating on the go. Feeding children donuts, candy and soda pop before they are 3 years old (literally training their food tastes too early).

Worse, in my opinion is a generation of kids growing up not learning to cook from scratch. I can't believe that I recently bought a turnip in a grocery store and the clerk (about 20 years old) did not know what kind of vegetable it was. She had to ask me.

I also agree that the excess carbs in the typical diet is overwhelmingly out of proportion to the foods eaten in the previous centuries. I could go on an on about my thoughts on this subject, but I haven't even touched on how in today's society, disorders and addictions are the catch all excuse for any behavior that we won't change because we get something out of the behavior we are unwilling to let go of. Of course there are real disorders and real addictions, but it is not a good idea to self diagnose it.

I also can admit that I have that same idea that everyone who is obese has a eating disorder. I was actually thinking about that the other day, and wondering if it was true. To me, and this is purely my opinion with absolutely no medical background or training, if you know something is very, very bad for you and you continue to eat it despite feeling both physically and psychologically bad after eating it, you've got a problem. I don't know if it is a eating disorder or not but there is definitely something wrong there. Addiction? Very likely with all the sugar and fats in fast food. Denial? Probably. I know I have a serious problem with it, and that I was fueling the problem by buying all that crap.

well said.

and at kaplods- i wasn't trying to disagree with you, just putting it out there
personally, i've done low-carb for a while. i was always hungry, definitely didn't satisfy me. its really all about finding what works for you, and it sounds like you're doing well on it
i get what you mean with the carbs are good for you stuff...it seems like everywhere you turn, its something else that will help you/sabotage you from losing weight. its exhausting.

I wasn't offended, just clarifying.


I also know what you mean by being hungry on low-carb. One of the reasons I was sure that low-carb diets had to be unhealthy, was because every time I tried Atkins or any other low-carb plan with an extremely low-carb first phase, I got "induction flu." Feeling weak, nauseous and even passing out. And it never went away after two weeks as the diet author always promised.


The secret for me was learning to eat smaller portions more frequently, and being sure not to go "too low" on carbs (if I eat a lot of low-starch vegetables I usually do just fine). Fewer than 40g of carbs per day doesn't work for me (I feel yucky). But if I go over 100g then I'm hungry all the time and rarely see any weight loss (unless my calories are ridiculously low).

There is no one-size-fits-all WOE. And because there's still a focus on which diets are better than the others, instead of which ones are best suited for which people, a lot of people spin their wheels retrying plans that don't fit their needs (because of the "any diet works if you work it" - which has a point, and yet it's not always that simple. Finding a way to work it, can be as important. I can lose weight on calorie counting, eating high-carb foods - but I have to restrict calories so low and endure so much hunger that it's a very miserable way to live).

They say about women's dating "you've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince," and finding a weight-loss plan that is livable can be very similar. There are just so many opinions "out there" that you don't know what to believe.

ok cool, just making sure

i found that even getting a little older, things change. what did worked for me in the past does not work for me now. i used to go to weight watchers a few years a go, and i lost weight. now, i tried it again before going to my current nutritionist, and the scale would not budge. i guess i can't have the type of flexibility in my diet at this point to effectively lose weight. i've been through quite of few frogs in that sense..lol

HI everyone! I am new here and was just curious, do most of you find that the best way to curb the binge eating is with a low carb diet? I struggle with the low carb concept but I also know that when I binge it is the carbs I go for!